The spark of curiosity: possibilities that unleash futures

By Antonio Vidal

FIT IN

When designing meant fulfilling requirements

At the beginning of my professional career, I had the opportunity to participate in the development and creation of architecture within a strong relationship with regulations and compliance with predetermined dimensions guided by a budget. This resulted in an immediate solution, but one with very little spatial or conceptual exploration, since we fell into a common inertia: the desire to respond to the demands of the present. Under these conditions, I saw architectural design as a puzzle whose sole purpose was to fit optimized pieces together so they would comply with legal requirements and provide solutions to the urgent demand for housing. However, this linearity gradually limited my curiosity, my ability to question, and my capacity to project a vision of the future. This led me to want to change direction, beginning with the need to explore alternative versions and restore meaning through my own architectural style.

I am not suggesting that regulations should be left out, because they are necessary; however, they should not be the starting point of the project. Although design analysis can solve a problem, it does not necessarily provoke experiences. When we adhere to a budget in which, once executed as part of the “whole,” an element is perceived as an object rather than as part of a system and an urban ensemble, the result may meet the demand, but it does not seem capable of evolving. It therefore becomes an imposed limitation.

Before I was accepted into Yacademy, I felt unmotivated to take the next step. However, when I received the news that I had been accepted, I was filled with joy and also with many questions. One of them became especially important: What is an architectural design concept?

OBSERVE

Before the first line is drawn

Arriving at Yacademy - and being challenged from the very first class - broke this paradigm. First, I began to question how I developed concepts. I carried out a deep introspection of the spaces I had created, confronting the limited tools I believed were the foundation of my projects. Through this process, I experienced emotions, empathy, and curiosity. The first question in my self-evaluation was: What if? If I remove one element, does my project stand or collapse? I made quick sketches to rediscover other ways of responding to those projects, and it was precisely then that I identified my first variable, one I had not previously considered: observation.

Today, we experience spaces quickly, attached to screens. We are so accustomed to instant attention that we forget to take the time to truly observe and question: Why do I come to this place to have coffee every day? What emotion did it awaken in me, and why do I want to keep visiting it? A project does not necessarily evolve or come to life only when construction is completed. I believe it begins by seeing what already exists in the site we are about to intervene in.

I used to believe that my project began with a program and ended once that program had been fulfilled correctly. Yet, as the classes progressed, more questions and variables emerged. I understood that a project begins by satisfying a need or by responding to the premise of an experiment. In many cases, our own clients may not realize that the process has already begun: not a single sketch line has been drawn, but research is already underway, a process that mutates, evolves, and transforms even further once the space is inhabited.

My way of seeing a project and developing a solution was not limited to considering “basic” factors such as the site, topography, solar exposure, prevailing winds, and the natural surroundings. These factors did not lead me to deeper questions - for example, the idea that a site has a memory, a topography has stories, sunlight communicates, or a natural environment contains countless forms of belonging.

This ambiguous process did not plant in me the creative seed required to imagine future scenarios or adaptations for permanent, recurring, and occasional users. I did not consider the dimension of future time, even though it is essential to creating designs capable of enduring. I realized that I was designing floor plans before defining the experiences users should have with the space and its surroundings, the weaving of a shared language, and their participation in taking ownership of the space - ultimately seeking constructive communication within society and the current urban system.

Yacademy forced us to ask these questions even before knowing what the design would be. In my case, seeing a great deal of architecture did not mean that I had learned a great deal, because I had not looked beyond what was immediately visible - and all of this happened before I had drawn my first line or sketch.

WEAVE

When variables begin to relate to one another

But after all this, what is an architectural design concept? Is there a basic methodology for reaching one? How is an architectural design concept “born”? What elements are considered in order to achieve a strong architectural concept?

