Originality - And How to get There

[Peter Pallotta]

Author CS Lewis wrote (at least twice that I know of) about "originality", both in one's life and in one's creative endeavours. If I combine those two references, he essentially says this:

"No man who bothers about originality will ever be original. But if you simply try to tell the truth, without caring twopence how often it has been told before, and to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work's sake, you will nine times out of ten become original without ever having noticed in.  What men call originality will come unsought."

Do you think this applies to golf course architecture? Has it been true of past architects/courses, and of today's?

[Joe Hancock]

Peter,

I have witnessed this in my experiences in golf design and construction; If one tends to the fundamentally important aspects well, other very good things, design-wise, happen somewhat incidentally.

If you have to fuss too much to make something work, then it is likely that something fundamental wasn't dealt with very well.

Not sure if that addresses originality directly, but I think it has something to with it.

[Martin Lehmann]

As a newbie on this wonderful website, I started a threat on fashion in golf course design a while ago. It didn't lead to many original ( ) insights, so I still believe that there is a lot of fashionable and copycat behavior amongst golf course architects.


Another thing is that, at least in my view, new courses tend to be over-designed using overly detailed plans and gps-data. I think the best holes and design features are made on site in the old fashioned way: during construction. At our golf course, we recently renovated a rather dull par 3. I arranged a shaper with an excavator and asked the architect to come over. Then we just started digging and shaping. The large greenside bunker, that was planned on the drawing board, dissapeared and was replaced by simple and elegant contouring using existing, subtle slopes. The exact positions and shapes of a new tee complex were 'found' more or less on-site.


When doing golf course design in the old fashioned, and probably more labor intensive way, there's more opportunity for serendipity and thus originality.   






     

[Adam Lawrence]

Martin -- which hole are you talking about? And did this happen before or since my visit?

[Martin Lehmann]

Adam,


We did the 11th hole in the last week of October, so after your visit. The fairway and approach have been lowered and reshaped to make the front of the green visible (if I remember correctly, that's what you suggested as well!). We have added a false front to the green and instead of a greenside bunker to the left, a steep run-off has been created. Simple and effective. New tees have been raised as much as possible and shifted to the right, again to increase visibility and to make the line of play more attractive. The hole remains pretty long with an uphill teeshot of 215 yards from the back tee. I think we managed to turn a very mediocre par 3 into quite a good one. The soil that was removed on the 11th has been used to build new tees on the 12th hole. 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Peter,

I think the "ideas appear when you least expect them" is probably true, sort of like you can't find a girlfriend no matter how hard you try, but when you aren't trying, a perfectly good mate seems to arrive on the scene.

Generally, I agree.  I consider a few of my earlier higher profile design opportunities to be "self conscious," i.e. I was aware I was designing something that would be seen by a wider audience and tried to hard to amp it up.  Oddly, some of that is doing it like you see the big boys doing it before, exactly the way NOT to be creative.

In music, how many bands have great music for two or three CD's (probably stuff they played in concert for years before being recorded) but when they get famous, they start thinking they need to be more "serious" in their lyrics and it all suffers.  So, yes, you can't be thinking "I need to be creative."  The most creative moments are when you have a very site specific problem to solve and you comb your brain for solutions, some you may have seen elsewhere, others really borne out of necessity, but mostly, borne out of necessity.

Of course, it might also be like "I find my keys in the last place I look."  Or, in other words, it might be perceptions of the human mind that make it seem that way.

[Tom_Doak]

Another thing is that, at least in my view, new courses tend to be over-designed using overly detailed plans and gps-data. I think the best holes and design features are made on site in the old fashioned way: during construction.
   

Martin:


It sounds as though you are speaking from another continent, but I can assure you that a lot of the best courses built in America in the past twenty years were created on site.  Bill Coore probably doesn't even know how to spell GPS     I am just kidding, but he certainly doesn't draw plans using it, nor do I.  And there must be a reason we both pay so many talented guys to work on site.


One of the things I learned from Pete Dye is that when you are in the dirt it's much safer to take chances in what you shape, because you still have the power to erase them after you see them.  When you put it down on paper there is always the chance that somebody will actually believe you meant it literally !

