There’s an idea that’s been floating around for decades – I actually forget where I first encountered it – called the Design Fallacy. This fallacy is based on the idea that “designed” is better than “undesigned” and that more design is better than less design. Examples of it are always objects where the external design itself interferes with the object’s purpose and use. So the beautiful old Fiats that required constant tinkering to run are not an example because the design of the car bodies had nothing to do with the flaws in the moving parts, but rear-hinged car doors (AKA suicide doors) are an example because the danger comes from the design feature itself.
The picture above (click to enlarge) is my personal favorite example of the design fallacy: the R40 subway car. The ends of the cars were sloped for appearance’s sake, but this create a large gap between cars that was dangerous for vision-impaired people on platforms (who mistook the gaps for doors) and for people passing between cars (which was still allowed in the 1960s). The big safety gates that were installed restored safety at the expense of destroying the sleek appearance.
The design fallacy is quite rare in structural engineering for buildings because most of the work is hidden. We structural engineers can indulge in out favorite styles without anyone knowing. There are obvious counter examples, but they’re not ordinary buildings.
Architecture, on the other hand, is ripe for the design fallacy. One example can be seen in many modernist houses, in the lack of moldings. Moldings may have been used at the top and bottom of walls (i.e., crown and baseboard) because they look pretty, but they also performed the function of hiding locations where differential movement of floors and partitions are likely to cause non-structural but annoying cracks. Getting rid of the moldings because they did not fit within a design theory meant that those cracks are more likely to be visible. The design itself interferes with the desired result.
An Apple store in Chicago has been getting a lot of press lately. It appears (fact-checking would be useful here from someone with more physical access to the site than me) that the roof was built without gutters, which has led to the formation of dangerous icicles during winter conditions. Oops. Assuming the reports are correct, this is not Apple’s first encounter with the design fallacy.
On the other hand, the fallacy often occurs when a designer (or team of designers) is trying too hard to be innovative. I’d rather people look for new and interesting solutions to design problems, even it means the occasional failure. The different between buildings and industrial objects is lifespan: short of alteration, a design failure in a building will annoy people for a lot longer than a design failure in a computer mouse or a car.
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