As usual, Steven's logic is extremely perceptive.

I think it's not only the organization of the information that is necessary, but the creativeness involved with the organization.

If the files are all in alphabetical order in manila folders, we're stuck with tract houses and standardized materials for everything.

I love organizing stuff.

Interesting that this came up. I have gone through a minor personal revolution in the last few days, and it all comes down to organisation of what I do.

I am a notorious time/project management avoider. Mainly because I have alot of work to do and my mind set was on the fact that if I am organising something I am not doing 'real' work.

An epiphany occured when I read this article at Wired on David Allen, who invented and expouses a system called Getting Things Done. I havent gone too much into it, but it started me off on a track this week that has been amazing.

Getting Things Done or GTD is an entire systematic organisational philosophy - and like I said, I am not a proponent of the system - but the main thing I took away from the article is this [paraphrased]:

Stress occurs when he have personal intentions that we do not achieve. And our minds are full of 'stuff' that obscures life, and has a cumulative effect on how you live, leads to procrastination, poor decision making and stasis.

Essentially, my system [as extracted from GTD and other things] relies on creating lists of every single thing you can think of that is on your mind. In terms of my work, it has involved a list so far of 18 projects/areas that I completely offloaded everything in my mind onto.

It is not enough to create a list of things to do. A task - particularly in architecture - is multi-faceted with a range of subtasks, timing differentials, yes/no questions, if-then-this scenarios. The GTD system holds that if a task is not fully described it only leads to procrastination and stress because there continues to be a set of unresolved questions and decisions.

So, I enacted a system on monday morning, and spent 3 hours offloading every question/task I had in regards to all of my duties - essentially a current snapshot of where everything is at. It was absolutely liberating. That day I had a lunchbreak out of the office and I cant remember a time at work when I was more relaxed and in control.

I now record every task almost in a journal form, so that everything is recorded. Everything is hand written - not typed. This is essential.

I have a very basic A4 sheet with the following headings:

Order/Issue/Action/Related to/Finished

No date column - you write it in. No computer work. There is a master list [which is the same as every other template] and everything is held together with a bull clip. I write in a black pen, and have a yellow and green highlighter to emphasize things.

One big thing that I had to get over with this is the urge to make things 'pretty'. This is not what it is for. You dont buy a hammer to polish it. As an aesthete with a minor tendency to phsyiologically react to that which I find ugly, this is the biggest thing I have had to get over.

In terms of how you relate or use this information in architecture, the applications are clear and endless. Having every part of your project noted, with decisions and tasks simulated on paper before you act is extremely powerful. I was dealing with a lawyer last week on a project and I had the mental image of him noting down every thing I said, the time, the intention, his gameplan etc, and I was thinking, why dont I do the same?

Some of you may think this is common sense. Some of you may think it is a waste of time. The way i work from last weke to this could'nt be more different. And it has been the best thing I have done in my working career so far. I will next be applying this to my life.

If you could internalize this function and produce/update items on the list -- and implement accordingly -- continually and automatically, you would be the ideal "actualized man" -- which is what we're afraid is what our "competitors" (everyone else, or at least our adversaries and our colleagues) already are doing, somehow.

Given that, keep it up ! And, if typing is neater and any faster, do that. After all, if this is going to be an ongoing practice, it needs to be automatic and as effortless as possible, no ?

As to the subject, the same degree of proofessional competence can produce works of unforgettable brilliance or mind-numbing irrelevance. So, organizaton is a necessary but insufficient component of superior service.

Well yeah - good point - the related to column allows one to put in tasks or events or ideas that are related to what you are doing [in regards to time, issue, sphere etc] - but of course it doesnt update automatically alas.

In regards to handwritten vs. typing. I have the belief that writing is more spiritually and psychologcially powerful than typing. It is pulling the thought out of the aether and making it real that is important - on the screen it is not as effectual, and curbing the urge to continually format ones system would be hard.

Thanks for your comments mate!

i have seen architects produce enough mind-numbing irrelevance through brilliant processes of organization to know that organization is not and should not be the end all, be all of the profession. often the architect's innate compulsion to organize will be the downfall of a project, not its success, i.e. budget excesses to ensure that every last screw head is twisted in the right direction, that each note is perfectly justified, etc. while god may be in the details, if you stare too closely at the leaf you can very easily miss the forest.

instead of information organizer, i think a good architect is an information editor.

wow. while i like the 'wonderfully provocative' part, mine was actually a very oversimplified statement. organization by itself isn't sufficient.

thanks for making it a discussion, quizz. allows for us to think it through more fully.

my comment was offered in the context of someone else asking what architects offer as a value-added beyond what engineers, artists, contractors and theoreticians might do. it occurred to me that we're the ones to harness and direct all the energy and production of a lot of other people on a team working toward the same goal. what 'organization' by itself leaves out, of course, is the framing of and the intention behind that goal.

my pithy statement that organization is what we do is over-simplified because there is no value-judgment, no discretion or discrimination, and no ethical dimension in the word. because it's so broad, it can encompass a variety of approaches to composition and process, including the role of editor that jafidler suggests. we have to engage in a process of both synthesis and analysis. receiving and fully comprehending the implications of information given to us and communicating clearly back to those involved. and on and on.

what we each as architects bring to our job of organization is a background of a certain ethical and aesthetic disposition. which changes everything, making 'organization' not enough.

