“Sometimes the Mismatch is the Best Match”
Do you recognize the above quotation? I know it’s crazy to be inspired by the 2025 live-action reimagining of the 2010 animated film “How to Train Your Dragon”, both directed and written by Dean DeBois (loosely based on a book of the same name by Cressida Cowell). It’s about a boy who doesn’t fit in with the bloodthirsty dragon slayers of his community. When he meets one the most dangerous “small” dragons, he wins a new friend through kindness, patience, and engineering skills.
Of course, the boy saves the community by helping the small dragons fight the big bad controlling dragon, with the help of his human friends and even his disapproving father (who thinks he is a wimp). Please excuse my clumsy summary of the movie. The mismatch is the kind, creative, and patient boy who is misunderstood in a community of dragon slayers.
When I heard “Sometimes the mismatch is the best match” towards the very end of the movie, I had to immediately write it down. OMG, it’s a mantra! It can work both forwards and backwards: Sometimes the best match is a mismatch.
If you have read any of my blog posts, you probably know that there is about to be a design commentary. Yes, architecture in 2026 needs to have a little mismatch. Isn’t it so much easier to think of a mismatch that can make the design work, rather than the directive to “think outside the box”? I think buildings nowadays look like there are only three architecture firms at work in our city!
For my many clients, contractors, and consultants who have worked with me over the past 40 years, can you think of the mismatch on one of our projects that makes the design sing? Sometimes it is a modern element in a traditional setting, or a traditional element in a modern setting. Sometimes we add an artsy/crafty element to any setting, and now I know why: the mismatch is the best match.
One of my favorite questions to ask clients several years after project completion is this: What is your favorite element/place/design “thing” in your project? What are the most common answers? A small detail, a place that isn’t the grandest, an unexpected color combination. It’s so much fun to be a designer, especially when we’re not one of the dragon slayers.
Want a surprise/mismatch in your project? Give me a call/text and we’ll make the best match together!