Negotiations of image and architecture

Preamble: How do I work? It seemed that as I endeavoured towards a “final project” in this culminating year of formal education I should visit this question as much as possible. A pause in the process offers a space of critique, a place to describe to oneself how one got there, to interrogate it and to refine it. Ultimately, the aim of this investigation was to define a methodology for practice. As architecture is so expansive, the process cannot be packaged formulaically, but a sense of understanding the process can certainly be discerned. Through this year a tangible whilst malleable starting point for my practice as an architect will emerge that will be remoulded consistently for the rest of my life. Doubt has always been running alongside any architecture work I have done. Although it is an uncomfortable presence, it is a welcome surveyor, questioning the decisions and cradling a caring consciousness. Doubt is of course a precursor to curiosity which actually tempts action, an experimentation, and a making. It is up to the practitioner to tame this regulator of activity in order to avoid a paralysis of creativity. As the film critic Pauline Kael observed: “A mistake in judgment isn't fatal, but too much anxiety about judgment is.”1 This calibration of self consciousness and free expression is essentially the birthing and proliferation of instinct. Instinct will shape the practice and practice will inform the instinct.