DESIGN STRATEGY & BREXIT - WHIMS & WISHFUL THINKING

One sees it frequently in the work of young architectural students: wishful thinking. Weeks might have been spent on a design for a project, honing its subtle resonances and clever references, when simple basic issues remain unattended, ignored. It is as if the logical mind is blinded by the indulgence that sees only a smug splendour and shrewd smartness in the proposal that is entertained, enthroned with such engrossed enthusiasm and commitment to the outcome that the irrational core of the design, the idea, is never seen as hopelessly meaningless; a simple impossibility that makes everything else merely a waste of time.

The project could be a beautiful, a brilliant scheme, but might never be able to fit onto the site; or it could be such that it contravenes everything the brief requires; or it might be in the wrong location; or be on land that could/should never be built on; or it might be impossible to service or construct; etc. The point is that the outstanding idea is like a house built on, or out of sand; or a tower held up by clouds or marshmallow - it can never be what it proposes or hopes to become because it is based on a phantom premise or a whimsical dream. One could simply say that the whole lacks integrity; cohesion; rigour - real substance.

The only way to get things back on track is to grasp the nettle of ordinary, basic facts and address these rather than to continue to ignore them as nasty, stinging realities to be subjected to some unknown future treatment, whatever this might be. The general response to the critic is: "That'll be resolved in the detailing, with time." In the working drawing stage, these concerns get fudged over with the comment: "The builder can sort that out on site," when it is already clearly obvious that there is a fundamental problem with the approach that is defining an outcome without resolving the basic issues that will inevitably mean that the results will have to be otherwise.

Design from the top down, where the preferred outcome is finalised before anything is known about its materials or its making, will always be fraught with problems once necessity starts making its rudely essential demands on the preferred result. It is like an attempt to get 4 out of 2 plus 1; or the fitting of square pegs into the proverbial round holes. Good design is always a dialogue between the vision and the facts, the raw reality, with each being tested, challenged and modified by the other; with one allowing the other to be seen in a different way, re-interpreted to enhance the process, to accommodate the limits and limitations so as to reach a coherence that has substance, true depth and logical rigour. One can liken the approach to the work of the bridge engineer. Every single part of the idea has to be defined to ensure that the bridge can stand. There is simply no use in specifying a presumed outcome when the detail has not been completely resolved. The bridge will just not stand up or be as one might have envisioned.

The strategy simply means that, if the supporting detail, the weakest link, as it were, is not fully worked out, then there will be no project, no grand design, no bridge, well, not the one imagined. Those involved in Brexit do not seem to understand this fundamental design issue. This is not a political matter; it is a practical matter; a matter of design method. There is no point in brashly declaring that some 95% or more of Brexit has been agreed when the nagging problem of the Irish border remains unresolved.

All of the excuses that architectural students use have been given: "We'll solve it with technology (yet to be devised);" "We'll agree to an extension of time and sort things out later (on site);" "We'll make a special case for Northern Ireland (to be somehow different by assuming an outcome might be possible, as if words alone might help);" etc. All of the excuses and proffered solutions fail by ignoring the essential point that, until there is a real and tangible, a workable solution to the Irish border, then there will be no comprehensive Brexit agreement. Logic makes it clear that the immediate strategy has to involve a concerted effort to define a realistically certain solution to the border problem before anything else is finalised, simply because it is the central concern that, if left unresolved, will break the back of every other agreement and leave Brexit in a scrambled heap. The Irish border is the only land border between Europe and Britain. The management of this interface needs to be defined, not ignored or dreamt about; hoped for. That Northern Ireland might only be a small region makes no difference to the principle or the seriousness or significance of the issue that remains a core concern.

This observation has nothing to do with any political stance: it is a simple design principle that every designer is eventually faced with. No matter how stunning the idea might be, or how desirable it might appear, if necessity makes impossible demands on it, the approach has to be changed, modified, perhaps put aside in favour of a different solution or approach that does have substance and coherence. There is no point in spending time putting the finishing touches onto a plan that has fundamental flaws and uncertainties in it, no matter how good it all looks or pretends to be.

Brexit negotiators need to understand what soon becomes evident to every student of architecture, and to every engineer: spin never resolves these core issues; neither does pushy grandstanding. Unless these matters are attended to with care and concern, with precision and determination, they will not go away. If there is to be a Brexit solution, the problem of the border needs to be resolved first, now, because the other 95% will be just a waste of time, no matter how brilliant, clever, shrewd or desirable the agreement might be.

If architects can be of any use at all in this world beyond being indulgent self-promoters of their personally declared genius, they can highlight this principle of design that they all know only so well, and give some sense, some cogency, some logic, to the political nonsense that we are currently being fed. 95% of nothing is nothing; it is not progress when core issues are ignored. The impact of a piece of straw on a camel's back comes to mind: little things do matter.