Just discussing today the merits of a design guide we have with one of our developers. The developer claims that a design guide should be flexible. This is a standard complaint, but as I thought about it, it occurred to me that design and flexibility are at odds. What is flexible is not designed, and what is designed is not flexible. The art of design is the art of expressing inflexibility. Design is the imposition of constraints.
While this may seem to be a tautology, it was met with outrage. Perhaps it needs a brief explanation, because we have all heard about flexible designs, or designing for flexibility.
Looking into the details of a flexible design, the elements that remain flexible are not specified in the design. For example, consider a house design that shows a square floorplan 10' by 10' and the remainder to be flexible. Clearly the inflexible elements belong to the design, and the rest does not. The same trivial example covers the idea of "designing for flexibility."
In other words, to make an existing design more flexible, it must require the un-designing of some or all of the original. Making flexible is not designing, it is un-designing. Flexibility cannot be the ultimate aim of a design. In other words, to say that a flexible design is better than an inflexible one is a contradiction in terms.
While this may seem to be a tautology, it was met with outrage. Perhaps it needs a brief explanation, because we have all heard about flexible designs, or designing for flexibility.
Looking into the details of a flexible design, the elements that remain flexible are not specified in the design. For example, consider a house design that shows a square floorplan 10' by 10' and the remainder to be flexible. Clearly the inflexible elements belong to the design, and the rest does not. The same trivial example covers the idea of "designing for flexibility."
In other words, to make an existing design more flexible, it must require the un-designing of some or all of the original. Making flexible is not designing, it is un-designing. Flexibility cannot be the ultimate aim of a design. In other words, to say that a flexible design is better than an inflexible one is a contradiction in terms.
