The Tools Speak Up

Who's in Charge Here?
​Every idea, no matter how huge and amazing it may seem, is just another fleeting thought until you take the tools to it. Tools realize possibilities and impose limits. Tools make things real. And this means tools have a lot to say -- maybe more than we realize -- about what we ultimately make out of our ideas.

Above are two recent design projects. One is an addition (done for the wonderful Feldmeier Galyean) to a traditional Bayou St. John house. The other is new house I designed for a friend around the same time. The projects are in different neighborhoods with different clients, of course, but they are both still houses, both in New Orleans, both in the same phase of design, and both on restrictive sites. They use the same materials, are in the same climate, in the same price range, and they were developed by some of the same hands. And yet they turned out to be very, very different. Why? Here's one possibility: the more traditional design was created and drawn in the traditional way, with lines. The less traditional one wasn't drawn at all, but designed and built entirely within a 3D model, in a Building Information Management program called Revit. As I work, the different tools show me things from different perspectives, they force me to make design decisions in a different order, and they allow me to see materials and forms, quite literally, in a different light. This has to have a huge impact on the resulting product. I have to wonder what would have happened if I had swapped the tools used to realize these little projects. And to wonder if a sameness sneaks into our work sometimes because we're reluctant to pick up a new tool.