The dictionary defines it as “an idea that is conceived.” Today I understand that an architectural concept is more than simply providing a solution to a need or an experiment. It goes beyond lines and research; it is a system that combines linear and circular processes and, why not, highly abstract forms that have yet to be explored. To speak of an architectural concept is to place it within a relationship of architectural entropy. Although we may begin with isolated lines, once they weave relationships among themselves, they form a system and a narrative that gives life to the design. This is why we cannot define or close a concept within a single phrase or word: doing so would leave us with isolated pieces that, although they may say a great deal, do not connect ideas and solutions capable of fully responding to the project.

There is no methodology that provides a fixed step-by-step process, but Yacademy gave us tools throughout the program. There are many different ways to create and apply one’s own methodology because a concept is made up of many variables. From now on, applying my own methodology will be the foundation of all my future projects.

For a concept to emerge, we must understand an “n” number of variables, knowing that they will mutate, change, evolve, and transform according to the demands of the project. This premise requires us to understand all the variables we will weave together throughout the process.

They are, in themselves, the result of a process of decomposition and reconstruction. The project is fragmented into multiple variables: territorial, historical, social, environmental, temporal, material, emotional, technological, experimental, humanistic, and others. Each one acquires a specific importance. Although we may not know which will become dominant or what relationship each will have with the others, the experience produced by all of them together is translated, simulated, analyzed, communicated, and reinterpreted until it materializes as a design decision with meaning. This happens through the network already created in relation to the system, while the system itself adapts as these variables increase or decrease.

Reducing variables does not always represent an opportunity; rather, it can be a lesson that our project has limits. Those limits open new possibilities for learning simply by asking: What if?

All of this gives importance to interactions and decisions, and to the creation of scenarios that will be reinterpreted through our interaction with the client and users, based on experience and perception. This is where our narrative emerges from the relationships among the project’s decisions. The narrative is therefore not constructed solely through the architect’s decisions; it is completed through the experiences of those who inhabit the space.

My learning did not consist of finding better words to define architectural concepts. It consisted of understanding that a concept cannot exist separately from all the decisions that construct and nourish it. Each variable has its own relevance, weaves its own relationships with the others, and is capable of mutating alongside them.

It is an entire narrative that explains why the project is what it is. It is built from many elements of the past, present, and future, through strategies that give shape to the narrative and are grounded in research, interpretation, projection, and experience.

EXPLORE

Designing possibilities before they exist

So, what can be done with all this information and these tools? How can they begin to be used in daily practice through technology and artificial intelligence?

One part of the classes I particularly enjoyed was the use of technology. These tools can serve as critical, evolutionary, and self-evaluative instruments, but they do not replace the architect. Once the conceptual process has been developed, we reach the most enjoyable part: interpreting it through a tool we do not yet fully master, but which offers an expansive field for exploration. By helping us create multiple future scenarios—and by using the variables we have already identified to make better decisions through self-evaluation and learning—we propose the following:

In my context, hiring an architect is still considered more of a luxury than a basic necessity. To break through this barrier in the market niche I aspire to serve, I have decided to use artificial intelligence - which I still need to learn how to explore and exploit more deeply—in two ways:

1. Exploratory simulation: the “invisible client.”
2. A communication bridge.

As a pilot project and a form of self-evaluation, I want to explore the idea of an “invisible client.” Rather than requesting generic lists of needs, I will seek to generate narratives based on real social, economic, urban, ecological, political, cultural, and historical profiles from my region, using the projects I have been developing as a freelance architect as a foundation. By asking the system to act as an average family searching for its first home, I can obtain an honest hypothesis about its desires, fears, and limitations.

This will allow me to design with data-guided empathy, creating proposals that demonstrate that conceptual design is not an elitist luxury, but an essential tool for improving everyday life—with a human touch.

This leads to the creation of a communication bridge between the client, the drawing, spatial experience, and materiality.

Many clients in the market niche I hope to serve find it extremely difficult to understand diagrams, ideas, and the dimensions represented in a sketch or technical drawing, or to imagine a space dedicated to a piece of furniture. To help them, I want to implement a new workflow that does not seek to replace my hand with a hyper-realistic rendering, but rather to enhance the sketch itself—a universal language that can cross boundaries.

