My Mantra for Architecture

So I was checking out a few quotes I'd heard last year that I wanted to write in a quote book, and I stumbled upon this list. This Incomplete Manifesto by Bruce Mao is one that his studio applies to every single project they undertake in that creativity filled room they design in.

As I read through them, I realized that they don't just apply to Architecture, the apply to any activity one could undertake. Here are a few of my favorites...

1. Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

6. Capture accidents
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

10. Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

16. Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

18. Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.

21. Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

33. Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.