A long time ago, when I was going through architecture school, some of the most intimidating yet formative experiences were the infamous design reviews.
To anyone who has never endured one, a design review probably sounds fairly civilized: a panel shows up, looks at your project, and tells you whether they like it or not. Well, this is far from the truth.
A design review was a grueling, intimidating, frustrating, humbling, and occasionally soul-crushing learning experience. It was not unusual to see students leave the room in tears—angry, embarrassed, emotionally flattened, walking away looking and feeling like beaten dogs.
All of this was usually after spending the previous week sleep-deprived, food-deprived, sunlight-deprived, and running almost entirely on caffeine and questionable life choices.
The review panel was typically made up of six to eight architects. Some owned highly successful firms. Others were respected academics, notable designers, or professors from other universities. In short, the audience was top-notch, and they were there for one reason: to give us constructive criticism with absolutely no obligation to soften the blow.
If your design was shit, you were going to hear that it was shit, clearly, sometimes eloquently, sometimes for twenty minutes.
To make things even more entertaining, they were also encouraged to critique our work using the most technical and sophisticated architectural language available. Occasionally, they would use terms so obscure that we had to quietly write them down and look them up later just to understand exactly how we had been insulted. The reviews could therefore become strangely cryptic, which made defending your work even more challenging. It was, essentially, design boot camp.
Throughout the program, we went through this ritual somewhere between twenty-five and thirty times. After a few years, those of us who survived developed fairly thick skin—and, more importantly, the ability to debate our work on relatively equal ground.
That was possible for one reason: the designs were debated within an objective framework.
I needed to explain all of this before getting to what became one of the cornerstones of my development as a designer and architect. And perhaps, after all these years, a small attempt at resolving some architectural-school PTSD.
During one particular review, something interesting happened.
I presented my project, and the panel proceeded with the usual ceremony. One by one, they expressed their opinions, challenged my reasoning, questioned the clarity of the presentation, searched for weaknesses in the concept, and tried to dismantle the design piece by piece. In other words, a perfectly normal day.
One of the reviewers happened to be a former professor of mine. We had previously had one memorable nose-to-nose argument—an experience that somehow did not prevent me from eventually choosing him as my thesis advisor. That day, after listening to my presentation and the discussion around it, he said something along these lines:
“Mr. Volpis, you know how much I respect you, both as a designer and as a person. This work demonstrates an outstanding level of execution. I cannot argue against it in any meaningful way. You developed a strong and defensible concept, followed it through a clear process, and translated it into a form that communicates exactly what it intends to communicate. The work is excellent. However, based purely on my personal taste, for whatever that is worth, I simply do not feel it.”
There it was. He was essentially telling me that the design was objectively excellent, but subjectively, he did not like it.
Almost immediately, another reviewer jumped in.
He agreed completely with the objective assessment but strongly disagreed with the personal conclusion. In fact, he said he loved the design and thought it was outstanding.
My professor listened and, with the cold, delightfully jackass attitude that eventually convinced me he was exactly the person I wanted as my thesis advisor, replied: “That’s what you like.”
And that was the end of the conversation. The debate over subjectivity was over because, frankly, there was nothing left to debate.
The exact same project had been equally appreciated by both reviewers on an objective level, yet only one of them connected with it on a subjective one.
Interestingly enough, he liked it more than I did. That was the part that stayed with me.
What had happened during the design process was fairly simple. The project had begun with a strong and appropriate concept. Once that concept established a clear trajectory, the design began evolving organically through the architectural language I had chosen; but I was also racing against a deadline. When you are strapped into that particular academic Formula One car, approaching the finish line with three hours of sleep and a model that is still held together with glue, priorities become very clear. I had to choose objective execution over the satisfaction of my personal taste.
That was my student-level “executive decision.” It earned me an A on my grade sheet with a design that, ironically, I as the creator was not completely satisfied with.
At that point, another door opened in my mind as a growing designer, and the big question was whether it really mattered if I liked it, as long as the message was delivered successfully.
I asked myself that question many times afterward. What would the project have become if I had been given more time to develop it? Would I have eventually liked it more? Probably, but someone else already loved it, in fact, nearly everyone on the panel loved it subjectively, and everyone appreciated it objectively.
Does that mean the design was perfect, or does it mean that it was flawed?
Subjectivity will always find reasons for disagreement. Personal taste is unpredictable, emotional, cultural, instinctive, and deeply individual. Objectivity, however, gives us a place to meet, it gives us parameters, it gives us structure. And even when objective criteria produce disagreement, the disagreement can usually be debated through tangible elements.
Entering what I sometimes think of as the “design matrix” has therefore been both a blessing and a curse, because the analytical process never stops and the search for an answer does not give me much peace. Once you learn how to dissect design, it becomes almost impossible to turn that part of your brain off, the search for answers can be relentless.
On the other hand, it is also magical, because objectivity allows us to recognize greatness even in things that our personal taste might reject. An apparent contradiction that help us to grow also on grounds that are outside design itself.
And perhaps that is one of the most important lessons I carried away from those brutal review rooms: appreciating good design and personally liking good design are not always the same thing.
Learning the difference changed the way I see almost everything.