Based on the processes explored in the program, everything begins with a freehand line, where the true architectural intention resides. With the help of tools I did not previously know—and still need to explore further—as a visual translation engine, I will propose an algorithm that interprets my lines and gives them texture, light, essence, and hostility. The result will not be a generic catalog image, but a visual connection that respects my authorship and allows the client to experience the atmosphere of a space before it exists, generating an infinite number of possible scenarios.

For me, AI has stopped being merely a rendering tool and has become my strictest examiner. In the coming months, I will adopt it as my “invisible client.” In this way, I do not replace my hand; rather, I challenge it to become more precise, and I am compelled to justify every texture, light, and shadow.

As a testimony to this flexible vision, I include a hand-drawn visual roadmap. It contrasts three eras of the same structure: the delivery of the space in the present; its organic transformation as the family grows and home working is incorporated in the near future; and its bioclimatic consolidation, with an urban garden, in response to the city’s imminent changes. This is the genetic map I share with artificial intelligence so it can project the future of my work, allowing users to perceive the integration of the whole within their project—a project of life.

EVOLVE

A methodology still under construction

Thanks to the opportunity to be accepted into YACADEMY, my perspective has changed in the way I see a space. From now on, when I visit an architectural project and look at it from a different angle, I will question the reasons behind its relationship with the exterior, its entrances, its distributions, and the decisions made during the construction of each space. I may not understand them completely on the first attempt, but I will be able to perceive their intention and ask myself what relationships existed behind that experiment. I will begin to question how a solution can continue to provide answers and emotions once it is inhabited, and I will try to read the decisions that shaped it.

I understood that my previous questions lacked elements that could nourish and evolve my projects. I asked questions about the experiences that should be produced for end users, but those questions did not always have context or reflection. The information I obtained remained merely information; I did not use it as a foundation for making design decisions. Today I understand that research and data collection do not contribute to a project unless we learn to interpret and relate them so that they can become design decisions.

From now on, I want to bring this learning into my professional practice through the self-evaluation of projects I have already completed and those I am currently developing. As a freelancer, I have the opportunity to revisit completed projects, observe what worked, identify opportunities, and consider what other decisions could produce different results. Based on these experiences, I want to develop exploratory exercises and use digital tools and simulations to investigate possible scenarios—not to replace architectural judgment, but to question it and test how far a relationship within the system can continue to develop.

However, I understand that this methodology is not yet a finished tool. It is a pilot guide that must continue to mutate as projects themselves demand. For it to become my own instrument for research and design, I need to continue observing, learning about, and exploring materials, techniques, processes, mechanisms, and simulation tools that will allow me to expand an endless range of possibilities for experimentation. I also need to continue learning from users’ experiences, because through what they live, feel, perceive, and experience, I will be able to understand whether the decisions truly respond to the project as a system.

If another student were to read this text years from now, I would want them to discover that learning architecture is not merely about finding an answer, but about developing the curiosity to keep asking questions. I believe one of the most important tools we have is the ability to stop and observe. When we visit a space and allow ourselves to see it from a different perspective, we begin to discover for ourselves how architectural decisions are constructed. There is no formula or completely linear guide that leads us to a concept; there are tests, lessons, experiences, opportunities, and new questions that allow us to build our own way of designing.

YACADEMY did not give me a finished methodology; it gave me the tools to begin building my own. Today I understand that an architectural concept is not merely a word, a phrase, or a final answer, but an entire narrative that emerges from the relationships among the variables, decisions, and experiences that construct a project. Therefore, rather than seeking a definitive answer, I want to learn to recognize which questions each project requires, which relationships can help it evolve, and when a new variable can transform something I believed was already resolved. Perhaps this is one of the greatest lessons I am taking with me: understanding that designing architecture does not mean stopping the questioning, but learning how to question better.