What are the options?
Recently we developed a scheme where we didn't show the clients or the planners any design options, and they approved it. In detailed design, we showed the client a couple of design options for a particular tiny detail, thinking they would see so clearly why the one we preferred would be better than the other, only for them to all like the option we thought was worse, and with no logical explanation as to why. Recently we presented a scheme that, we thought, had a strong logical response to brief and difficult site conditions, and an attractive design presence, only for the planners to ask us for lots of other design options because they didn't 'get' why it was designed as it was. We duly prepared a lot of other design approaches, but because the underlying premise, brief and site constraints, and the designers working on it were, of course, the same, they all had a similarity. The planners still didn't like them. In fact, they liked the version that we thought was