A lot of modern-day architecture discussions can be confusing, alienating and overly academic. That's why I was drawn right away to Barry Berkus' "How to Think Like an Architect" video series, because he speaks and thinks in such a sensible, pragmatic and accessible manner:

Now to the industrial designers among you: When you're in the sketching phase, how do you start designing, say, a handheld product? Do you start by drawing the human hand and filling it with your object? Do you start with the object's innards, if it's got electric guts, and start shaping the form around that? You're probably familiar with a variety of processes, but you'll likely find Berkus' architecture-based design process as interesting as it is different to what ID'ers do. Here he shows how he goes from vague bubbles to hard lines:

As industrial designers, when we design an object, it's the same object all day long. Meaning it's not fundamentally different at 9am than it is at 6pm. But a house exposed to sunlight is. Berkus shows you how that influences the design process here:

If you go to Berkus' YouTube page, you'll see that he's got just seven "How to Think Like an Architect" videos, and that they stopped coming in 2011. You may be wondering why.

Sadly, Berkus was diagnosed with leukemia and passed away in 2012. While he had a long and illustrious career as an architect—please read his obituary here and see for yourself—it is a shame we did not get to benefit from the hundreds of other videos this man undoubtedly had in his head.