Four principles

The essential purpose of Direct Management, as we understand the term, is to create buildings which are whole. This means that each part of the building is right in relation to the other parts, and to the part of the land that makes the buildings and the land more beautiful.

I will try to summarize the real meaning of Direct Management.

  1. The design evolves during construction. This means that the form of control over designs does not stop when drawings are finished, but goes on, continuously, before, during, and after construction. This cannot be done if architect and contractor are separate, or consider their jobs separately. It will only happen if the person who controls the design at the beginning actually controls the construction, too.
  2. Flexible cost control. Cost control requires continuous changing of ideas about what is built, in relation to money that is available, and in relation to what has been done already.
  3. Experience with one's hands. It is also impossible for an architect to have enough knowledge to control the process successfully, unless they have experienced almost every phase of construction with their own hands.
  4. Love of craft and the joy in the physical process of making. In the old days, making a building was clearly understood as a work of making. In this word, designing and physically building are inseparable. However, in the modern world, design has become separated from construction. Architects think of their work as designing, on paper, with the idea that the building process is a separate process. This is not what I call making at all. A good building can only be created, when it is deeply understood as something which is made, by a direct connection of the act of making, and the act of feeling, with your hands.
  1. ​The discoveries you make in the making​
  2. ​The situation talks back​

If you do not feel anything, during your work, you will get nowhere.