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Successful buildings must respond to a wide range of contributing factors that influence design. When Vitruvius advised that building must respond embody Firmness, Commodity and Delight he was could not have imagined the importance of many of today’s design influences: financing, construction delivery, operating costs, information technology, market presence, recruitment, staff retention, rapidly changing medical and scientific technology, etc.
Only through a process that engages building owners, principle users, management, facility operators, engineers, technologists and builders can a building design be properly defined and concepts explored. This requires good listening skills, consensus building and an ability to achieve balance. We accomplish this through a variety of techniques that help us better understand the design task we have undertaken and the range of issues we must consider.
Unless we understand our clients’ overarching vision, we do not believe we can accurately measure the success of our efforts. Over the many years we have worked with multi-faceted institutions, we have developed and perfected techniques that help us better understand and document the larger goals of those we serve.
We have never had a client who had unlimited time or unlimited financial resources. Every building is the result of finding the right balance between often competing goals. Achieving that balance is only possible if our clients are allowed the opportunity to establish a set of prioritized goals that can become the basis for measuring the proposed alternative design solutions we provide. This is a core component of how we approach every building we design.
Over the years we have come to recognize that architects and interior designers too often use terminology that can be confusing to or misinterpreted by clients. Words that we both use (“contemporary” or “traditional” for example) can be interpreted quite differently by the client team and the design team. We routinely employ a participatory process that allows us to create a common illustrated vocabulary that greatly enhances communication throughout the design process.
Vitruvius would have understood programming. It is where the functional drivers for a project (“commodity” as he termed it) are defined. Programming, however, is not just the opportunity to ask “What do you want? “How much of it do you want?” and “Where do you want it?” Programming needs to be more of a probing and exploratory process that challenges preconceptions, benchmarks current practices, tests assumptions and, ultimately, becomes aligned with the budget.
We have seen on many occasions that those who work in a particular setting have become so accustomed to their environment that they stop seeing the things they like or dislike. Those observations are very important to our understanding of operational design input. Occasionally, we utilize a technique that some refer to as “photo journaling” to prompt and document the informed observations of our clients. In simple terms, this is a process where individuals who work in a particular department or area of our client’s existing building are provided with disposal cameras and asked to take photos over the course of a few days and record their comments. These are often some of the most valuable comments and valuable observations we obtain during the design process. Typically, they include comments that could only come from those who work in particular setting over a long period of time. Quite often, these are observations that would be largely invisible to a designer who only visits the facility at intervals.
Most people who choose architecture or interior design as their profession have a highly developed ability to envision 3 dimensional space or objects. We recognize that this is not a capability that is universally shared. Most clients have chosen to enter their fields of specialization because they have other highly developed skill sets. Today’s computer technology helps us bridge that gap by allowing us to generate, almost on demand, 3 dimensional representations of the concepts we are proposing. These are enormously helpful in fostering better communication between the client team and the design team. As the design begins to reach maturity, we frequently create relatively inexpensive full-scale mock-ups of critical areas of the facility (patient rooms, lab modules, etc.) to ensure that those who will use the facility can better understand what they are being asked to approve. This process often results in substantive comments from the users and helps refine the design.
All of the aforementioned techniques are directed toward engaging our clients in the design process, enhancing communication, improving the quality of the design and keeping the client involved in the effort.
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