The Value of Details

I once went as a guest to a barbecue at a very nice house in a leafy suburb east of Adelaide. At the time I was a student, and the owner - a Lawyer - took me aside and said very plainly that he understood Architecture. 

The Lawyer explained that he had engaged an Architect to extend his house and create more family space, but he had balked at the original cost of construction. He personally took a red pen to the design and stuck out anything he could to save money. Pointing up to a high-level window he said that if he had known the window would be there it would have been the first thing to go. 

With a more humbling tone he went on to say how grateful he was that the Architect had kept the window. During the day the family are busy in their own corners of the house, but each night they eat together, and the window aligns perfectly with the moon rising over the dining table. The Lawyer and I stood there for a while, just gazing up at the sky.

At the time I was studying Architecture, and I was lucky to be working part time as a Ward Clerk in a private hospital. My job was to answer the phone, but it hardly rang, and I spent many hours just watching people make their way through the corridors. One day I watched a nurse place a chair halfway down a fluro-lit corridor. She then gently coaxed a patient out of their room, encouraging them to move along the corridor rails. As they reached the chair the patient sat low, recounting between each breath the difficulty of every step, all while the hospital continued to move briskly around them.

10 years later I found myself walking towards another window, this time as an Architect in a hospital ward that I had designed. This full-height window was one of several that were placed at the end of the corridors, and from a distance the glazing disappeared upwards as the frame extended beyond the ceiling, pulling the sky into the building. Adjacent the window was an upholstered seat, neatly tucked into the wall and angled slightly, so that the view aligned with a street tree two floors below. 

On this occasion I arrived at the window to stand alongside the Director of Nursing and other members of the design team. The Director was guiding us through the newly opened ward and discussing value management. At this point she very plainly stated that these windows, if they had been known, would have been the first thing to go.

The Director’s tone then softened as she went on to describe how the space was being used. In this hospital the patients and carers move carefully together down the quiet corridors towards the natural light. They reach the nooks in a shared moment of achievement, and then they pause to peer out the windows with silent curiosity. Later, when patients are more able, they tow their visitors to the windows, and with feet pointing to the seasonal changes in the trees below they softly natter about the world outside.

By now our tour was reaching its end, and I don’t think many of us were really listening to the Director. Just like standing in the Lawyer’s house, the orders for strict functional design and cost management had long passed. The design is now in its phase of active service to its occupants, and I wondered - as our noses were tilting up to follow the clouds gently moving past - what is the true value of these windows? And what other details have been saved in projects that are now enriching our world?