"writing by architects tends to read like it's intended to not convey ANY information save an impression of the architect's ability to use a thesaurus and their superficial familiarity with the writings of deleuze."

HA!

i have never seen anyone get into shit for explaining things clearly. forgetting to obfuscate when the design sucked, yes that can get you into more trouble with folks...but good design and clarity? never a bad thing.

actually, i am not so sure any of my grad school profs would have fallen for confusion in place of quality. my current prof absolutely not. cuts through babble like a knife. scary smart man. i would say above is part of the "nooneunderstandsme" syndrome. very popular, that.

the written word kills imagination, limiting it to a predetermined fate of definition and cursory acceptance or rejection.
i propose a shift back to the oral tradition of our ancestors, where the concepts of history, imagination, politics, art, science, etc. were passed on generation to generation in story/parable forms and were really a part of your life and heritage, and a foundation for understanding what true communication really is.
it will take 4 or 5 generations to really take hold, but i feel it's worth the time.

That's all very good --- and also the reson why I so often in a discussion made an apeal to use graphics instead of words , to stop use words but show some real arguments ------- worda are so easy in discussions in these fora's and it is acturly wrong that academic rules and the selected oppinion of midstream critics are allowed as "arguments" when the only argument in these cases shuld be somthing Better, it's wrong that peolpe who is only good with the written can obey a creative work based on visual presentation , without one single drawn line without anything but negative written response without following the tread of graphic presentation.

thar ain't nudn to it. ya sits down an make a writ. now, ifn thars fightn words, weed be fixen to sit down an commence to communicate on it.

architects' quality of writing is relative, but most of them definitely can't spell

When beside the most modern architect conspired houses are way to expensive, quite edgy and if you would live in a cuttinge edge design you would end up in a tin can where the shape of the windows make you dizzy , Now architects can't write seem to be the general oppinion, then think about their houses.

some people don't know what a period is. period.

Creative writing may make doctors better

Some doctors might improve their bedside manner by honing their creative writing skills, a small study suggests.

Yale University researchers found that medical residents who completed a creative writing workshop felt the experience helped them better view their patients as people, and not just medical cases.

The effect, according to the researchers, seems to stem from the fact that the residents not only reflected on their own emotions and the experiences of their patients, but also wrote it down as a story.

Many residency programs have support groups where young doctors can discuss their concerns, lead study author Dr. Anna Reisman noted in an interview. However, the process of writing a narrative may help residents examine their experiences in a more thoughtful way, according to Reisman, an assistant professor of internal medicine at the Yale School of Medicine.

"Focusing on the craft of writing, in other words, provides a means of increasing one's powers of observation and improving one's understanding of both self and others," she and her colleagues write in the Journal of General of Internal Medicine.

My background is largely in the written word. I decided to make a jump to a design career because I realized I wasn't ultimately happy just reading and writing about what others were creating....and wanted to get in on the fun of building stuff myself.

(insert obigatory disclaimer here about how well I understand the not-fun aspects of a career in design; at least some of them I'm already VERY familiar with.)
//you're asking, "why do only the demo guys get to have the fun?"

but this is just by way of explaining what motivates my question:

how do you, as a designer, think about the writing process?
//keep it short. why subject other people to the eyes-glazed-over-torture i've suffered? if you want to write puffy, go work for donald rumsfield's t-team.

do you see any parallels between the writing process and the design process?
//or any creative activity?

how did you learn to write about design?
did you get a good understanding of the subject in school?
if you are in practice, what did you learn about it from a real-world perspective?
//not in any design job (tragically so. and pity the world's mental well-being for that.)
however, to answer as best possible: one day, you gotta write a fax. you write and send it. from your followup call you know whether the recipient understood your fax.
improve as necessary. (note that i had no prior experience as a graffiti artist before i sent my first fax.)


I realize I have biased my sample from the git-go because presumably if you are hanging around here typing, you have SOME comfort level with the written word (some more than others, ahem.)
//yeah, i like some words more than others. :-)

i freelance as a sportswriter for a regional magazine...its some of the most creative work i do...i treat punctuation like color...blur/separate ideas.

also get to talk to some notable sports figures. pay is not much at all. ~$100-$150 an article = 10-12 hours...very rewarding...editor even indicates that i'm an architect.

i'm trying to find an outlet that will let me write about design.

writing, in general -- not the best paid profession in existence. it's like some other creative professions where there is a certain amount of pressure to work for free, or nearly for free.

if we lived in a society that was as massive a consumer of the written word as, say, the late nineteenth century, the situation would be a little different. but we place greater cash value on other things these days - with the exception of a few blockbuster fiction writers.

what I have always heard from professional writers of my aquaintance is that the real "killer app" in writing is having a specific area of expertise, and that area of expertise being one that has a good number of profitable publications or other outlets devoted to it.

not sure where this leaves us in regard to writing about design, where there certainly are publications, but as for profitable ones? -- hm. and the state of journalism being what it is, there are few enough general-readership publications that actually have design critics on staff.

obviously one would need to have other motivations than making maximum bucks.

if its one mouse and two mice..why isnt it one house and two hice ???????????

I don't know if it is relevant , but I designed quite a few small boats I build a few but published free plans for many more . Boatsbuilding is not just easy, you need years of experience good skills and best of all centuries of experience or atleast a good feel about how and why a submerged volume act and react. Ontop offering plans atleast you must master the tradisional drafting , you must know what reoubles it is to lift the lines from plans to materials and you must posses a great knowleage about various wood species modern laminating differerent constructions their individual weakness over time and right now , ---- so you would think boatplans are expensive --- they are not,
Not if the plans are made by amature dreamers at a desk and published in popular mechanics and is 80 years old, not if they are supposed to be build from offcuts from latest garage building , not if what boatbuilding is about is building the worse flatbottomed monster from the vorse possible housbuilding plywood not if the general idea is to end covering it with glasfiber and epoxy.
But if you look around for small boat palns what will you find ; not the quality beauty mahogony dinghies, not the seaworthy sailboat, but worse of all not the detail knowleage and feel for shape and ability , the cosy designs that will last a hundred years no, what you will find are amature plans made from the idea that a boat have to be fast build and build with housebuilding fittings and materials, --- the fine old arts of boatsbuilding simply went down the drain with "do it yourself from avaible scratch ; it's just a box in the water anyway" Popular mechanics attitude.

Now how do this relate to architecture --- well read closer and you will reconise quite a few clues ; if writing about it from academic rules if quality are jettisoned and fast solutions bringing the hugest and fastest surface replaced the beauty, if theories never tried out and never spoken against and the crafts in it is replaced with writing desk knowleage, when all it is about is providing a lookalike and not the century lasting quality , guess you find more resons why writing desk designs done with arogance towerds the very crafts involved , why it's such a shame that architects untill recently obey the computer and is to afrait to even try it as anything but the pen they was used to, --- replecing the obvious tallent required with academic frases and written arguments based in theoretic academics --- when did that ever bring the revolution architecture need more than ever.