Life, uh, finds a way – famously spoken by Jeff Goldblum’s character Dr Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park. Pointing out how little control the managers of the park actually had.
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, and writer, you probably would know him better as Le Corbusier.
Le Corbusier is regarded as a pioneer of modern architecture. His ideas have had a large influence on architectural theories and his thoughts on urban planning has shaped many cities we walk around it.
Housing for a Saw Mill
French industrialist Henry Frugès read an article written by Le Corbusier and liked his ideas. Frugès commissioned Corbusier to make ten houses for his sawmill workers in Lege near Arcachon and then 135 houses for his sugar workers in Pessac.
Frugès wanted Corbusier to make Pessac a laboratory to help reform low-cost house design. He said for him to break all conventions and abandon traditional methods.
Corbusier devised a system using large squares and half-square modules that could be arranged to make four different house types.
The scheme was received very badly and many of the workers refused to move in. Just 51 of the original 135 were ever made. A new law was introduced in 1928 to allow low-income workers cheap loans to buy property and so they were free to alter and change the property as they wished.
Bricolage
In the french tradition of bricolage , creative improvisation, the homeowners changed the interior and exterior designs to look closer to the traditional style of the area rather than Corbusier’s modern design.
Over the next 40 years, the homeowners made many changes and in the 60s sociologist, Philippe Boudon made a detailed study of conversions. Some of the redesigns were for practical problems like leaking flat roofs.
Boudon found that one owner was very happy with their alteration which was just restoring the floor plan back to Corbusier’s original design.
When Corbusier was asked to comment on what had happened in Pessac he said – “You know, life is always right; it is the architect who is wrong.”
Best Created Process of Mice and Men
We all try to provide ways of doing things for our teams that we think will be productive and efficient. We try to be the architects of our work environments.
After we have made our cunning plans you have to let go and let the team work. They will improvise, adjust, tweak and generally make things work best to solve their problems.
This isn’t a bad thing at all. It’s interesting to find out what they care about? What they are incentivized to do?
The plan you had started with many assumptions, some hidden, some obvious will not be followed perfectly. Letting the process work is just testing these hypothesises and is a brilliant way to learn more about your team and what you do and don’t know about them.
You don’t control your team, you just guide them, hopefully in a positive direction. You will be wrong, and they will be right.
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe 