Pati de Gràcia

An inner courtyard that was only partly covered, so that rain could remain an event.

None of these ideas is new, and probably none is exclusive to any one trade. But they are easily lost when there is a hurry, a tight budget or expectations about how things should look. That is why it is worth writing them down from time to time: not as a rule, but as a reminder of what we wanted to do when everything was still possible. The notes that follow are just that, a reminder, and like all reminders they serve mostly the person who writes them.

When you look at a space for long enough, it stops being a set of walls and becomes a succession of hours. The same room is a different room first thing in the morning, when the light comes in sideways and makes the edges visible, than in the afternoon, when everything flattens and the materials seem quieter. To design with this in mind is to accept that no decision is final: an object that works at ten in the morning may disappear at seven in the evening, and the other way round. That is why it pays to work with few things, well chosen, and to let time do the rest of the work.