Architectural design is not a “solution”.
Whilst design does encompass an element of problem solving, to reduce the whole process to a “solution” diminishes architecture into a clinical, utilitarian discipline rather than a vehicle of exciting opportunities. Loads of opportunities. To define architecture as a design solution also carries a whiff of quasi-religious orthodoxy, which assumes that there is one absolute truth, a "right" answer.
Do fashion designers talk of design solutions? If fashion design is a solution, we’d all wear animal skins and hemp bags.
Do filmmakers talk of design solutions? If cinema is a design solution, we’d all be watching the same film. Actually, cinema wouldn’t exist because what is the problem that cinema solves?
Do chefs talk of design solutions? If cooking is a design solution, we’d all be eating raw ingredients.
And if architecture is a design solution, the office would be a tent with a desk and WIFI, the home would be a shed with a bed and a toilet, schools would be trees under which classes can congregate. And all these spaces would look the same.
Language matters. It affects behaviour, and the words we use to express things influence how we approach them, not vice versa. This is evident in how the trite, formulaic structures to design pitches, design-and-access statements, RIBA stage reports and property marketing have led to a trite, formulaic approach in designing architecture that is looking increasingly generic.
So in architecture and property development, as in fashion and in film and in tech, differentiation is a business imperative, because to be generic in a competitive market is tantamount to business suicide.
Those constraints architects face are not problems to solve, but catalysts of imagination and innovation. They nudge designers out of the familiar, out of the comfort zone and out of the pre-conceived ideas. They usher in the new and the enthralling. Unpredictability is perhaps the designer's best friend.