What is awesome?
“Don’t forget to be awesome” is the slogan of an online community of people “dedicated to decreasing worldsuck” which I consider myself a part of even if don’t actively engage with the group online very much. I’ve found that I wasn’t born quite late enough in Generation X to really connect with people online, and so I fall on the outer edge of the Nerdfighter community. I first heard their slogan over a decade ago when I didn’t understand what the group was but I was immediately drawn to what that statement was implying that we all should be doing - on the way out the door you make sure you have your keys, wallet, phone, jacket if it’s cold, umbrella if it’s raining, and oh yeah, when you go out into the world be awesome.
I’m the type of person that falls into routines and going through the motions of a working day and even a little reminder to strive for awesome helps me a lot.
But what is awesome? It’s in the eye of the beholder to be sure, but for some reason I always think about videos of people sinking no-look half-court 3-pointers, or drifting along cliff faces in the Swiss Alps while wearing a wing suit, or making amazing renditions of pop songs using nothing but found objects as awesome, and I’m doing nothing like that in my work or personal life. Even the more tender examples of awesomeness in the world like patients getting their dream make-a-wish experience, people paying off their last round of student debt and especially seeing young children either hearing or seeing clearly for the first time - those especially get me. I’m grateful that people are having those experiences and others are sharing them with the world - but my daily experience doesn’t include anything like that.
Probably the most demonstrably “awesome” aspect of my work that I can say comes from my own hands are the sketches or renderings that I do as part of the design process. I’m hard enough on myself that I focus more on what I perceive as shortcomings in the imagery - especially as compared to the other work that is out there (to be fair, the other work is often by practices that have full time renderers - something HinterSpace doesn’t have) than on what’s successful about them. I do a lot of more renderings than I share with the world, in part because some are private (for clients only) and also I get busy and move on to other things before realizing that I should post something. My presentation style is a work in progress that I constantly strive to improve, and that, in a small way, is awesome.
But, there are other aspects of my work and other kinds of awesomeness, kinds that can’t be shared in a flashy social media post.
The main role of an architect is not to have good ideas, it is to communicate those ideas to the people that will make those ideas reality. A great design that doesn’t get communicated well they never get built. My day is more full of phone calls, emails, applications to governmental agencies and technical drawings than it is with designing spaces or creating renderings.
It’s those seemingly innocuous calls, emails, meetings and documents where the awesome comes in.
It is pretty awesome to have to face someone who is at best neutral and at worst hostile to your idea and to bring them to your point of view so that the project can move to the next step on the road to construction - and most importantly - habitation.
Reader, creating a spreadsheets that convinces someone to move forward on a project is a truly awesome experience - I’m sure you might not think so, and my 12 year old self agrees - but it is an awesome achievement and experience.
As is thinking you missed something and now your project is in trouble but then finding an error in the spreadsheet that shows that you were never in trouble in the first place and everything is fine- a borderline religious experience!
Other times it’s sending an email that gives the receiver exactly the information they need so that physical work on the project doesn’t grind to a halt and lead to time and cost overruns. People are hard on emails, spreadsheets and phone calls, but they are often how things get done.
When I started writing this I thought it was going to be about a search for big, flashy examples of awesome, but about halfway through my perspective changed and I realized that the small, barely seen examples of awesome mean a lot to the everyday lives of those that experience them. If they’re forgotten the next day, that’s fine, they served their purpose and there will be more to do tomorrow. On your way out the door, just don’t forget to be awesome.
