We walk ahead facing backward: thought is an inductive coupling of observation and prediction. Prediction is looking back to see forward: it's the best (and only) tool we have under the circumstance, our circumstance being...time.
All aesthetic/creative impetus is conjecture based on past experience, and so a heuristic reaction toward a future goal, and thus all results (iterations) are provisional and are post-proved, or after-validated, to conveniently (or not) prove the original premise, or thesis. There is no shame in this unavoidable blind-stepping.
Blind-stepping (idea and test) can be done collaboratively (parallel opinions, or parallel iterations, gathered temporally) but the final opinion, or iteration, before again iterating is a singular choice, discrete to one gate keeper. This singular gate scales atomically through universal reach and is the essential mechanism by which we, and the world, move.
How can we all be involved together then? Only as constructs in a hierarchy, something as beings we are evolved (or created) to do at our most basic level – we assess our local hierarchies and our place in them constantly, always adjusting, and strategizing to improve our possibilities, potential, value, leverage. Hierarchies themselves are constructs, and under constant influence by constructs acting upon them.
Singularities of choice can, in appearance only, but essentially simultaneously, superimpose. The ideal of collaboration is choice superimposition: a highly potentiated and graceful condition. In the layered moment of superimposition there is a lovely spectrum of interference, oil on water, blue on a colorless feather, iridescence delighting the eye, harmony singing our aspirations.
In the endeavor of architecture, the prime gatekeeper is the client. Do we choose our gatekeepers, or do they choose us? s m a l l c h i t e c t u r e proposes an (apparent) simultaneity periodically reassessed in the name of service.