ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN – SIMULTANEOUS TRUTH

Architecture has a history of explaining itself through other disciplines. It has been called ‘frozen music’ by Goethe,# and likened to language and its rules, involving semiotics, semantics and symbolism. Architecture is a complex matter that, like issues of taste, requires a set of descriptive analogies in order to try to get close to the richness and depth of the experience, as one sees with wine tasting. This reference to other matters outside of the discipline is not unlike the attempt to explain the sound of an antique viola: see - Australian Chamber Orchestra welcomes 416yo Italian viola into its collection https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-25/416yo-maggini-viola-now-in-aco-golden-age-instrument-collection/106379198: "The sound is mysterious and dark, these instruments are much like humans in terms of complexity, how it looks is almost how it sounds — I would say dark chocolate, caramel, red wine" : see also - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2024/06/country-outside-inside-place.html.

So it is in architecture that the complexity of the involvement in all of its abstract diversity, in the experience of its creating, making, and functioning, uses other experiences to enrich its understanding.

Sean ODell

Internally, ODell is known as Orion's "architect", but he is not an architect in the conventional sense.

Instead, he is a system architect, whose role is to ensure that the spacecraft balances all of its technical requirements.

The words of the space engineer/architect, Sean ODell, who overviews systems for the Artemis II moon mission are interesting in this regard: see - "They'll be flying in our baby" says Artemis II spaceship's architect  https://www.dezeen.com/2026/02/25/orion-spacecraft-artemis-ii-nasa-lockheed-martin-interview/ -

Instead, he is a system architect, whose role is to ensure that the spacecraft balances all of its technical requirements – of which there are around 35,000 in total, encompassing everything from power and weight to lighting and ergonomics.

"It's the effort of coming up with an integrated design that balances all of the competing things that need to all be true simultaneously in order to have a system that can do this mission," he explained.

Sometimes, that effort means tearing things up and starting again. For instance, in the early days of the Orion programme, the intention was for the capsule to touch down on land in order to avoid the corrosive qualities of seawater.

"But we got down the road of trying to land on land and just came to the position where the technology that we needed for that was just too heavy," said ODell.

"And so there was a time when we had to decide that to live within the mass constraints that we have, we had to change to a water landing."

Architectural design can be seen as this efficient and effective embodiment of complexity without compromise – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2017/12/frank-lloyd-wright-accommodating.html - the balance of competing things that need to all be true simultaneously. These words provide some sense of what design is about. Architectural design is not self-expression or the hunt for the bespoke; although it is a hunt - see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/08/design-as-dreaming-hunt-not-hunting.html - an understanding that is not too different to the space engineer’s strategy:

Designing involves pondering a gossamer of possibilities; alighting on several irreconcilable possibilities that give rise to quasi-predictions; no one is committed: something quite new might drift into conversations, other predictions tentatively reached; a new consensus might appear to be forming. Some of the most important variables are subtle, elusive, and extremely hard or impossible to assess with finality, but they are gauged by a sense of rightness.

Variables are considered as a composite, in parallel, and with the help of a blending of the metaphysical and the obviously pragmatic. The mistake of seeking rationally to focus on any one consideration that is held as primary has to be avoided. The decision - like the action from which it is inseparable - is always alterable, remaining highly sensitive to so many shifting considerations. One has to be always ready to change a decision about the right procedure or action. There is no space left for a "plan," only for a bundle of open-ended and nonrational possibilities.

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The famous quote, "Music is liquid architecture; architecture is frozen music," is primarily attributed to the German philosopher and writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He described this concept to describe how the harmony, rhythm, and structural, and spatial arrangements of buildings evoke an emotional experience similar to music.