Words before lines
Good ownership starts with a sussinct vision for the project. It may be may be simple or elaborate, but it needs to send a clear message to the Design Team. The project vision is supported by a thorough inventory of needs, wants, hopes and dreams: the program.
It is never easy to describe the 'being' of a project. In our design role, we too often receive programs that are filled to the rim with specifications of items that should not matter until much later, like the color of the arrows in the parking garage. And many times, a clear statement about the objectives, the motivation or even the ideas is either forgotten, or not getting beyond state-of-the-art and world-class. Such programs, however precise they may appear, leave architects with guessing the guts of the project. Few will dare to steer clear of paint-by-number designs - a risky undertaking.
There are two main reasons for the progression of these tick-box programs. Clients are often insecure or afraid of the huge complexity level and high costs of these projects. Most clients have never developed an architectural project before, and are unfamiliar with the design process.
On the other hand there is the progression of design-and-build and ppp-wrapped projects, where the client 'buys' a finished concert hall, theater or museum complex. The common element is the realization that there is only one chance to get it right. At the surface, turn-key bids may have reason to predefine every bolt before they are designed. It creates the sense of getting what was paid for. But the risk of describing an unbuildable project, or worse, a boring one, are great. Moreover, there is no empirical or statistical evidence that these projects encounter fewer problems.
We have a different take.
When issuing a program for a design competition, we want to be sure that it invites architects and designers to respond with wit.
A big part of our role is to explain the design process and the roles of the Design Team, the program and the budget. Our involvement often includes a base analyses of site conditions (if a site exists) and a study of design solutions, which are useful for the program discussion with the client, and which may also become examples in the brief.
We make an inventory of the needs of the users and other stakeholders, and guide them at conceptual and technical levels to a point where the program starts to write itself. This concerns the formulation of the encompassing project vision, and the definition of the scenograpic functionalities and qualities.
Just like in our design work, we aim for project proposals that go beyond the obvious in a meaningful way. We are convinced that the quality of the architectural interpretation of the program depends on the clarity of the ideas at conceptual, architectural, organizational and technical levels.
A well-written project brief should become a document that fully respects the genuine desires of the client, but that at the same time is a heartfelt invitation for competing teams to translate and transform words into lines that fully express their intellectal approach and design style.
