If I were to analysis my personal approach to design development I would come to the conclusion that completion and an emphasis on the presentation of something 'finished' perhaps best describes my current approach to engaging with an architectural problem. Sketchbooks (not to scale) machetes (small models) and bricolage are the usual methods used to develop my design ideas. However these often demonstrate completed and 'finished' artefact in themselves.
This is arguably a personal trait, possibly demonstrative of a subconscious desire to constantly establish order or a sense of clarity, particularly where buildings as seemingly chaotic as Bursledon are concerned. However this is can be read as a very different approach to say Carlo Scarpa's approach to architectural development within historical contexts. His ideas were worked and reworked, with ideas only finalised during the construction process where they were still often changed, subject to constant influences and input. Everything was therefore transient and constantly in 'process'. Admittedly Scarpa often had the luxury of time, seventeen years in fact at Castellovecchio Museum.
However would this process led approach necessarily work within a contemporary architectural discourse, where a finalised solution is required far more quickly within a generally faster paced capitalist context. Advances in representation also allow architects to illustrate their ideas far more quickly and to a greater level of photographic completion that was previously the case.
Therefore whilst many architectural ideas and indeed methodologies, such as Scarpas, would no doubt work within the realm of academia, these quite often exposed as unsuitable in regards to their application to realist context. Therefore methods and processes are only useful to the point where they are practically applicable and relevant within reality. How therefore could elements of, for example, Scarpas, rather luxurious, investigative and intuitively developed approach be balanced into the current context where speed of completion is perhaps more a more prevalent and often necessary consideration?
Ultimately it is my belief that architects have to balance and mediate ideas and influences from a range of references and sources in order to ultimately establish a suitable methodology that can re-articulate a subjective situation into something of clarity and of worth to society.
