XS: Very Small Projects

Today i embarked on a very very small project. Some interior fit-out of an office lobby.

As disillusioned as i am about the scale of it, i am inspired by these words of Kevin Mark Low of smallproject

"There was a game I played when I first began work as an architect to keep the passion alive. It was called small projects.

The game basically involved reducing any given task to its smallest distinct parts in order to understand how they were all related, a humanising of each task in the faceless grind of professional practice. A meeting with a client became a task of how certain words put together in particular ways could end in a new idea built or an opportunity lost. Site work became a project of understanding the subtle differences of each contractor's operation and the bearing that had with how they built. The design of a door entailed the reassessment of each joint to see if the whole could be made any more effectively. The design of a house began with the single activity that a family related itself most to, and a master plan was reduced to relating the simplest cultural fundamentals of food, work, travel, learning, rest and play. Basic functions so taken for granted, like what happened just before sleep and right after waking or how toilets were used, the way roof eaves functioned or how gutters really worked, each served as a beginning to subvert the dominant paradigm. And the discovery was that the beauty of each and every project was less found in how they actually turned out than how the design of each was informed by the dynamics of use and the intricate relationships of elements or events around them. Relevant design was not merely about the form of the project, it was about why and how the project was formed."

Perhaps that where in the smallest details, God is there.