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I totally agree. If architectural design was left up to the construction crew, you'd never see a building like what Frank Gehry designs. Did everyone working on

I totally agree. If architectural design was left up to the construction crew, you'd never see a building like what Frank Gehry designs. Did everyone working on his projects curse his name and wish they could just build something with nice straight lines? Yeah, probably. But like you mentioned, a great designer pushed the envelope and now there are some amazing new buildings in the world.

err4nt 10y ago
People with understanding can also design things that push the envelope, why do you think the term 'sadist' exists ;)
civilian 10y ago
I want to improve on your metaphor-- I think that architects/construction crew is a bad one. Architects design on a house, but they also are very aware of the engineering constraints of how a building will stand, resist earthquakes, and generally is structurally sound. They learn how to do it in school, but when they work they tend to just use cheat sheets they get from wood & concrete suppliers. (source: my uncle is an architect) I work with some designers who have _no idea_ how CSS works. Or they only have the vaguest of ideas. That's an architect who is handing off pretty drawings and the construction foreman is also doing structural engineering checks on the fly. I don't need a designer who can write code full time, but I wish that all of them were forced to do a course in layout with css. Obviously flexbox is solving a lot of this pain, but I think it would still be beneficial.
- e12e 10y ago
  > I don't need a designer who can write code full time, but I wish that all of them were forced to do a course in layout with css. Obviously flexbox is solving a lot of this pain, but I think it would still be beneficial. Right. My point is that designers (and coders) that push designs that generate the pain - is the reason why now get things like flexbox. If we were all designing to fit within, say absolute positioning, no-one would create, implement and refine flexbox. Browsers wouldn't include it. This is an extreme oversimplification, but it illustrates the point I was trying to make. On the subject of CSS - I was a big fan of the idea of CSS-regions - based on simple design ideas from classic desktop publishing packages. But I also see how they were a bad fit for the corner w3c and friends have designed themselves into with CSS. FWIW Håkon Lie did a good job pointing out problems with integrating the idea into the html/css paradigm: https://alistapart.com/blog/post/css-regions-considered-harmful https://alistapart.com/blog/post/css-regions-considered-harm... I'm not entirely convinced CSS columns are super-good and regions couldn't be made to behave/have a responsive fallback - but I see how laying out text with regions would be yet another different layout model -- and that it would break with the "HTML for semantics, CSS for presentation"-idea that is now being more-or-less thrown out in favour of "JavaScript all the things until it looks like we want". On a similar note, I just (re)discovered that CSS Shapes are a thing - although (still) not supported in Firefox: https://alistapart.com/article/css-shapes-101 https://alistapart.com/article/css-shapes-101 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1098939 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1098939
- antod 10y ago
  I want to improve on your metaphor-- I think that architects/construction crew is a bad one. Architects design on a house, but they also are very aware of the engineering constraints of how a building will stand, resist earthquakes, and generally is structurally sound. They learn how to do it in school, but when they work they tend to just use cheat sheets they get from wood & concrete suppliers. (source: my uncle is an architect) In my previous career in structural engineering drafting (possibly different in other countries), architects that understood that stuff were by no means the majority. I observed plenty of heated arguments between Architects and Engineers over seismic bracing requirements getting in the way of having windows everywhere, and even a few over basic understanding of gravity ie somehow expecting windows around corners being able to hold the roof up. Of course, the architects that did appreciate this stuff were highly respected by the engineers. I think the divergence stemmed from having two architecture schools in the country - one started off with a Building Science degree that dove-tailed into an Architecture degree, while the other larger school was very 'design' focussed and IM(unfair?)O seemed to churn out glorified interior decorators. Things might be different now though - I've been in tech for nearly 20yrs now.

err4nt 10y ago

People with understanding can also design things that push the envelope, why do you think the term 'sadist' exists ;)

civilian 10y ago

I want to improve on your metaphor-- I think that architects/construction crew is a bad one. Architects design on a house, but they also are very aware of the engineering constraints of how a building will stand, resist earthquakes, and generally is structurally sound. They learn how to do it in school, but when they work they tend to just use cheat sheets they get from wood & concrete suppliers. (source: my uncle is an architect) I work with some designers who have _no idea_ how CSS works. Or they only have the vaguest of ideas. That's an architect who is handing off pretty drawings and the construction foreman is also doing structural engineering checks on the fly. I don't need a designer who can write code full time, but I wish that all of them were forced to do a course in layout with css. Obviously flexbox is solving a lot of this pain, but I think it would still be beneficial.

e12e 10y ago
> I don't need a designer who can write code full time, but I wish that all of them were forced to do a course in layout with css. Obviously flexbox is solving a lot of this pain, but I think it would still be beneficial. Right. My point is that designers (and coders) that push designs that generate the pain - is the reason why now get things like flexbox. If we were all designing to fit within, say absolute positioning, no-one would create, implement and refine flexbox. Browsers wouldn't include it. This is an extreme oversimplification, but it illustrates the point I was trying to make. On the subject of CSS - I was a big fan of the idea of CSS-regions - based on simple design ideas from classic desktop publishing packages. But I also see how they were a bad fit for the corner w3c and friends have designed themselves into with CSS. FWIW Håkon Lie did a good job pointing out problems with integrating the idea into the html/css paradigm: https://alistapart.com/blog/post/css-regions-considered-harmful https://alistapart.com/blog/post/css-regions-considered-harm... I'm not entirely convinced CSS columns are super-good and regions couldn't be made to behave/have a responsive fallback - but I see how laying out text with regions would be yet another different layout model -- and that it would break with the "HTML for semantics, CSS for presentation"-idea that is now being more-or-less thrown out in favour of "JavaScript all the things until it looks like we want". On a similar note, I just (re)discovered that CSS Shapes are a thing - although (still) not supported in Firefox: https://alistapart.com/article/css-shapes-101 https://alistapart.com/article/css-shapes-101 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1098939 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1098939
antod 10y ago
I want to improve on your metaphor-- I think that architects/construction crew is a bad one. Architects design on a house, but they also are very aware of the engineering constraints of how a building will stand, resist earthquakes, and generally is structurally sound. They learn how to do it in school, but when they work they tend to just use cheat sheets they get from wood & concrete suppliers. (source: my uncle is an architect) In my previous career in structural engineering drafting (possibly different in other countries), architects that understood that stuff were by no means the majority. I observed plenty of heated arguments between Architects and Engineers over seismic bracing requirements getting in the way of having windows everywhere, and even a few over basic understanding of gravity ie somehow expecting windows around corners being able to hold the roof up. Of course, the architects that did appreciate this stuff were highly respected by the engineers. I think the divergence stemmed from having two architecture schools in the country - one started off with a Building Science degree that dove-tailed into an Architecture degree, while the other larger school was very 'design' focussed and IM(unfair?)O seemed to churn out glorified interior decorators. Things might be different now though - I've been in tech for nearly 20yrs now.