Some time ago I wrote on my personal blog about the balance of ‘stuff and design’ in architecture. I define stuff as codes, program, and services while design is experience, material, light and more. There are certainly many ways to approach this comparison, but the one I took was an order of operations. Some architects think stuff first, and then create a box to shove it in. Others, perhaps more fashionable right now, think design first then cram the stuff in. Neither of these approaches is really right or wrong, but they share a common shortcoming- they each proceed from a view of stuff and design as a dichotomy.
I wonder if anything would change if we began to answer the question of stuff or design, with a yes, meaning in all things stuff and design at the same time. Certainly this is not a new idea; in fact, it defines what the best architects are able to do. But I must confess the longer I work in architecture the more I talk, and complain, about stuff, and the less I talk about design. So let me encourage us as architects (or illegal architects for those of us not yet registered) to talk about design in terms of experience, material, light and you name it, a little more than we did yesterday; do more than just dress up the stuff in our projects, do the hard thing and think stuff and design at the same time.