Intention & Design: The Life and Practice of an Architect

We apply integrated design thinking using BIM Building Information Modeling to pre-emptively ensure every aspect of the building is fully co-ordinated at design stage rather than left to resolve on site. For our clients this ensures a smooth process, and enables us to achieve buildings of a higher quality that cost less to build, and subsequently cost significantly less in use for energy consumption and maintenance. For the contractors we collaborate with, or who employ us directly, our buildings are more straightforward and economic to build, because we understand construction, create simple robust detailing, offer responsive support, and provide timely, clear and comprehensive information.

For the partners we provide specialist consultancy advice to, we bring the benefit of unrivalled expertise in innovation and fresh thinking, underpinned by the practical experience of delivering successful sustainable projects over 30 years. Both pupils and staff felt that the environment is much calmer, and this has really affected discipline. The quality of light and air has transformed the space and improved alertness. We have seen an immediate payback in terms of concentration, progress and attainment. Without a doubt, the imagination and commitment that Architype bring to the delivery table is outstanding.

With their strong collaborative ethos of partnership working, they have helped us design out waste and deliver exceptional value to our clients, within tight programme and budget constraints. Throughout the design process Architype really listened to us. The team was particularly good at understanding the requirements and ideas of different stakeholders, adding their own experience and knowledge and turning it into workable concepts. They interpreted our requirements within a really innovative scheme to give us the hospice our patients and their families deserve.

We aim to achieve tangible economic and environmental benefits to our clients, contractors, buildings users, and society. Every element of design matters to us. Every detail of a building. Every piece of a drawing package. Every line of data in a schedule. Instead of seeing design as a linear process in a series of separate projects, for Architype it is an integrated and iterative process across all projects, underpinned by constant research and innovation, both within our practice and across our wider collaborations with clients, contractors and consultants:.

At Architype, we care about how people find the experience of occupying and using our buildings, and we want to ensure our buildings actually perform as they should. It is an endemic problem in the building industry that designers and contractors have no ongoing interest in building performance beyond dealing with contractual defects, which leaves users to cope with the impact of any issues.

We therefore stay in touch after completion — offering users guidance and support to enable them to use the building effectively and efficiently. This takes the form of simple to follow user guides, and regular visits to gain feedback, and to provide training and advice. We also undertake performance monitoring, of temperature, humidity and air quality, and of energy and water consumption, in order to check if the building is performing as it should.

Every building is a one-off bespoke prototype, and there will inevitably be some teething problems.

Architecture, Philosophy of | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

We do not claim that our buildings will be perfect, but by using the combination of user feedback and direct monitoring, we aim to identify and then troubleshoot any minor problems that may arise quickly and economically. We apply the experience and knowledge gained by monitoring our previous buildings to improve the design and performance of our future buildings. We are committed to improving our practice through this continuous improvement cycle, so that by we will be able to offer our clients a guarantee of the performance on our buildings. We offer a wide range of services, and can adapt the scope to suit each project and client.

We have worked with Architype for the past few years on several different projects. They fuse sustainable design with a strong awareness of entrepreneurial needs, which is vital in our business. They are always excellent at delivering thoughtful, creative designs in the desired time frames. We work for a wide range of clients including national government, public bodies, local authorities, commercial companies, contractors, charities, educational bodies, health trusts, community groups, voluntary organisations, private entities and individuals.

Irrespective of the nature or scale of the client, we provide the same approachable, responsive and professional service. Since we have designed over buildings and provided specialist consultancy to many organisations. Whilst the majority of our work has been in the education and housing sectors, we are successfully delivering a wide range and type of projects.

Introduction

We collaborate with a wide range of expert partners in the design and delivery of our projects, to enable us to achieve the high standards to which we aspire. We engage with a broad team of consultants who share our ethos and understand our approach, including: We are employed by a wide range of contractors to work directly for them on design and building projects, or to provide specialist consultancy advice, including many well known regional and national companies including Kier Construction, Lend Lease, Morgan Sindall, Bouygues, Osborne, Speller Metcalfe, and Thomas Vale Construction, Rooff, Neilcott, Balfour Beatty and Willmott Dixon.

We collaborate with a number of leading universities and research organisations on research projects and post occupancy building performance monitoring, including Oxford Brookes and Coventry Universities, the University of East Anglia, the Adapt Group, BRE, and Wood Knowledge Wales. Kier Construction's experience of working with Architype is second to none. The information they provide is of the highest quality, their detailing is practical and effective, and their technical understanding of construction is exemplary. Most significantly they are collaborative in approach, proactively engaging with us and our sub-contractors to seek the most robust and economic solutions that will deliver the best value for the client.

We challenge the conventional view that sustainable design is boring, complex and expensive. Instead, we deliver beautiful and elegant buildings that are economic to build and easy to use. Every single building we do has sustainability integrated into it from the very earliest concepts, through design, and into construction. We understand the dynamic balance of building, site, climate, and social context, and capture the positive climatic conditions of daylight, ventilation, and passive solar gain. Every Architype design is rigorously assessed to maximise building performance through orientation, building fabric, materials, services strategy, and simple, elegant detailing.

