Design tips for students: “Play Notre Dame”

In journalism, the maxim “Play Notre Dame” means to find the strongest counter-arguments to your position, and argue against them directly and forcefully. (In college football, back in the day, Notre Dame was the most challenging team you could add to your schedule. The best teams wanted to play Notre Dame.) So the negative corollary is: don’t play weak teams to gain an easy victory. Or for journalists, don’t play to the weak counter-arguments; don’t simply ask yourself the easy questions.

In a similar fashion, when students are evaluating their own design work in process I encourage them to ask the hardest questions and answer them in writing. For example: A student has a schematic design for a dormitory. He or she should ask what makes this different from and better than a prison? and then answer that question in a few sentences. Writing it down is important, because writing clarifies thinking.

For most buildings, the ultimate hard question is: would this project be a gift or a burden to its users and its community?