Failure

A Web site is ostensibly not the place to showcase your failures. Ostensibly, because the assumption that things that fail in desirable ways are entirely undesirable is one that I do not subscribe to. There are failures of sorts. Unnecessary and useful failures.

A useful failure is an action that turns out differently than expected and demonstrates that the expectation was incorrect in a context in which that expectation would not have been otherwise adjusted.

As an architect, you hope and expect to make a positive and substantial contribution. That expectation is partly incorrect. In particular, the impact architecture can have on policy in a neoliberal context is limited. My useful failure was the overestimation of the impact of my possible contribution.

Fortunately, there are also useful successes, actions that turn out differently than expected but where the expectation was wrongly too negative. An example of such a success is the Maakhaven project.