| Imagine that you are an architect who has been asked to build a house on an empty lot in a fairly well-established neighborhood. You take a look at the nearby buildings to make sure that the colors you use on the outside of your house don’t conflict with the aesthetics of the neighborhood. When you are done with your masterpiece of a new house, you stand back and marvel at what you’ve accomplished. It is a brilliant-looking four-story structure with huge open glass walls to afford the owners a great view of the surroundings. The rest of the house has many beautiful features such as an open porch, bay windows, balconies, skylights, and virtually everything else a new homeowner could want.
Six months go by and you receive a call saying that your fabulous house has basically been reduced to rubble. It turns out that in your original assessment of the neighborhood, you didn’t think much of the fact that the existing houses were built from brick with extremely thick (hurricane-proof, to be exact) windows, no skylights, and no balconies. Also, the houses were predominantly ranch homes with basements made from strong foundations. What you didn’t take into account was the design philosophy of the neighborhood. In ignoring that, you didn’t realize that during the rainy season in that neighborhood, the area is frequently hit with torrential downpours, hurricanes, and multiple tornados. Without knowing why the other houses were built the way they were, you built a house that looked great the day after you built it, but would never survive the rainy season. |
