Niall Hobhouse to Nicholas Olsberg
One can make oneself gloomy anytime about this project by assuming that a
built something is the only outcome by which to measure success.
And too pragmatic, maybe; or too easily swayed by the prevailing
practice, when it is the practice in itself that makes any interesting outcome so
nearly impossible?
Certainly what you fear may yet happen, but that is the risk I knowingly
took. I do feel that the risk has been rather reduced in my perception by
what I now understand about the general entrenchment of the industry; and
reduced in fact by the way the process has modified itself since we started.
The largest risk I still perceive is that the gardener/designer who has an
idea may not have the articulacy to access the web correspondence which
does, in aggregate, constitute the Brief. The Popes did fine for me in their
way, and they took the chances that you say were unacceptable; but they
might not have managed to show themselves at their best against this sort of
challenge.
That’s where you come in.
Why not post it to the site, incidentally?