[Jeff_Brauer]

Martin,

Not to mention, even those of us in the plans biz never just ship plans out and make no field visits.  And, the entire golf construction industry understands that they are just a starting point and expect to make field changes, at least to some degree.  I have never in my career, and only rarely in any other decent architect, seen a course built by plans only, with no field changes to meet site conditions (or just good old fashion mind changes or better ideas)

Ever since I have been on this site, since what, 2001?, some folks seem to want to portray the different methods as black and white, when in reality, there are many shades of gray.  And, of course, the field only guys wear the white hats around here.

It is a rare project that can get away with no plans at all, given modern permitting requirements.  But, if you think its better to have some engineer draw related plans, rather than having a golf course architect at least get them close, I think in many cases, you might be wrong.  At least, I have seen lots of engineers get involved and ruin stuff, whereas had the gca had enough training to do most of the drainage, etc. it usually comes out better.

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks for the good posts and exchanges, gents.

Several posts had me thinking about my own approach to creative endeavours: I've come to the conclusion that, as much as I like ideas and studying and knowing how things are supposed to work, I actually approach a subject/project almost completely by intuition. It either comes out right, and feels right, or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, I might as well throw it out. I don't have the talent to fix it -- and indeed, I have found over the years that if I fuss over it too much I inevitably make it worse. (Sadly for me, I think Jeff is right - that the successful working professionals are a mix of planning/paper and spontaneity/dirt. I think I just have the dirt part).

Peter 

[Martin Lehmann]

I live in The Netherlands, so I'm from another continent indeed. In my, admittedly limited and humble, experience with golf course architecture and golf course construction I have seen quite a number of detailed drawings and GPS equipped machinery. And of course, in all cases the architect in question visited the site several times and made changes and alterations in the field.


The thing that struck me though, is that the architects I witnessed very much worked from preconceived ideas and objectives. With little room for improvisation or, as I mentioned before, serendipity: the ability to create something interesting and new more or less by accident right on the spot.


I understand the need to have some kind of masterplan to be able to manage a project and to get permits. But I get the impression that the goal to create a certain type of golf course, with a certain style and with clearly and strongly recognizable signature features in many cases is more important than creating a course with the specific characteristics of the site as main point of departure. I also understand that there is a big difference between sites and that in some cases intensive earthwork and manmade features are needed. But I don't necessarily understand the template like way golf courses are often built.



 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Martin,

About ten years ago, I first worked with a contractor who had invested in GPS staking, using a back pack type unit.  I called it staking by wandering around.  It was fast, and sometimes he would set a few stakes to my grading plans while we were at lunch, and it was really easy to see where my grading plan overcooked things, didn't all for some neat features, etc.  I think tech allows more changes, not fewer, providing of course, that I was there when they were laying out the field stakes. 

Of course, this was the Quarry, my highest ranked course, a unique mining site, etc.  I always felt the tech helped make it the best design it could be.  Tech good, architects not being on site to use it.....bad.

[Tom_Doak]

The thing that struck me though, is that the architects I witnessed very much worked from preconceived ideas and objectives. With little room for improvisation or, as I mentioned before, serendipity: the ability to create something interesting and new more or less by accident right on the spot.


I understand the need to have some kind of masterplan to be able to manage a project and to get permits. But I get the impression that the goal to create a certain type of golf course, with a certain style and with clearly and strongly recognizable signature features in many cases is more important than creating a course with the specific characteristics of the site as main point of departure. I also understand that there is a big difference between sites and that in some cases intensive earthwork and manmade features are needed. But I don't necessarily understand the template like way golf courses are often built.

I agree with all of this but I guess I've just seen a lot more improvisation in the finished product on the courses I've seen under construction, both my own and others'.  Pete Dye usually had a plan in mind when he was building, but he never let anyone else see it, and he was totally unafraid to change direction when someone did something cool, even if it was different than what he'd been thinking.


