Translation of an idea, a raw concept, in an architectural language is an initial concern of design. This process is usually done by drawings, a tool which let the imagination come to reality. The bright side, a tiny crack on the black box, is the chance of realizing the idea but most of the time, the design is done before even it really starts. That’s why almost every architect believes architecture is for tough skins. Frankly speaking, we all know that such a cliché is a way for people to survive in different professions, to keep the sense of belongingness; doctors believe they have the most stressful job in the world, Civil engineers think they do all the serious work while architects just paint a rainbow-ish piece of shit and the list goes on. But there is a truth in differentiating how people think in different professions and it’s about the way they look at their surroundings. Focusing on architectural design, understanding three-dimensional space is an inevitable requirement. The way objects are perceived in the space, their coordinate, their order, sequence of narratives and the power of picturing all in the head before starting a move, are what make architects stick out.

All of this came to me when I was sitting on a bumpy leather bench in L’italiano barbershop, tortured by a long list of hairy guys waiting for their turn. Briefly telling what the hell is L’italiano barbershop, it’s a business concept of starting up an enterprise which benefits all equally by providing hairdressing services in different branches in Milan. Putting aside the obvious effects of the communist mindset for starting this business, they claimed that “… the intention openly declared is to counter the fierce competition of Chinese hairdressing colleagues, lowering prices, but never to the detriment of the quality of the service.”. An archetype of “negative motivation” is found here when they took a negative meaning, revenge in this case, to serve their society for good, to change. In fact, they were somehow offended by the smart strategy of Chinese micro-community's survival in which non-violently invaded a portion of the Italian economy. In response, those angry Italians who were all moving their right hand up and down in their own way of, let’s say, complaining, started to shape another micro-community to counteract the so-called “financial loss” caused by Chinese. They fixed the errors, coded a new program and released a new version of barbershops. The title itself symbolizes the nationalism as the glue for keeping up the sense of belongingness as if an Italian football team is planning for the last-minute comeback. This, is not anymore, a negative feature because not only it provides job opportunities for Italians but also it makes a strong social bonding in the scale of a neighborhood and changes the barbershop into a nod for social conventions, a cozy place to sit, talk, talk and talk. And the content of all discussions in this heterotopic space can be considered as up-to-date information about that specific neighborhood which I would like to call it Local live data. And you can easily have access to this databank by following the flow of on-going conversation which almost always is occurring and … bang! Now you know that Francesco bought a blue navy Fiat and Alberto is going to Carloforte for vacation this weekend. Overall, the effect of L’italiano on the neighborhood reminds me of the same effect of micro-enterprises mentioned by Jane Jacob in The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

The Main Ingredients

After this boring historical lecture, let’s go back to the comparison of architects and barbers. speaking of getting bored, when I was sitting in L’italiano, waiting for my turn, I tried to look at the world through barber’s eyes when they’re working and here it goes what I found:

The main ingredients for starting are a chair, a mirror and technical tools which I call them all as scissors:

Chair
Not a regular chair but the most comfortable for me, which is height-adjustable and has extra parts such as headrest, footrest, armrest and a step to put your legs on it. In short, all needed for a delightful sleep, especially when someone is messaging your head. But apparently, it is designed for a more important purpose, making the head accessible from different directions and accordingly, make things easy for the barber.

It can be compared with an architectural drawing desk from the technical point of view and any sort of working desk for an architect in a general sense.

Mirror
Rarely used by professional barbers but generally, gives them a better perspective of the head from distance, so the barber can check occasionally and see how does a specific point on the head look from different angles at the same time; metaphorically playing the same role of mirrors in driving.

It can be compared with the notion of perspective in architectural drawing, or, any other drawing techniques such as rendering, which let the architect test his ideas.  

Scissors
A group of technical hardware which provides different options for barbers and let them decide which strategy is better for each situation.

It can be compared with drawing tools such as a ruler, mechanical pencil, fountain pen, technical pen, etc.

Working In Progress...

It’s always the matter of a prolate spheroid; a barber, like a sculptor, is always dealing with such a shape as the base. But there is one big difference between a sculptor and a barber. The base for the barber is always changing. The general shape may be the same, but they are always dealing with unique situations as the form and condition of each head is different than the other. A long-hair guy may ask for a summer cut, an old man, almost bold, may ask for a fancy cut, fixing with gel. And that’s how someone can evaluate the skill of a barber. The more the barber is able to decide at the moment, to improvise, the more professional.

About the process, the first connection happens when the request passes from the client to the barber. At this stage, the client is imagining himself in his new haircut and tries to describe that image. Here is the point where the narration is the main medium for transferring the information. That’s why sometimes the client is drawing an imaginary line around his head which I would call it the basic guideline. In this phase, he is realizing his image for the barber. After receiving the abstract instruction, the first move perhaps is adjusting the height of the base in its most accessible position so that the barber can comfortably reach it from different sides. Now that the position is set perfectly, it’s time to refer to the personal bank of data including the knowledge and the experience and adapting it with the current request. After a brief brainstorming and picking the right strategy for cutting process-which may all take a few seconds-it’s now the time for drawing the basic guidelines.

Let’s imagine the client is asking for a neat gradient cut starting from his ear and goes to the boundary he draws around his head. Two alternatives are available: One is realizing the line by cutting all the hair on the bottom-side and making his head black and white. Then gradually working on the edge and fading the contrast using the toolbox called Scissors. Here it’s important to consider the basic guideline lower than its real position to make a buffer zone for making the gradient. The level of improvisation is lower in this case and probably more preferable for barbers with structured mindsets.

Another option is starting to make the gradient by removing the hairs gradually from bottom to top until the approximate boundary of the imaginary basic guideline. Here the level of improvisation is higher as the barber can constantly check its progress and alternate their decisions second by second.

During this process of cutting, a certain degree of redundancy can be considered as well, which opens some space for possible mistakes. Referring to the case of the client with gradient head, the barber usually makes the gradient by using hair clipper and the 6mm comb as the white color and 22mm comb as the black color but they can leave some space and shift the scale, starting with the 10mm comb as white and 25mm comb as the black to avoid irreversible mistakes.

The Result and The Question Mark

Realizing the exact request of the client is almost impossible as we’re talking over an abstract topic. But there are some factors which let the skillful barber stick out of the crowd by improvising a design which on the one hand, meets the client’s expectations and on the other, adapts the basic knowledge of hairdressing with the demands; putting both into practice makes an amalgam as the result which because of its abstract nature, is not possible to be evaluated accurately. Thus, in the end, if the client is not satisfied, there is no way back. He usually decides to act picky about a part of his head, insisting on cutting and editing again and again while they both know it won’t change anything at all. In fact, it’s just a defensive mechanism for the client to comfort himself and annoy the barber for a relief. A strong sense of déjà vu may come to architects now, reminding them of some final presentations during their career, those moments of endless arguments when everyone insists on convincing the other which usually comes along with an invisible enduring haterade. A typical example of a passive-aggressive pattern in behavioral analysis within a lose-lose form of situation.

Looking at this process from a larger perspective reveals some delicate similarities between architects and barbers in different senses, from the spatial perception and the matter of improvisation to the evaluation process of the result. In the end, nobody can tell if there is better version or worth for a profession, but it may be valid to say the way people do their job affects their way of living, looking and understanding. Whenever a barber looks at a head, a doctor at a body, a civil engineer at a building and an architect at a barbershop, it’s just different; and the type of received data in each is strongly related to their profession. In the case of comparison between architects and barbers, it gets even more interesting when the matter of processing and visualizing three-dimensional space as the content comes into play and applies differently in each of these contexts.