To create great buildings, one needs to maintain passion, focus and drive. A critical component to all three of these is inspiration. As you engage in the day-to-day aspects of your work, what keeps you inspired? What keeps you wanting to make your next design even better than your last? And how do you carry this through your entire career?

Inspiration is a key ingredient to keeping your work fresh and yourself refreshed. For this reason, I have put together the following list of unique ways for you, as an architect, to stay inspired.

1. Read A Lot: The more knowledge you can get from other thinkers and innovators (in other fields), the better. Doing this, you will probably find some new ways to approach complex problems, break them down and come up with sophisticated and practical design solutions.
2. Bend Boundaries: Set creative boundaries for yourself when you are facing a challenging design issue or problem. By exaggerating or minimizing boundaries that you are used to, it will force you to think about your design dilemma in new ways. For instance, give yourself a small allotted amount of time in which to “solve” a design issue. Or, pretend that you have three times the budget than you actually have. This might just free your mind, getting you to think of a totally different way of solving your original problem.
3. Streamline your Organization: Become an active thinker. During or after visiting a site, another great building, reading a magazine or even having a discussion with a fellow architect , make it a habit to record the most important thoughts that will spark your future action(s). Organizing your ideas will result in better ways for you to create new ones. Organization actually can spark creativity and innovation.
4. Switch Your Perspective: While working on the day-to-day details that surface for specific building projects, don’t forget to take that eagle-eyed view. Think of how Norman Foster or Zaha Hadid would approach your design problem. Or think of what a good architectural critic might say about your design challenge.
5. Get Out More: Although having a consistent design setting (like your office) is very conducive to being creative, so too is changing your scenery. Try thinking about a design problem in a totally different place. Go see a great architectural lecture. Or go have a brainstorming session with your colleague in a new setting.
6. Remember Your Colleagues: Don’t forget about the people around you. They can help you stay inspired too. Coming up with new ways to communicate with your colleagues to generate creative ideas can be quite motivational.
7. Set Your Goals: Don’t lose sight of your goals, whatever they may be. Be sure to revisit them often — both so your time is spent working toward them and so that you remember why you are doing what you do. One of the keys to maintaining inspiration, is also to reward yourself. After you reach certain goals be sure to enjoy them, take a break and then use that energy to renewing your momentum.

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I have heard much talk about kitchens and stores for the future, but as you will see, it is nice to see some prototypes. They actually give us something tangible to think about so we can begin to advance them, challenge them and seize upon great opportunity.

The two following videos explain how a future store and kitchen of the future can work together — integrating them toward a more seamless experience. If you watch both, you will get an idea as to what your own experience might be like if you were to live and use such environments.

Does Life Get Any Easier?

Although they are not exactly interactive, there is much that a user can control and specify. Additionally, due to RFID tags, many of the procedural steps that are necessary today may not be necessary in the future.

However, does life get any easier? I would say that it Read more

THE IMPACT OF RAPID MANUFACTURING

Rapid manufacturing is developing beyond the ability to make “models” or “prototypes” — it is evolving into a way for designers to make a “brand” where their design actually is more of a “matrix”. Designers will be focusing progressively on a systems approach so users can “customize” their “version” of a design to their needs.

Here is a short video where Paolla Antonelli, the MoMA curator of Architecture and Design, discusses the impact of rapid manufacturing and how it will work:

MASS CUSTOMIZATION

As customer selection allows for perhaps a greater multitude of “customized versions” to meet different occupant needs over time, perhaps architecture will be better able to feed occupant senses by integrating selections from a fuller spectrum of design ideas and choices — for less money and with minimal energy.