A late evening the other day I was browsing the internet, which I tend to do quite regularly, and I came across Juanma Teixidó’s blog. There I found a picture of a coffee cup, which had the words ‘What would you attempt to do, if you knew you could not fail?’ written on it. Rather intrigued by the question, I started pondering. What would I actually attempt to do? As usual I wore my designer hat firmly placed on top of my head and I immediatly gave the question the agenda to challenge me as a designer, so I rephrased the question
— ‘What would you attempt to design if you knew you could not fail?’
I spent a couple of days thinking about it. Ideas such as designing the new iMac, iPad or Macbook, the new Mac OS X Panda GUI or Apple.com (It shouldn’t surprise you that I want to do something with an Apple product!) were ideas that I found on the very top of my head. I figured that if I had the chance to design anything I wanted, knewing I couldn’t fail, I’m sure it would be a lot more rewarding if I did something outside my current skillset. I thought about designing a car, a bicycle, a yacht and a house, things that would involve mechanics, much knowledge about material and laws of physics and even great amounts of math — fields I have very little or no knowledge about, but that fascinates me plenty.
Wanna-be architect
I spent another day thinking about it, and came to the conclusion that I would like to design my own house. Doing everything from the early sketching, calculating the measures of the house, finding the perfect size, what number of floors and where I would place the windows for the optimal amount of sunlight. What materials to use to save energy and create the perfect and the most comfortable enviroment - to what sofa would fit best, the size of the bed and wether I would have a swimming pool or a sandbox in the garden. All of these questions inspired me a great deal, and come to think of it, this is definitely something I want to attempt some day. It wouldn’t necessarily need to end up as a house, but as a model or even just thoughts on a paper would suffice – just some sort of realisation.
Beautiful combination of architecture and interior design — House of Convexities by Antonino Cardillo
What about you?
Now, I’d love to pass this torch on and see what other designers out there would attempt to do. So, if you’re a designer, ask yourself what you would attempt to design, write a blog post about it, send me the URL and I’ll set up a mini-site with a nice overview of everyone’s answers.
Hey Ole, great post and topic to ponder!
As soon as I saw the title of the post I immediately thought I’d like to design my own house from scratch. I guess its something thats on my mind at the moment and I do find myself getting really inspired by great interior design.
Maybe someday I’ll get the chance! :)
I’d definately want to design my own house!
I would love *LOVE* to be able to design the perfect pair of trainers. I’ve never found a pair that are super awesome just regular ‘ol’awesome.
Would be a interesting experience to have a bash at it.
Recently I’ve started to dream about how great it would be to design the new wemake-hq myself. Oh the excitement! Nice post Ole Martin, got my head spinning now :)
To me that’s very simple: NOTHING AT ALL. I love learning through my own mistakes.
The short answer would be… Everything! I’d love to have a go at designing anything outside of my comfort zone!
But if I had to be more specific and realistic (in this fake scenario you’ve given us) I would probably love to have a go at designing a city. An entire city, everything from the shops and city center, to the surrounding houses and communities.
I think if you’re building something like that from scratch you can make everything a lot more efficient and create an easier way of life for the people living there.
Even something as simple as perfecting traffic flow on the roads in that city, to cut down the average 2 weeks of our life we spend waiting for lights to change, and the 6 months we spend just stuck in traffic throughout our life.
The basic idea behind the city would be a focus on making people’s lives easier, so anything that could be done to help that would be built.
Everything from cheap/free public transport that was environmentally friendly - to free super fast broadband available everywhere in my city. People would be happier, work harder, and play harder. Which would stimulate the economy and keep people happy at the same time.
There’s too much I’d change to list everything here, but being involved with the ideas behind “designing a city” would be brilliant. Not only to have input into how things looked, but also how everything worked would be amazing!
Haha, there we go - you asked, now take in my crazy answer and ponder just how cool that would be!
A thing I’ve always dreamt about is designing something that fits right into the flow of everything living in the wild, the nature - I think a submarine or something that can fly have occured the most in my dreams.
Something that could reduce the pollution and noise from one aspect of our modern life to a level so that it seems as natural as a fish swimming in the ocean, or a bird sweeping straight down along the mountain.
That would be awesome. I guess its connected to my dream of flying, as free as that bird.
Liam, I was thinking along the same lines. A week ago when I was enjoying a walk on the Oslo Opera House, it reminded me of something I read a while back.
