The design of each assembly and junction can be pre-tested and individually certified to Passivhaus standards before being included within any design.
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.
Keeping a project and all its elements together is, however, complex – but not complicated.The outcome, the delivered value is the driver, not the process.. As the impacts of global warming and destruction of the natural world become clearer to us all, we should not hide away, or simply feel guilt, or try to push it away and dismiss it.
We should use our energies to connect, collaborate, innovate.If we are truly the dominant species we should and need to demonstrate the fact, through leadership and adaptation of what we do as individuals, but more importantly how we can come together to find expansive solutions to the problems we have caused..
In the edited words from a memorable speech: -.We shall go on to the end,.
(Editor: Lightweight Ovens)