A routine is a sequence of actions that culminate with a product. No product, be it the zen of drinking tea, the finality of a sandwich, nor the totality of a musical composition, can be achieved without the careful, strict accomplishment of specific actions. Visualized as a concept map, the product is the end point, usually, and the actions preceding function as a series of checkpoints. The end point, or culmination of the routine, is a checkpoint as well. Each checkpoint is a milestone toward the development of the goal the routine strives to obtain.
In context of the routines of pet ownership, minimizing on the routine of walking a dog, a golden retriever, such points of action, or checkpoints, carry geographical significance. Whereas many routines may occur in a small, confined space, walking a dog requires a neighborhood of a space, a liberated, yet consistent path for an animal that thrives upon spatial freedom and exploration, yet values a familiar hearthy routine. Each checkpoint is defined by the occurance of an event: departing from the home, sniffing the ground, typical distractions, and the desired result- the excretion of waste. Whereas many routines are purely linear, with the desired result culminating at an end point, walking a dog is rather cylical, with the zenith occuring in the middle of the process. The dog departs from the home. The dog excretes at a usually familiar point away from the home. The dog returns to the home, remaining there until the process is ready to begin again. The diagram is not a crescendo to an endpoint, but a wave that crests in the middle of the timeline. Therefore, the geographical checkpoint at which this action occurs should be the most implicitly dramatic.
What responsibilities does a designer have creating the checkpoint for this to occur? Does the designer even have the power to dictate where this occurs? Well, yes actually. The design of such checkpoint could be done in such way that it recieves the proper emphasis, becoming a monument of sorts, truly a checkpoint in a physical form. In human civilization, monuments are designed to be celebratory and commemorative, urban focal points, or checkpoints rather, from which the entirety of a neighborhood is based, such as Dupont Circle, L'Arc de Triomphe or Trafalgar Square. Certain monuments, that are dedicated to more dramatic, melancholy circumstances, tend to posess a more subtle, yet powerful existence. Maya Lin exemplifies the power of such subltly by physically actualizing what she concieved as a figurative scar in the earth, the Vietnam war, and the design for her processional monument that exists amidst the landscape of the National Mall. Her design is absent of the sort of explicitly powerful grandeur of the Arc Triomphe at the opening of the Champs-Elysees, but present of the implicitly powerful subtly.
Returning to the context of a marker for a dog to pee, an activity so ritualistic yet mundane does not need the dramatic architecture of the Arc de Triomphe. Rather, it desires the subtlty like that of maya lin, with the craft of the landscape around to deliver the emphasis that the actual monument should lack. The subtle elevation of the checkpoint over the land around is completly emphatic, physically and symbolically elevating this point in space over the surroundings. In order to retain this emphasis, it is important to isolate the marker, and void the remainder of the space of any vegetation or architectural element with the exception of the grass and the form of the land. Therefore there is no competition, the marker will have to win. In order for the golden retriever to more easily "mark the spot" and welcome the object psychologically as the point of excretion, it should be ergonomically designed to best accomodate the form of the dog himself. The marker, a boulder planted into the ground, should be reasonably proportioned to the height of the dog and elliptical so that it may be round enough for the dog to appreciate but thin enough that it can agree with the dimensions of the dogs parts. It should include concavities that allow better access for the dogs hind leg to rise. Thus, the combination of its isolated power and its ergonomic form should easily speak to the golden retriever that it in fact is the zenith of his walk, the most important checkpoint in the process, the item to be peed on.
