This has often resulted in solutions that require no capital expenditure at all, because we find different ways of meeting the requirements..
Available to purchase at.Design to Value in the Built Realm..The complexity of architecture, engineering and building technologies has increased exponentially in recent decades, distorting how buildings are designed, constructed and even conceived.
In parallel, architecture has become acutely, myopically object-oriented, celebrating the product rather than the process.In unison, these routes have led the discipline into a service-centered approach, one that seeks to hastily resolve problems rather than solve them holistically, carefully and analytically.. What if we look past the hospital building and see the journeys of a thousand patients, past the factory and reflect on the launch of a lifesaving treatment, past the data centre and muse upon the millions of connected people.. Design to Value explores just that.. Much design practice has reacted to complexity through specialisation to make it feel more ‘manageable’ – fracturing the building process by elevating expertise.Today, rarely does an architect oversee the entire building process, from analysis to aesthetics, engineering to construction.
Yet architects have a unique capacity to critically understand and engage with the myriad stakeholders involved in a design process – and those who will ultimately use building and be affected by its presence.By fracturing the design process, traditional approaches to design and construction make room for ballooned budgets (being over budget is a built-in assumption at this point), rushed decision making, sacrificed ethics and injurious miscommunication and lack of trust.
Design to Value embraces complexity, acknowledging the complementary nature of ‘value drivers’: the financial, aesthetic, socio-environmental and processual.
Rather than breaking down the design process into discrete, rigid steps, Design to Value seeks nuance and the space for innovation in the layers of each project.How could every building be carbon neutral, how could we replace every coal and gas power station?
These ideas are part of leadership but I believe leadership needs to go further than influence.The ambition needs to link the influence with the capability and energy to deliver..
When my son was in Junior school as part of a project, we did a historic walk around my hometown, Newbury.I remember vividly reading about a workshop, just behind the Methodist Church, which during the Second World War was used to make components for the eponymous Spitfire.
(Editor: Basic Razors)