Building the recreation area next to the sewage works

[Marty Bonnar]

I've been thinking recently about the difference between BAD design and POOR design.
A quick example:
Bad: maybe running nine holes straight uphill or having water carries on just too many consecutive holes.
Poor: maybe having too small a green on a hole with a long approach or vice versa.
Whatever, I'm sure you've got your personal sewage works adjacent to the rec area.
What's worse?
BAD or POOR?
F.

[Peter Pallotta]

Marty - I'll take bad over poor any day of the week. I've played many poor courses, and they are usually so boring that I can hardly keep my mind on what I'm doing. A bad course can sometimes make me mad, but at least it keeps me engaged and playing golf. If an architect is going to miss, I'd prefer he miss big! Inherent in a bad course is the possibility of a great one; inherent in a poor course is likely just a less-poor course.

[Matthew Petersen]

Marty - I'll take bad over poor any day of the week. I've played many poor courses, and they are usually so boring that I can hardly keep my mind on what I'm doing. A bad course can sometimes make me mad, but at least it keeps me engaged and playing golf. If an architect is going to miss, I'd prefer he miss big! Inherent in a bad course is the possibility of a great one; inherent in a poor course is likely just a less-poor course.

I'm going to respectfully disagree.

A bad design, as defined by Marty, cannot be fixed and indeed may be unplayable for many golfers. A poor design could at least be rectified.


I also tend to disagree with your premise. It's boring design that puts me to sleep. Poor design is interesting. Design is generally poor for a reason. Poor design is usually the result of an attempt to do something interesting that just wasn't carried off quite right, or didn't work out quite right. (Or maybe I haven't figured out the hole yet.) That's what I'm interested in.


Bad design, like multiple forced carries or relentless marches up steep slopes. There's nothing interesting about that. That's just bad. And there's usually a housing development with better land next door to explain it.

[Peter Pallotta]

Didn't mean it to be beard-pulling, Matthew. Maybe a product instead of the words Marty/we are using -- there's a lot of grey area in defining poor and bad, and maybe we're just defining them differently. For me, 'poor' in this case is simply an architect using all the same/standard conventions that everyone else does, but getting them wrong. I'd rather they break a few conventions and risk failing 'badly'. (I even just started a thread on that, for what it's worth...)

 

[Matthew Petersen]

Didn't mean it to be beard-pulling, Matthew. Maybe a product instead of the words Marty/we are using -- there's a lot of grey area in defining poor and bad, and maybe we're just defining them differently. For me, 'poor' in this case is simply an architect using all the same/standard conventions that everyone else does, but getting them wrong. I'd rather they break a few conventions and risk failing 'badly'. (I even just started a thread on that, for what it's worth...)

 

Yeah, I think that's right, Peter. I was trying to go based on how Marty defined the terms. I wouldn't normally use "poor" how he does, either, FWIW.


So, I edited, because I think we maybe agree more than I thought based on my first reading of your post. Sorry if my first words were overly harsh.