...their goal was to accommodate what clients do and how clients socialize while serving their health and wellbeing as well as delighting them.
-From "The Neutra Philosophy", The Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design
Were Richard Neutra still alive, I'd like to sit with him and learn more about his ideals and process.
Neutra apparently handed long questionnaires to his clients. The answers would help him tailor fit his design to their needs. This is an empathetic process, and many of his clients apparently loved the houses he built for them.
My questions would be about the purpose of the questionnaires, and how he really used them. They likely would not have answers, at least verbal ones.
If a client said they did not like to wake early, and hated sun in the bedroom in the morning, did Neutra design a windowless bedroom? I'm sure he didn't. So, what to do with such a client. Curtains? What of clients with a fear of heights?
Neutra was famous for his ego, and yet it seemed he could really design for, rather than impose ideals on his clients. But his ideals and ego are certainly part of his designs. The houses are recognizable as "Neutras." Glass walls, connecting inside and outside, serenity-- all good things.
A genius interpreting client needs and coming up with houses they like.
What's not to like?
Rather, what can be improved?
Years ago, I spent three months developing a customer service manual for heavy equipment dealerships. I learned early in the process that asking a customer what they wanted was a largely fruitless exercise. I had to watch them move through the dealerships to see what they had simply gotten used to, but could be better.
I recall an anecdote from a business book about a milkshake store with flagging sales. They asked their customers how to improve the milkshake, and got a variety of answers, none of which improved sales. The store then hired the author who simply watched what happened. He noticed the vast majority of customers bought a milkshake during the evening rush hour. He proposed installing a drive-though window, which the store did. Milkshake sales exploded. In short, the customers didn't know that getting out of their car to buy a milkshake was a pain point until offered a solution they couldn't have conceived.
And so with the heavy equipment dealerships: no customer ever said they found a place dirty or disorganized. But when one became cleaner and tidier, they'd comment on how much better run the business was, and how much more confidence they had in them, even how much more proud they were to do business with them. The dirt and disorder has been assumed and felt right--just the way things are. But it didn't feel good, which was only recognized in hindsight.
Very few people can articulate the specifics of what they want in a house, or an office. They may know how they want to feel-- safe, at peace, happy, focused -- but not the specifics of the design that will produce those responses, or improve them. Eight foot or nine foot ceilings? Big picture windows? An appliance garage?
The genius marketer found a solution for the milkshake store, just as Neutra found genius solutions for his clients. It seems to be the way the world works -- that we don't know what we want until we're shown what it is. So we need designers with vision to produce a better future.
I have a problem with this. This process creates change, but not for the better.
Find me a scientific study that says humans in the developed world (where we live with the genius of modern design) are much, much happier in 2021 than we were in 1921, or 1821. The science says otherwise, that we're pretty much just as happy as we were before, if not a bit less.
Neutra's approach was to try and understand human nature, and design for it. He goes on about women's natures, how we evolved from the African savannas, other insights into humanity. In his many books we see a great mind trying to grasp what can only be ungraspable. He is shining a flashlight in a pitch dark cathedral, and coming to encompassing conclusions from what he has seen. This is why ego-driven design will forever be a sideways move -- not an improvement, or a step-backward, just a tradeoff: something new replacing something old. No more houses with small windows. Now big plate glass. No more houses with defined inside and outside. Now glass sliders that blur the difference. So new and cool! But no better. Modern design is much like retail therapy: a new toy to distract and amuse, but quickly discarded for the next new and cool. Who remembers Richard Neutra outside of the architectural profession?
Neutra tailor-fit his house designs to his clients. Nearly all the furniture I've made is tailor-fit to my clients. This is a solid good. The home designed for an average person is designed for something that does not exist and has no soul, The only motive is a profit of some kind.
An idea: let's stick with this same process, of tailoring a building to the people who will use it, but try and eliminate the ego -- perhaps to ask the architect to work the way the builder does. The builder just gets the job done, so to speak, doing what the clients want, but also advising the clients on the various options. The best builders also are good advisers, and can talk to what has worked, and what hasn't. This is to prioritize the genius of experience over that of vision or ego.
The design rationale of such buildings would begin with client needs, and explore the paths of least resistance to meet those needs. Shed all other distractions, assumptions, and past practices that produced homes that feel right (because they're so common), but not good (because they were not built for the people who use them, but for ego glorification, investor profit, or other goals). No two would look alike, no defining name could be attached to these tailor-fit buildings, except in terms of the process by which they were created. These buildings might not profit the people involved as much as standardized designs do today, but we might begin to see a uptick in our quality of life.
Us average folk might not be able to put into words what details of a housing project apartment makes us feel sad, or unsafe, or what the improvement should be, but the experience of others could help us find it.
Comments