Some notes on thoughtfulness. On thinking. What is it?
Project development and delivery, in architecture, engineering, and construction, is about building models (mental and digital, and physical models) and QA/QC’ing those models by developing and issuing a set of construction drawings. The drawings are a continuous QA/QC process.
What QA/QC means in project development and delivery:
If you’re designing a building, a ship, a machine, or an aircraft, designing any complex thing for construction or manufacturing, what’s really happening is that:
- you’re formulating a mental and digital model of the thing,
- that model is fuzzy, and full of gaps and inaccuracies, and
- you’re shepherding the model from its inadequate state to something functionally adequate.
Basic Questions
Very soon after project start, an AEC digital model quickly exceeds our cognitive grasp. It’s just too much to hold in mind. We experience a declining ability to answer even basic questions about it, like:
- is it done yet?
- is it good enough yet?
- is the model forming a coherent functionally successful whole?
- is there good fit among the physical items modeled?
- are any physical items that matter, missing? Where? Where not?
- is the model good enough in some regions and not others?
- where are the regions that are good enough?
- does anything signify to anyone the useful distinction between regions that are good enough and all other regions that may not be?
Focus is needed.
A framework for focus is necessary. You have to be able to focus to get to clarity. And you can’t deploy the same intensity of focus everywhere. Intensity has to vary. By definition, really, if you focus everywhere, if you put the same intensity everywhere, then there is no intensity, and there is no focus. Everything just becomes undifferentiated FIELD.
In general, in any field of study one makes a conceptual survey of the field, and then narrows for intensive close study at certain areas within it. These areas of intensive close study illuminate and sharpen understanding of the broader field, while at the same time the contextualizing field gives narrowed close study its meaning. It’s a mutual interplay. In the interplay, thought happens, understanding grows, meaning is found.
This is fundamental. It’s the basic observable dynamic of how the mind, and perception, work.
First of all, recognize the difference:
- The broader field
- The narrowing focus
The interplay between those is the mind in motion. Or perhaps more precisely, just setting up the conditions for that distinction, sets the mind in motion.
As it is for all fields, so it is in AEC design and construction. These are thoughtful enterprises, complex environments requiring the mind engaged and active.
In AEC this is seen in the distinction between model and drawing. The former, wide, expansive, whole, environmental. The latter narrow, focused, selected, contemplated with greater intensity.
What is contemplated, in any given technical drawing?
Well, again, fundamentally, and first, it is the requisite expression of one pole in the two-pole dynamic interplay between field and focus; it is the two-pole dynamic that gets thinking started, keeps it running (back and forth) and carries it forward. Thought empowered, thinking things through, all the way through, to clarity. This cannot be overstated and must not be forgotten. Nevertheless, let’s move to specifics.
The primary functions of technical drawing are:
- At informative locations within modeled environments (within models mental, physical, and digital) we initiate, develop and express our act of attentive clarifying focus. Let’s call these, …locations of visual close study, or V-C-S.
- At V-C-S locations in models we conduct physical evaluation of the model. Physical evaluation consists mainly of two checks:
- A check against omission of physical items in the model (everything that should be shown here at this VCS location, is shown here; nothing that matters, here, is missing), and
- A check for good fit among the physical items present (define good fit however you like. Vitruvius defines good fit here).
These two checks are continuous QA/QC work carried on through project design and development, and continuing as QA/QC and interpretive function during construction. Let’s argue that the work of becoming aware, or making oneself aware of the FIELD of a project’s modeled environment, by developing clarifying attentive focus within it, and the cognitive work required for visualizing that narrowed focus within the context of the modeled environment, well, that is the mind in motion. That is the mind well and truly engaged. That is the engine of thought itself. And, finally, that is the core work of AEC professions.
This is (about) serious thought, with adequate respect paid to the engine of thought itself, first of all to the engine’s prerequisite: mainly, an array, setting out an attentive gradient,
- Physical and good fit evaluations at V-C-S locations conclude with affirmation of model QA/QC. Who affirms what, where, within models mental, physical, and digital, is made clear. This supports accountability no doubt. But before that, coherent thought, and thought conveyable at least and adequately conveyed, as needed. One can affirm, or assert, that at these locations, the primary checks have been made (see 2), and professional standard of care, met.
One must always remember that these checks and affirmations are made at an already, first of all, narrowed set of locations within a model, not ALL locations, but only representative ones. Everyone is free to take whatever they can from all other locations within the FIELD, but at these locations affirmation is made. This narrowing is what comes always first. Otherwise one just creates an engagement with infinity problem that makes fools of us all. It is the narrowing that sets out the necessary peaks and valleys of intensity (of attention). The difference, like a voltage drop, sets the mind in motion, gets the perception engaged, makes meaning, delivers coherence, makes sense of things. - Visual close study within models, narrowed focus within a FIELD, is deployment of a context/focus array that is the 2-pole engine of thought itself. That engine is a thoughtful interplay between our expansive perception of a modeled environment (the FIELD), and our narrowing act of attentive focus within it, at V-C-S locations. From this engine comes adequate project understanding and functional competence.
- In the interplay, thought happens and understanding grows.
- The two poles, (WIDE ←→ narrow) (FIELD ←→ focus) (MODEL ←→ vcs), are as different from each other as the COSMOS and a ←→ lens for looking at it, as mutually distinct as the UNIVERSE and a ←→ telescope. These are not in any way the same kinds of things and are mutually irreplaceable. To no sensible person would it occur that one obviates the other.
- Finally, expression of attentive focus, clarifying visual close study, supplies the courtesy of drawing attention to things not to be missed in the model.
What’s drawn by any drawing?
Your attention.
Want to know more? For the current state of this in the AEC industry, and the future of it, see here:
OPEN VCS, a lens for looking at models 