It’s lovely how they made the Opera to be walked on. This kind of interaction between architecture and people.
Now, the article looked at the connection between awardwinning buildings and how happy the people living in those buildings were.
There was a disconnect there - Don’t remember specifics, but many of the awardwinning ones were supposedly really nice to look at. The problem lies in that they are too static. People change, they live organic lives, and they need their surroundings to change with them.
So, the buildings where people were the most content was those that change together with the people within.
I would like to design an area - be it a city, building, park, hillside, part of a desert - where people, animals and other forms of life could live a good life.
(And it should bring back the nature into peoples lives! - Without interrupting either)
Thank you guys for all your answers!
@Liam — I don’t find your answer crazy at all! It’s super ambitious but you have a lot of great points, and I think that if we would be able to do things from scratch, great things could come out of it. You should take a year off some time and start sketching :)
@Lukes Beard — You’re aware of the fact that you absolutely have to design a pair of trainers now, right?
Oh, I definitely agree with Liam here. I’ve been dreaming about designing my own area for a long time! I remember sitting on our old PC in games like SimsCity — and later Sims & Sims 2 creating little areas and houses when I was like 8-9 years old.
The last year and a half I’ve been sketching a part of a little fictional city, and the process of thinking trough everything from important buildings; town hall, police stations etc. to tiny details, such as texture on walls, typography on signs and public parks etc. is definitely a huge time-stealer.
Heck, we’re talking EVERYTHING here. Interiors & branding for every little coffee shop, infographics for the public transportation system — the placement of trees and ponds in every little public park. The architecture of every little apartment complex, school uniforms and much, much more. I think you get the point.
It’s really, really exciting to sit back and think trough all of this. It’s like taking what I love doing now; interactive & graphic design, user experience — and totally taking it up to a new level, from monitors and paper to something as huge as a city.
Creating a perfect balance between every aspect of a huge city and making a best possible experience for it’s citizens would be a tough, yet really exciting job. And: If I could pull this off, I would finally look at myself as a good designer.
So, if I had the time and money (hey, we’re already being unrealistic here — so IF I had), and I knew the project wouldn’t fail, I would totally design a whole city!
A little ambitious, but I would want to take part in the development of a vehicle that explores new worlds. Something with the power and speed to actually make it to far off planets in other galaxies, something that would give us the chance to interact with other intelligent life. More than money, power, fame or whatever I want to know what’s out there beyond our little bubble. So if I couldn’t fail, I would help design the instrument that allows us to do that.
Or… a seamless iPhone 4G.
I had to think about this one because my first instinct was to say that I wanted to design my own house. However, since that dream could actually come true at some point in the future, I wanted to go with something far less likely to occur.
Therefore, if I could design anything, it would be a golf course. Doing so would give me a chance to combine a number of my favorite things (Design, Problem Solving, Nature, and Golf) into one awesomely challenging project. I’m thinking the course would be situated near the mountains for beautiful vistas from the tee box, but also run alongside the ocean for gorgeous views of the coast from the fairway and varying winds that would challenge players. I would get to design each hole to provide golfers of all skill levels with a challenging, but rewarding experience.
I don’t get to play golf near as often as I’d like these days, but when I do I always enjoy spending time outside with good friends. I’d love to design something that would give other people that same joy.
I would love to design a building automation system that would be simple enough for anyone to use and any electrician to install quickly. The thing is, bringing something like this to market without losing control of manufacturing and marketing and everything else is probably tricky. But, if I could not fail, this would be something I would design.
I think it’d like to design cars… Spending days on how the door handle looks and stuff like that.
I wouldn’t necessarily design something, but rather implement something, I have plenty of ideas for great (physical) things sitting around gathering dust.
So if I could do anything and not fail, it’d be to make stuff with my hands, to craft it out of wood, metal, etc. Just to get away from the constant constraints of the screen.
On the other hand, if I couldn’t fail in design, I’d possibly design more things. But that’s a different story.
I know I’m a little late to the discussion, but I would follow in Ole’s footsteps and build my own house.
Right now, I fret and anguish over paint colors, furniture placements, and appliances. I couldn’t even imagine what it must be like to have to make structural/technical decisions about how the house will be built. Those choices are so permanent! But if I was guaranteed not to fail, you’d be hard pressed to pull me away from the drafting board. :)
Divide by zero.