Good designers are fast on their feet

     As the design process advances, complications inevitably arise- structural problems, fluctuating client requests, difficulties in resolving fire egress, pieces of the program forgotten and rediscovered, new understandings of old information, and much more. Your parti-once a wondrous prodigy-will suddenly face failure. 

     A poor designer will attempt to hold onto a failed parti and patch local fixes onto the problem areas, thus losing the integrity of the of the whole . Others may feel defeated and abondon the pursuit of an integrated whole. But a good designer understands the erosion of a parti as a helpful indication of where a project needs to go next.

When complications in the design process ruin your scheme, change-or if necessary, abandon-your parti. But don't abandon having a parti, and don't dig in tenaciously in defense of a scheme that no longer works. Create another parti that holistically incorporates all that you now know about the building.

101 things I learned in architecture school 

- Matthew Fredrick