"Technology's got nothing to do with it...

I found a great quote in the latest edition of Property Australia magazine:

Temple Sagrada Familia, Barcelona: "In terms of the power of the idea, the technology's got nothing to do with it because Gaudi dreamed it up before the technology. But in terms of realising the idea, without today's technology it would have been pretty hard to pull off"*.

One of the Directors at THG put this on my desk based on a discussion about new web technologies, but in retyping it, I think the real meaning is in the fact that Gaudi didn't let a lack of technology stop him from dreaming big. Just because there are nay-sayers out there, doesn't mean we can't imagine - and work out the details later. I was at a conference earlier in the year where a presenter said "design it as though you don't have to build it or pay for it" - a concept which certainly frees the mind to think of concepts that are totally outside the box.

*Mark Burry, a professional research fellow at the Victoria University at Wellington, Innovation Professor of Architecture and director of the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory, the Design Research Institute at RMIT in Melbourne and executive architect and researcher at the Temple Sagrada Familia.