MWA Design Process and Culture

MWA DESIGN PROCESS AND CULTURE

DESIGN PROCESS & CULTURE ISSUE A, 06 APRIL 2021 DRAFT What Is Design?

Design for Architecture is the process by which complex problems and competing issues are resolved and integrated in a spatial domain to form a cohesive and efficient whole. Designs incorporate spoken, written, and implicit information, relating to performance, functionality, assembly, aesthetics, and values. Design is expressive of the best synthesis of form, process, technology, and composition, available at the time a building comes to life. Best Practise Design offers the best synthesis possible of performance, function and aesthetic characteristics as relate to and are relevant towards, a project.

How do we Design?

Rigour is key plank of the design process. Interrogating the site and constraints, informing, and enriching the process by asking the right questions at the right time, and forming reasonable, rational answers, will create site specific, rational designs based on robust project logic and first principles analysis.

Design is about Collaboration Design is a process that has many points of view; it can at once be technical, artistic, commercial in nature, or political in nature. As such, we welcome and encourage conversation with project stakeholders around design themes and strategies. The more that the process is imbued within meaningful, relevant discussion, the more informed and broadly situated is the design solution. We listen, engage and craft results based on the various perspectives relating to a Site, the Brief, and the Project.

Design Reliability We want our design success to be measurable. We understand and appreciate the various technical and functional aspects of a design, as relate to building services, structure, or the client’s operational requirements. We understand and can intelligently interpret the relevant design characteristics that underpin the relevant planning authority’s strategic approach to a landholding. We appreciate the wider market forces and community expectations within which a design will be realised, and success measured. We understand and can work intelligently with, the commercial drivers for investment projects, as relate to efficiency, utility and brand position and definition. For a Project to be measured as a success, all these factors must work together cohesively and cooperatively. Design, and more particularly, good design, is a powerful tool with which to transform value, however that value is measured.

Design Thinking Thinking like a designer requires agility and sensitivity; thinking can proceed in both forward and backwards direction, and can operate transformatively, shifting the position of a project radically to an entirely new position and value. A good designer can think rationally and spontaneously, at the same time on the same subject. Being strong conceptually must be tempered with control, rigour, and analysis. Good design does not come easy. It needs a strong conceptual basis, followed by an iterative and integrative approach to resolving the purpose of the design. Aesthetics and composition play a part in skilfully managing the bulk and scale of the project. The designer can also think about and integrate, programmatic relationships, interiors concepts, streetscape design, landscaping and building materiality to the design expression and concept. Materiality is key with the designer needing skill in forming a unique and interesting palette of materials that at once satisfy functional and tactility requirements. The designer can also conceptualise, integrate, and adopt the functions of various building services performance requirements, to create interesting and unique design features, as well as improve the environmental performance of the project.

Design Culture The designer has a relatively daunting task – one that is almost impossible to accomplish alone. A truly collaborative designer will be surrounded by other designers, all engaged with and working towards the same goal of design quality. Through familiarity, training and conversation, a design team can all become sponsors of good design. Understanding that good design relates to all aspects of architecture, a design team can integrate itself around design objectives at all stages of the design process, from initial conversations about a site, right through to technical resolution for construction. A flat, non-hierarchical team structure works best to allow for quick and easy conversation amongst team members; transparency, accountability and trust is key to a good design team, where team members can speak openly about problems and solutions.

MWA DESIGN PROCESS AND CULTURE

Time The most valuable resource for a designer is time. Time, combined with experience, leads to efficiency in thinking and application of effort. Transacting a process from conceptualisation to realisation takes skill and doing this in a timely, effective manner, not only ensures the ongoing commercial viability of the firm and the design team but enables an effective problem-solving focus for the project.

Speed, integration, and effective thinking is a sponsor of good design. Providing leadership to the consultant team encourages effective collaboration, positivity, and problem resolution.

Precedent Having a good understanding of best practise projects around the world, enables the designer to lead a conversation around project team expectations and opportunities. Utilising these examples to explore, interpret and understand possible design outcomes for the project, can assist with cultivating knowledge amongst team members regarding the functional requirements for a design as well as the various alternatives available for its resolution. Precedent can also give clues about materials and expressions that will assist the design to react to and be creative regarding a project opportunity.

Communication Above all, a designer must be able to communicate. There are various moments, opportunities, and pathways available where there is the opportunity for the wider project team, including the Client, Authorities, Consultants and Stakeholders, to interact with, understand and respond to the project design intent. A good designer can communicate skilfully and accurately the design ideas underpinning a project, as well as deal with questions and provide meaningful answers. A good designer can also track and record these conversations, through project design reviews, minutes, and design reports, and decide in a cooperative way, which issues are important and need to be dealt with.

Review Perhaps the most important part of an iterative and first principles approach to a design, is allowing others, to inspect and review the design progress and rationale. This review process needs to be an open, transparent forum where all participants feel comfortable offering their perspective or thoughts on a project. The dialectic of the review will identify and determine which of these ideas and suggestions is relevant and meaningful to the design enrichment. A design review can be enjoyable, positive, and constructive. A good designer can facilitate such a review and make it an enjoyable and relevant process for its participants.

The Site Each site has its own unique characteristics. It is for this reason that design exists – established and normative principles as relate to building assembly and function, are applied to the unlimited variability of various site-specific situations. Rigour in design analysis in early stages of a project, ensures the site constraints are properly understood and design decisions based on these constraints are robust and reliable. The site may also be characterised as a figurative one, in which a site sits within a commercial, value-driven context, as well as a socio-political and cultural one. Design value can only be produced by understanding these various figurative contexts, and a skilled designer must be adept at dealing with both in conceptualising and communicating about a design project or opportunity.

Deliverables The designer’s only opportunity to demonstrate the quality, integration, and intention of a design solution, is through the outputs of an architectural process. Typically, these outputs are drawings (plan, section, elevation), and can also include hand sketches, massing and form analysis, diagrams and overlays, schedules and reports, example images, precedents, and analysis, conceptual and detail architectural renders, real time walk around environments, virtual reality walkthroughs and enriched and interrogable BIM models. For a designer, their most valuable resource is time. Therefore, a designer must carefully plan and execute the right combination of deliverables and outputs that relate to the relevant stage of development of the design and ensure that those outputs carry the right amount of information as are relevant to communicate to the project wider team at the time of their execution. Ensuring that these deliverables are executed expeditiously and skilfully, gives the best chance for the designer to gain traction with the team. As the design intent reaches consensus and agreement, the quality of the design output can be more fully explored, and there is nothing more beautiful that a set of skilfully and artfully executed architectural drawings. The quality and integration of the architectural drawing or output can have a profound effect in gaining the confidence of the wider project team and project stakeholders.