Op-Ed: Thoughts on Naivete as Design Method or, Why Our Entry Didn’t Have a 6” Curb

2013-07-24T12:35:00-04:00

When asked about courage in architecture, Elizabeth Diller has said: "[It] comes half from being naive and also not having the cynicism to stop yourself when you have a good idea that you don't know how to work it out.” More simply: You can’t know that it can’t be done if you’re going to do it. My partner and I recently won a Jury Citation — a euphemism for 9th place — in a competition for bus rapid transit stations. Our project was by any measure grossly out of scale, eclipsing any imaginable budget or structural methods, and barely included any buses at all. Rather than being sited in an expanded traffic lane, our entry swooped high and far above the city. It created a counterpoint to the constant discourse on hyper-efficiency and speed. It provoked, I hope, questions about the nature of the competition as well as addressing the brief. But the night before we submitted our entry, I reviewed the FAQ and had a moment of panic.

Other entrants had asked, “frequently”, how high th...

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Op-Ed: Thoughts on Naivete as Design Method or, Why Our Entry Didn’t Have a 6” Curb