As a friend of mine once said, an architect is no more than a conductor of the symphony.

More like a composer, no?

let's put e and Philarch together -- to get good stuff built, don't we really need to be both composer and conductor?

the super is the conductor

Let's see: the three principals are client, architect and builder. . .

Not to take this analogy too far, but... to get good stuff built, we really need both good composers and good conductors, but it doesn't have to be one entity. It might be a pretty decent analogy though considering it takes into account the fact that composing compliments organizing information. Or maybe we just can't be so reductive.

What I really was trying to convey is the idea that composing well isn't nearly enough -- too many really good designs never get beyond the paper stage -- architecture is about getting good buildings built and, if we're really concerned about the built environment, we must embrace and execute the post-composition phase as well.

post-composition. i like that. but i find that design never really stops until all the finishes are installed.

architect = composer
architect + supervisor + builder = conductor ?
contractors + labor = orchestra

architect = architect

the rest is whatever...

The analogy might be getting out of hand, but I think its still helpful for getting a different take on the role of architects.

This is only somewhat related, but in terms of organizing information:

I read yesterday that the flight instructions for the pilot (astronaut? commander? the person in the cockpit) to launch the space shuttle are about 250 pages long. But astronauts say that launching the space shuttle is actually very easy, something "a monkey could do"...

...unless something goes wrong. Of the 250 pages of instructions, something like 200 of them relate not to how to do it, but to how to manage a crisis.

I thought that was interesting, that the knowledge is almost entirely how to quickly analyze a situation and decide the best course for resolving it. Often days as an architect feel like that, too!

Someone (a pilot, i guess) said flying is "hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of stark terror"

that was dialogue from the scene in Apollo 13, when the flight crew has just completed a particularly hairy experience in the flight simulator.

Ah, that's where I heard that.

I guess the musical analogy descends from the older one, that architecture is (or can be) "frozen music." I see nothing wrong with analogy, if it has been honed to its best state, bcause it can elicit new truths -- or fresh nuance, at least -- about a subject. Analogy can be risky, of course, if it leads in false directions.

architect = babysitter

As a constructor and any architect's biggest fan, I am dismayed by the negativity toward the project architect that i encounter on job sites. I suppose there has always been enmity and suspicion between trades and professions, when the actions of one can impact, financially or otherwise, the welfare of the other. And there can be several kinds of reasons for friction, of course.

The successful kinds of relations between architects and (in my case) cabinertmakers -- and these have been in the overwhelming majority -- occur when the parties try to accomodate and learn from each other. It is gratifying to be able to show an architect what is possible and practical -- sometimes exceeding his or her requirements or expectations -- in the course of translating the drawings and specs into accepted shop drawings. I have personally gone to great lengths to satisfy both the spirit and the letter of those expectations.

See this is what I don't get: if architects are Information Organizers (Information Architects?), then why do so many of us get so twisted out of shape about theory? Poststructuralism, Smooth/Striated, Emergence, Algorithms ... these are all just different ways of organizing information. Cultures are always changing up their dominant models, sometimes slowly and surely, sometimes overnight, and architects deal directly with these cultural/informational models every day of the week, so how is theory irrelevant?

Architect as 'information editor' is more appropriate.

We create and organise information. Information organisation is passive, not active. My system above is all about action, and I create information in response to specific tasks.

So theory is not necessarily about organisation of information, but a selective and ongoing editing process. If I want to use a theory in regards to any task or action, the theory must be sought out, and edited to apply to the situation. Parts will be discarded or modified or added to over time.

I have a rather dispassionate attitude towards theory, particularly academic or scholastic theory. I dont adopt something in and of itself. It has to be useful and usefullness is measured in the result it produces.

I tend to be pretty ruthless sometimes...

That's a theory about theory, right? You organize organizations.

Where's metamechanic when you need him?

Perhaps, and you could argue that organisation of information is not passive as I suggest because the way in which you organise is active and has a built-in filter of what gets shown and what doesnt. But one thing you dont to when you organise information is that you dont create new information - but you might create new systems of organisation.

But then this goes back to editing.

is there new information?

organizing = making new relationships?