Design Thinking
I’m from a city designed by the famous modernist architect Le Corbusier, a beautiful town called Chandigarh in Punjab, India, at the foot of the Himalayas. Though not consciously, the early seeds of design thinking for me were sowed at a very young age when we would go out and celebrate Corbusier’s architecture in and around the city. Whenever I walked down the street, no matter the road, arterial or side one, I revelled in buildings that reshaped the rural environment into a vibrant city. The city was meticulously divided into a grid system of nearly even and regulated sectors, with a “Les Sept Voies” (seven street systems). Each sector has a commercial strip on arterial roads, and inner streets connect the neighbourhood to a mini-market complex and central parks. In many respects, it defines a truly mixed-use community. While here I speak of urban planning, Corbusier’s Chandigarh is also a climate-responsive built environment. Many of his structures used a “Brise Soleil” system or vertical shading devices to reduce heat gain, a practice remaining in use still. This is something we try to use in our facades even today.
Fun fact, Cliff was nicknamed ‘Corbu’ in his UWaterloo days for his Corbusier inspired designs.
The design thinking as a tool for me became more conscious when I traded one foothills city (Chandigarh) for another (Calgary) and as I completed a Master of Architecture. I moved to Calgary, Canada, a city vastly different from Chandigarh, in pursuit of graduate studies. I came from a regulated city to a city known for its urban sprawl, or even more extreme, a hot climate city to a frigid one. Calgary’s network of +15s drew parallels for me to the dense shaded treed sidewalks of Chandigarh, both of which exemplify the needs and wants of the citizens, in my opinion.
In order to actually explain my design thinking, let me first define what design is to me. From the moment you open your eyes to the moment you close your eyes, I think that one can only see design. Design for me is everywhere! It is also the very process of opening and closing the eyes. Design is ubiquitous in every moment of wandering. I find it difficult not to be fascinated by it.
Very simply then, design thinking can mean thinking “design.” Since Design is everywhere, you can think with it on the go. An example of this would be that even the drain covers are part of a thoughtful design. As much as it is personal for me, it is likewise a creative and collaborative process. And it can have multiple meanings for the same team. This can have a profound effect as the project can gain from multiple perspectives. Even for me, one day, I am thinking efficiency, another admiring the design beauty and philosophy, but also, more often than not, design thinking is about problem-solving. It’s only fair if I say one must thoroughly understand the problem first and then solve it by understanding its environment, context, and the existing.
Have you ever imagined a mirage on a sunny day? While the science might explain it as an optical illusion, your mind is somewhat thinking of water (read, solution) due to the atmospheric conditions (the problem). Of course, you can judge me for overgeneralizing this example and oversimplifying its process. I am simply demonstrating the point to say that true design thinking is supposed to make life simple, be it for the end-user, the thinker or the builder. Possibilities are endless.
While I may go on and about romanticizing design thinking, I won’t. So instead, I will show a couple of our projects that highlight my points.
The Greenwich Condos project challenged us to design a gateway building that would serve North Oakville for a long time to come. We responded with a simple solution. We wanted the building to be a symbol, a mark that signalled a way for the residents and visitors. We softened up its edges to create visual and material warmth and opened up the corner lobby to the organiclandscape of North Oakville. The critical part of our design thinking was ecology and how our understanding environment was vital for us to develop its design.
In another example, when designing 10 Duke St. in Kitchener, a mixed-use building, we faced an opportunity in disguise. The existing heritage building, reminiscent of the 20th-century office structures, presented a challenge and opportunity to create something different. We responded by carefully studying the architectural proportions of the existing edifice and offered morphology synonymous with downtown office buildings. Designer mined visual, material, aesthetic and structural epithets from the environs and existing building’s context to chart a new design on top of the old.
Being an architect in the world today impinges us to think and take our design thinking earnestly. As architects, and more specifically, I, as an architect, tend to or try to design responsibly and with problem-solving imperative in mind. What we do is no small matter. It shapes and defines our cities, countries, and the world. Whether it’s a simple pavement pattern or a skyscraper, it affects the living, playing, socializing, healing and loving in the world. It sets the decades or generations-long trends, like the types of architectural legacies on which foundations we build today. So take your design thinking and thinking design seriously.
Varun-Preet Singh
