The architect Louis Kahn famously told his students that one might ask a brick, "what do you want, brick?", to which the brick would reply, "I like an arch." A little cute, maybe, but I've found the underlying idea helpful. What Kahn was encouraging among designers is a certain receptiveness, a quieting down to begin to hear the quiet messages all around us; if we can do that, oftentimes our surroundings will guide us to the best designs. In his example, it's an arch: taki