The impact of every building is minimised over its whole life cycle, by radically reducing the energy consumed and carbon emitted during construction and in use, and by carefully specifying robust, renewable and natural materials. We monitor how our buildings perform in occupation through our post occupancy research and evaluation, staying with a project to ensure the building users know how to operate it for optimum performance, and to apply the lessons we have learned to improve our future designs.

The very first winner of the Cut the Carbon award blew the judges away. Architype provided page after page of undeniable evidence that this architect lives and breathes energy efficiency — and has done for some time. The firm has spent the last 26 years, long before low-carbon buildings were mainstream, using designs, techniques and materials to reduce embodied energy and carbon.

The judges congratulated Architype and agreed that, after 26 years of exceptional sustainable building, with plenty more around the corner, the Cut the Carbon award has gone to a very worthy winner indeed. Passivhaus is a quality assurance system backed by a rigorous certification process. Its value rests on the assurance that its performance claims are both credible and reflect a genuine benefit to both the user and the environment, including:.

Architype has adopted Passivhaus as our core approach because it is based on sound building physics, and unlike any other building standard, it has proved its accuracy and performance over a 20 year period of monitoring in a range of building types across Europe. Passivhaus bridges the all too common performance gap between prediction and reality in the performance of buildings.

Design & Theory Concepts

Structures have always been based on programs: In a way, archaeologists excavate buildings to try to determine their programs. Today, we define architectural programming as the research and decision-making process that identifies the scope of work to be designed. Synonyms include "facility programming," "functional and operational requirements," and "scoping. Their work was documented in Problem Seeking , the text that guided many architects and clients who sought to identify the scope of a design problem prior to beginning the design, which is intended to solve the problem.

In the s and s, some architectural schools began to drop architectural programming from their curricula.

• The Process of Design.
• Africa: Land of Savagery & Violence;
• Life as an Architect: Struggles, Joys, & Daily Life | Theatre Solutions Inc..
• Marked.
• An encyclopedia of philosophy articles written by professional philosophers..

The emphasis of the Post-Modern and Deconstruction agendas was instead on form-making. Programming and its attention to the users of buildings was not a priority. Now, several generations of architects have little familiarity with architectural programming and the advantages it offers:.

The most cost-effective time to make changes is during programming. This phase of a project is the best time for interested parties to influence the outcome of a project. The "whole building" design approach is intended "to create a successful high-performance building. People involved in the building design should interact closely throughout the design process.

The owner, building occupants, and operation and maintenance personnel should be involved to contribute their understanding of how the building and its systems will work for them once they occupy it. The fundamental challenge of "whole building" design is to understand that all building systems are interdependent. According to standard AIA agreements, programming is the responsibility of the owner. However, the owner's programmatic direction can vary from vague to very specific. In some cases, the owner does not have the expertise to develop the program and must use the services of a programming consultant.

Most programming consultants are either architects or have architectural training, but others have become skilled through experience. Many architects perform programming as an additional service to their standard contracts. Many building type consultants laboratory, health care, theater, etc. Programming may happen for different purposes and may impact the level of detail of investigation and deliverables. For instance, programming at the master planning level is more strategic in nature—providing information to building owners to make decisions regarding current and projected space needs and rough budgeting for implementation.

Programming at the individual project level provides specific, detailed information to guide building design. The following discussion is intended to provide a clear process for conducting the research and decision-making that defines the scope of work for the design effort. It is imperative that the major decision-maker—the client-owner—allows participation of all of the stakeholders, or the client-users, who are affected by the design.

Experience has shown that client-users' involvement in the programming process results in designs that can be optimized more efficiently. Design programming should involve the parties that are affected by the design solution. Prior to the beginning of the process of programming a project, the programmer and the client-owner develop a list of the stakeholders to be involved. One organizational method is to form a Project Programming Committee with representatives from the stakeholder groups.

Lines of communication must be established to determine how and when meetings will be called, what the agenda will be, how contacts will be made, and how records of the meetings will be kept. The authority of the committee must be made clear. In the example above, the committee's authority will be to make recommendations to the college authorities. Within that framework, the committee must decide how it will make decisions as a committee by consensus? Many different programming formats incorporate the same essential elements.

In all cases, the design programming fits within a larger context of planning efforts which can also be programmed. For design programming for a building, we propose a six-step process as follows:. This step is necessary if the programmer is working on a project type for the first time. The programmer should become familiar with some of the following relevant information:. Working with the committee, the programmer solicits and suggests broad goal statements that will guide the remainder of the programming process. Each of the following categories of goals should be addressed:.

Based upon the goals, the categories of relevant information can be determined and researched. Programmatic strategies suggest a way to accomplish the goals given what one now knows about the opportunities and constraints. A familiar example of a programmatic strategy is the relationship or "bubble" diagram.

These diagrams indicate what functions should be near each other in order for the project to function smoothly. Relationship diagrams can also indicate the desired circulation connections between spaces, what spaces require security or audio privacy, or other aspects of special relationships. Other types of strategies recur in programs for many different types of projects.

Some examples of common categories of programmatic strategies include:. Ideally, each of the goals and objectives identified in Step 2 will have some sort of strategy for addressing that goal.