Good Design

HOW DO WE KNOW GOOD DESIGN WHEN WE SEE IT?


Buildings are like people, they have a soul, they feel and they like people, they are liked by people, at times hated too. When I say they are like people I can hereby categorize them into:

· Good looking buildings
· Good buildings &
· Good buildings that are good looking

Design can be defined more on experience basis than form. A design does not become good just by a single sensory perception called “sight”, but a good design is the one that serves all of them, or at least attempts to fulfill some of them. A good design is not the one that “looks good” but is the one that feels good. A good design is responsive of the contemporary movements to the needs of users, a review of the development of processes and methods of design approaches, and a redefinition of design in terms of users experience, not physical form.

A design that is natural, that is comprehensible, by grounding the meaning of architectural expression in a given cultural situation. A good design is a design where the user can relate himself. A building is like a body, and the user is like a soul, and it is the user that makes the design alive.

It is not the award winning design that is beautiful but it is the test of use that makes it beautiful. A good design is responsive to user wishes; it develops a pattern language that enables the users to shape their own environment, wherever permitted. A good design emphasis on the software aspect of design- use, experience, and perception, than on the hardware aspect- physical form.



The design should serve the purpose for which the building is intended to. A good design should also have the character of the place, it should relate to the human scale. It should be beautiful in a sense that it should be a pleasure to be there, experiencing it. If it were an office building, the employees should feel the pleasure of working there, at the same time it should motivate and force them to behave in a disciplined manner. The building should also have a character of the purpose, it should be overpowering if it is a governmental building, and it should be welcoming it is a public building. A good design should also be part of the natural landscape.

And depending upon all these necessitates designing at the scale of life itself.

In short I mean that user’s requirements take over the major dictator of design capability. And we have the technology, so the only goal for the designer is to input user lifestyle into the design, making the design more flexible for users of different cultural backgrounds, and generally considering the social context. In other words a disciplined interlocking of logic and art. You have to know people first before designing.


There are some buildings that the world watches and some that the profession watches. More than the design, the process of design makes it more beautiful. Where a designer interprets the brief “client’s given-and to the lay person, understandable criteria”, into more ambiguous one of “sense of place”. Designing does not mean just making houses, or constructing useful things in general, but signified expressing oneself, communicating, arguing and freely creating cultural habitat. And in this process of expressing and communicating, it is important to remember with whom the designer is communicating, and to who is he expressing, other question is expressing what?

The buildings that exist are activated, because of peoples’ needs and wishes, and they are live because of their active participation.

The challenge is to understand the process design, and the ways of bringing this about.