We often speak of free will as if it’s a divine right. But in design, it’s a privilege earned through context, constraint, and care.
Free will is a concept that has been used more and more recently as humanity has become more self-centered. As we evolved as a species, we began to create reasons to justify our choices. But it must be remembered that every choice we make is the product of our other older choices.
At its core, nihilism states everything is meaningless. While it’s a statement about the emptiness of this world and our actions, some interpret it as a relief. But you can relate more to nihilism when your life is falling apart and to the latter when everything is going great. We can also think of this as vice versa.
So-called free will resists showing itself in how you interpret this statement.
But there’s still a choice of hope. The thing that made man go on and on. Perhaps the last resort to keep one’s sanity. A belief so strong that it can defy logic.
As designers, we can feel free within the limitations and necessities of the code in a building. Most of the time, we use and bend the restrictions to our advantage. Or maybe we use them to create a unique building that follows the shape of the given land. Choosing which color to use on the walls or which direction the main facade should face is the tip of the iceberg when we talk about free will.
Just as Brutalism made people live in similar stacked places, old housing had followed similar shapes and aesthetic searches that almost all looked the same.
The free will we seek should make us design differently for different needs for different people with different lifestyles. It should make us feel hurt as a designer while designing because of the strict -not standard- requirements of the actual user. The main goal is to be free at your will while satisfying the actual user as a designer.
The general use for free will usually involves acts of daily life where the action affects only a few people at most. Since a proper design should not be designed for specific conditions and specific people, the implementation of free will is more challenging.
Designing a house comes with the challenge of creating a ritual for the user living inside. Your choices about plan placement or orientation are the first step toward a working architectural design.
Free will should hurt a little. It should make you sweat. Because real freedom demands responsibility not escape.
You can place a bathroom on a facade if the house has ocean views.
You can make bedroom feature its own small garden if you want and let other rooms use the city view without walls implementing an open plan.
It should be remembered, however, that these analogies should at least mean something to someone. Another thing we need to be careful about is not over-designing just because we have free will. We need to create a third point of view or get others’ ideas about when to stop designing and take action to make the design real.
Free will, as much talked about lately, not a blank check for one’s behavior, but should be interpreted as creating 3rd options when the given options are not enough for the design. Your ability to create a 3rd option for life choices is the real richness and wholeness. For you should never be forced to choose between death and suffering.
So as we try to test the limits of our free will, we need to look for the other perspectives that might help us find the real problems. One should not have radical or fixed thoughts when dealing with people. And you shouldn’t criticize or praise blindly.
Perhaps free will is not something we hold passively, but an active act of testing and adapting. It’s about creating something that never existed until you dared to imagine it.
