A spooky action at a distance - and how an architect's skills can shape a life in design
The Church of the Light is the main chapel of the Ibaraki Kasugaoka Church. Designed Tadao Ando and was constructed in 1989 in the city of Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, Japan.
By Gregory Ronczewski, Director of Product Design at Ibbaka. See his skill profile.
Between 1980 and 1982, Alain Aspect, a Ph.D. candidate at the École Normale Supérieure de Cachan, conducted a series of experiments for his doctoral dissertation. In the experiment, he examined a strange phenomenon in quantum physics, known as "non-locality." A Nobel-winning physicist, Niels Bohr proposed that once sub-atomic particles (electrons or photons) are in contact, they instantaneously remain influenced by each other over any time and distance and for no apparent reason. This connection will remain forever. Interestingly, Albert Einstein dismissed non-locality on the basis that for such a relationship to exist, the information would need to be traveling faster than the speed of light. He called it “a spooky action at a distance.” For Einstein, the speed of light was the absolute boundary of how quickly one element can affect the other. In 1972, John Bell, an Irish physicist, came up with a simple way of testing the non-locality concept. Later, it becomes to be known as "Bell's inequalities" theorem. The experiment Alain Aspect performed gave the world of physics irrefutable results that sub-atomic particles can travel faster than the speed of light, proving that Einstein was wrong, but even more, that at the lowest layer of matter, things are interconnected. Forever.
When I read about the Aspect experiment this connectivity forever made me think about skills. After all, in this blog, we look at skills from many different perspectives. I have a firm conviction that once an individual acquire a skill, it remains forever connected to this person. Even if it becomes dormant and not used for a long time, its properties can be traced forward to other skills - the core skills used daily. The relation between these skills remains active eternally, albeit on a deeper level, something like what is happening with the subatomic particles. For instance, I am an architect, but I haven't touched a drafting board for probably 35 years. Does it mean that all the skills I acquired during my architecture studies and have not utilized for such a long time are gone? Not at all. I see their influence in my everyday practice. Once a skill enters the system, it remains there forever, like riding a bicycle or skiing. Once you learn it, it's yours. It may take some time to get over the initial hump of starting over, but the foundations remain there. What is more important, the influence or support that a dormant skill offers to a set of active skills can't be ignored. There is an underlying web of connections, much like a neural network, that becomes active when a set of skills is called upon (I wrote a post about it).
This underlying connectivity is critical in the horizontal mobility of talent. When one moves to a different domain, the use of dormant skills becomes evident. When you broaden your frame of reference, you expand your base of knowledge and skills. Suddenly, the past skills, that have not been present in your work, can offer an enormous and unexpected boost that powers innovation and creativity. There are many variables attached to each skill—for instance, a time when a skill was introduced and what other skills were introduced simultaneously. Knowing when a skill was introduced allows us to track progress, or development over time in the experience level. It all forms a foundation on which a total number of skills forms an image of how a person is viewed through the skill lens. What about other elements to support skills from the evidence perspective? Certifications and documents are helping to see a broader picture. And let's not forget about the peers - the people who were able to observe the use of a skill in any given context.
In the book The Multi-Skilled Designer: A Cognitive Foundation for Inclusive Architectural Thinking, Newton D'souza presents eight essential skills for a 21st Century Architectural Designer. Supported by the theory of multiple intelligence from cognitive psychology and psychometric research, the author takes us on a journey considering individual differences, scale and complexity incorporating skill diversity into what he proposes. Let's look at the list.
Intrapersonal Skills
ability to pursue emotions and meaning in design through personal memories;
ability to explore metaphors and analogies in design; and
sensitivity to personal knowledge.
Look for these skills in the works of Daniel Libeskind and Peter Zumthor.
Interpersonal Skills
empathy towards human needs;
ability to be socially persuasive; and
ability to engage in design collaborations.
Look for these skills in the works of Alejandro Aravena and University-based Design Centers such as Detroit Collaborative Design Center and Clemson Architecture + Health.
Suprapersonal Skills
ability to connect beyond the material world; and
ability to engage in vivid cognitive imagery.
Look for these skills in the works of Louis Kahn and Zaha Hadid.
Bodily-kinesthetic skills
sensitivity to human scale;
awareness of body movement; and
ability to activate social performance in space.
Look for these skills in the works of Steven Holl and Herman Hertzberger.
Naturalistic Skills
sensibilities that consider natural features such as topography, flora, and fauna;
ability to incorporate expressive and functional qualities of nature; and
ability to pursue the ethics of sustainable design and ecological resiliency.
Look for these skills in the works of Geoffrey Bawa and Chris Cornelius.
Spatial Skills
ability to imagine and manipulate space in fluid and unrestrictive ways;
ability to conduct spatial choreography;
sensitivity to spatial transparency and the creation of tactile sensations; and
ability to conceive space as strategic wholes.
Look for these skills in the works of Frank Lloyd Wright and Tadao Ando.
Verbal/Linguistic Skills
ability to incorporate a design syntax;
ability to use verbal tools such as narratives to generate design; and
ability to be persuasive in the verbal articulation design ideas.
Look for these skills in the works of Bernard Tschumi and Maya Lin.
Logical-mathematical skills
sensitivity to the use of number and geometry;
ability to produce variations of formal design strategies; and
ability to resolve functional and programming aspects of design.
Look for those skills in the works of Le Corbusier and Greg Lynn.
Newton D'souza proposes that designers could use the above skills as a self-diagnostic tool to learn more about themselves and their peers. This set offers a window into multiple mental capacities of an Architectural Designer. I think this list proves that skills can not exist in separation from each other. Even if a skill is not used, it informs how other skills are used, and by doing so, it makes a skill map more diverse and unique. Ibbaka Talent offers a gateway to building a unique skill portrait - for individuals, a team or an organization.
