There has been a number of times over my time in yacht design where I have had to reflect on my decision making and in some cases completely revise some aspect of my thinking that I had long held to be true and unquestionable.
It’s important not to hold too tightly to ideas and concepts what is true today may not be true tomorrow. And it may not even have been true in the first place.
The following passage from Bruno Munaris’ Design as Art” sums it up eloquently.
“To understand something is not to be able to define it or describe it. Instead, taking something that we think we already know and making it unknown thrills us afresh with its reality and deepens our understanding of it.
There is an unlimited number of ways of thinking and perceiving. In my understanding to design is to intentionally apply to ordinary objects, phenomena and communication the essence of these innumerable ways of thinking and perceiving.
Producing something new from scratch is creative, but making the known unknown is also an act of creation. Maybe the latter is more useful in nailing down just what design is.
The more firmly we're convinced that we've identified an object the less precisely we understand it”.
