#391 - HOW TO GET INTO THE FLOW STATE OF DESIGNING ARCHITECTURE
SUMMARY
This week David and Marina of FAME Architecture & Design discuss getting into the ‘flow state’ while designing. The two cover strategies for focusing, learning architecture, music, the working environment, architecture school, and more. Enjoy!
TIMESTAMPS
(00:00) Introduction.
(02:30) Working with different media and suspending disbelief.
“Part of getting into the flow state is finding a way of working, or a specific media like painting or drawing that you have more dexterity in, and that allows the thinking to be more fluid.” (03:40)
“If you can find that space where you are feeling free to explore, question, and have fun without judging anything you are producing, that’s the ideal creative zone to get into, because you’re open to whatever is going to come to you. But that’s very difficult to get to in architecture when you are expected to deliver certain things which are always running the back of your mind and it’s hard to let go of that.” (04:35)
“Architecture and the act of designing architecture are responsive. You’re responding to site, culture, people, program, sun, wind, the technologies of our time, and the materials we have. One of the things that happens when students get stuck, it’s when they don’t have enough information [to respond to] or they have the wrong information.” (07:42)
(17:25) Music.
(23:42) Environment.
“Your environment does play a role in how much you can focus in the early years [as an architecture student] and I think that’s why everyone in school was so particular with things like lighting.”
(33:50) Allocating enough time and all-nighters.
“The reason why all-nighters are to be expected and are acceptable is because as a a student, you may not have a solid 3 hours in the middle of the week to work unless it is [late at night]. [When I was a student] I needed 5 hours to work [and get into the flow state]. The beauty of working late at night is that it’s quiet. There’s nothing else happening and the world is shut down. It does give you, especially if you’re learning design, that break… You can breathe and think, and not worry about the next class that starts 45 minutes from now.” (35:50)
(50:53) Having too much work when you’re a student.
(58:00) The frustrations of finding your flow state.
“One of the things that’s difficult to prepare for, but you have to be ready to go through, is just being very frustrated and lost. You don’t know what to do to figure the design out and no one will tell you. So you’re constantly trying all these methods of working based on what others are doing, what you see in the movies, what your teacher does, and nothing will work. The solution is resiliency. Just endure. Put in the time. There’s no other way around it other than putting in the time.” (58:00)
(01:09:00) My teacher threw my model in the garbage.
