System Thinking

Residential design usually begins with a document called a “brief.” It lists rooms, areas, functions, and stylistic preferences. It appears clear. Yet a residential brief is rarely a clear problem statement. More often, it is a projection of desire. And desire does not remain pure. It carries conflicting expectations between husband and wife. It is compounded by approving officers interpreting the same policy in different ways. It can conceal the designer’s blind spots around cost and buildability. It also inherits market habits and entrenched assumptions.

 When we talk about prefab housing, a common fear arises: “Won’t standardisation make everything look the same?” This fear confuses standardisation with sameness. A well-designed system doesn’t constrain creativity – it can actually liberate it. Consider the classical Chinese garden: a world of whimsical charm and deep artistry, where no two gardens are alike. Far more than a mere outdoor space, it was a personal universe: a library for the scholar, a studio for the artist, a quiet retreat for meditation, and a gracious setting for hosting friends, enjoying music, and staging opera. Most importantly, it was a world in miniature, crafted by its owner to be a spiritual haven. In essence, designing such a garden was akin to designing a complete, contemporary dream house.

Picture this: you’re transported 600 years back to 15th-century China. The emperor, hearing of your unparalleled skill as a builder, summons you to build his new palace. The emperor’s top priority? How soon he can move in. The scope of the palace is quite ambitious: it covers 8,700 halls and rooms of all sizes. The footprint of the buildings alone, excluding gardens and plazas, is equivalent to 15 soccer fields.

A headache, brought on by matters at work, was my companion to the Canglang Pavilion on a gloomy morning. It is one of the oldest gardens in Suzhou, a city of canals and white-walled dwellings that stands as a living archive of China’s garden design, deep in the Jiangnan region, the historic centre of Chinese literati culture. Instead of heading directly for the famous structure, I circled behind to an unassuming cluster of buildings—the Cuilinglong.