As I tried to say before, the good thing about trusting serendipity [or old-fashioned trial and error] is that you are never afraid of making a mistake, because it's easily and cheaply corrected.  On the other hand, I have observed a few architects who pride themselves on their plans, who are loathe to change the plan even when they can see it's not turning out well.

[Tom Kelly]

Martin,

A slight essay but...


I think you and others are lumping plans and GPS/Surveying/tech etc in with bad architecture slightly mistakenly. They are valuable assets to an architect if used well, especially for the architects that aren't fortunate enough to work with the same construction crew on every job as for most it is impossible to maintain a full time crew. They also allow for accurate pricing of jobs if the initial survey/plans are close to what the final product will be. It makes the financial side of things alot easier.

In reality what I think you are getting to is how the architect creates and communicates their ideas.

If the architect can see the hole/course/green etc in their head clear enough on initial site visits and can use accurate surveys to produce precise detailed plans, perhaps including sketches and 3D models that can be passed to a shaper/finishing team who can decipher the plans well and set them out correctly then there is no reason why a good golf course/hole can't be built, partly because of this technology.........IN REALITY having an accurate survey to produce super accurate detailed plans which can be deciphered by the team on site correctly as the architect had seen in his mind without other forms of communication is unlikely to happen, it's like Chinese whispers.

Well drawn, accurate plans can be of great use to show the shapers/crew the initial ideas along with drawings/photo-shopped proposals. I'm surprised how few sketches I see. These allow the guys on site to get things close to finished without the architect having to be looking over the shoulder of every guy on site 24/7 especially when ...again... the architect hasn't had the chance to work with these specific guys before/enough to let them loose and trust them. The likelihood of originality is then more dependant to come from the next stage. A hands-on architect will then see for him/herself what it looks like in the ground and make any changes necessary as they go. Maybe a tee needs raising as the visibility isn't quite as expected or for some reason a feature just looks out of place. Some guys see things in the dirt better than when they see the initial site, others are more confident in their initial plan. Sometimes the architect is lucky enough to have someone on site who sees something they haven't that can add to the job and do some their work for them! Other times the shaper 'playing' with things on site might lead the job away from the architects vision or work against what the shaper on the other side of the site is doing if the architect isn't careful. Maybe sometimes the dictatorship is best and the architect just does everything, survey, design, shape, finish but again in reality although maybe ideal this is a really inefficient way of doing it unless the architect has 8 arms and is trained/experienced in all the processes and can win the next job to keep them eating whilst doing the current job....A 'hands off' architect may not change things in the ground in which case the shapers/finishers will likely do what they've seen before as it is close to what they expect the architect will want and thus lead to something unoriginal, but maybe they do it how they want and it becomes original because of that, or perhaps they do it exactly to the plans and the architects ideas were original in the first place.

Essentially from my experience it is all about what's in the architects head and their ability to communicate it, whether that's by plans, talking, drawings, showing is upto the architect. Whether it is original or not is down to the architects or individuals responsible for the final product, not necessarily the process.


Peter,

As for originality I think it depends on the individual. I think CS Lewis might have just been talking about his thought processes. "to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work's sake" is abit ambiguous to me. He was obviously blessed with an amazing imagination, where as someone else who may not have that imagination might through research and trial and error come up with something original too. The creative vs the scientific approach, the creative is probably easier but science way can still be original.

As for GCA, perhaps you could say the guys that work harder to get things 'done' are more original. Are the Tom Doaks and Bill Coores more original because they work to get every aspect done well and the originality just appears or because they have done so much research that they consciously try to produce something different, maybe in order to differentiate themselves from their competition and win work? Some of the most original GCA I've seen has been from one time architects, is that because they 'didn't know what they were doing' and therefore approached things differently to others? Maybe they tried to replicate others but were just bad?! I believe like most things in life, it's somewhere in the middle, a combination of all of the above.

Often I find originality is just what appears cool after a few efforts. Put a few different options down and the one which is coolest is often the most original, definitely rings true for me with most art forms, music, tv etc. If I try to do original from the outset with that a specific target I'd probably end up reproducing something I've seen/heard. Perhaps I associate cool with original too much?!