Process

The best design process involves all stakeholders or ultimate end-users of the project. A good architect is in this way akin to a midwife – with experience and skill, the architect can coach the client through the entire design process and myriad decisions, with clarity and always with the clients best interest in mind. Husbands and wives, partners and everyone involved should be included in contributing their ideas to the process, and in this way, the end result is less a statement by a solitary ego (the architect’s), but rather an expression of everyone’s best ideas, as drawn out in the process by the skilled design facilitator. The happiest clients are always those who feel like they were given something even better than what they could have expected – which is a function of listening, and having a breadth of knowledge of materials and systems that can easily meet the stated project goals on time and on budget.

 

Preliminary and Schematic Phases for a Sample Project Graphically Described Below:

 

Of course, all great architecture is a clear expression of the needs of the project, a thoughtful integration with the site, a sensible use of materials, and an intelligent integration of every aspect of the design, from the structural system to the building envelope, to the landscape design – but the hardest part of the design and construction process is often the maintenance of clear communication – of a careful listening to the client’s wishes – and a skillful execution of these into a design. In the process, with Building Information Modelling, a complete virtual building is created that allows the client to see exactly what is being proposed. In this way, the esoteric language of the architect (drawings), gives way to fluid, live, fly-throughs in real time of every space (interior and exterior) of the proposed building, that the client and builder can easily comprehend and quite literally ‘get inside of’.

The design process passes through four basic phases, Preliminary Design, Schematic Design, Design Development and Construction Documentation. Additional phases such as Construction Management or Contract Administration are also common.

1. Preliminary Design – Getting all information necessary to get started, a site survey, soils reports, zoning research, and a design contract, early program sketches may take place here.
2. Schematic Design – the program develops and the client starts to see models, sketches, diagrams and other media that start to communicate the function and form of the buildings
3. Design Development – The building can still undergo many significant design changes in this process, but the best forms and massing are selected and structure and systems start to take shape here
4. Construction Documents – the building starts to take a hard form here, crystallizing as it were into something that can be executed in construction

At the end of this process, building permits are issued, drawings are tendered to contractors, and a bid to build for a defined price are presented to the client.

For a set of images in a project that describes the Design Development Phase – please click the link to this project!