Often in architectural design (and as with any business) there is a wide variety of modeling, testing, and planning to ensure that the final project (or product) will make its way into the real world with great success. As architects, I know that there are a wide variety of things we do to help us visualize our built environments for clients — where we pull from our own internal talents and resources, combine them with the latest know-how and efforts of our design team and consultants, and then proceed to get them accepted by all kinds of review boards, committees and so on. But — have you ever done a quality control design test of your building after it’s built? If so, how do you do it? And what do you do with the results?

Do you ever ask yourself — How much testing and surveying do we really do as architects once our building is built? What do we do after it is constructed? Do we merely check in on it in a general manner and use it for marketing opportunities?… Or, do we examine what our design team has created?

I say all of this because I think it is important to have a relationship and connection with your designed buildings after they are built. Wouldn’t it be nice to be a “fly on a wall” so you could get a sneak peak at exactly how your building occupants use your spaces, interact with them, behave within them and so on?

Why Running a Design Test Is so Important, And How You Can Start to Do It

Of course, if something about your building really fails, I am pretty sure you hear about it in no time flat. However, there are ways for you take the time to really observe the nuances to what you have built for your occupants. For instance, it is important to really listen and watch the way the people within your buildings use your designs. You will immediately begin to see the things that work and the things that do not, but even more amazingly your design test observations will lead to realizations and then into Read more

If by chance you watched the 2010 Academy Awards you may have noticed that the “Animated Short” category was won by the film called Logorama, directed by the French animation collective H5. This interesting film, like so many others, has actually proven to be a bit controversial. But I do think one thing remains clear — so many of our environments are “branded” in many ways and at many levels.

In Logorama, the entire animated environment is made up of logos, brands and slogans to depict an entire world with much of the complexity of ours. To give you a better idea of what I’m talking about…the following is a short trailer to give you a quick glimpse at the world of branding which Logorama creates:

What Logorama Will Help You to Ask Yourself

From an architectural point of view, this animated short film brings up some old and new questions regarding architecture, “signage” and branding — whether it be stylistic branding or more additive branding. For instance, how might your building be perceived, after all of the hard work you put into designing it, when a well-known “brand” it added to your building by way of signage, corporate cultural identity or even by its proximity to another built form with a strong “branded” identity?

The latter are some interesting questions, but first, you may need to ask this — Is branding and architecture really a bad combination? I mean, to some extent everything might be “branded” — as if branding is inherently woven into all designs in our built environment. Is perhaps “branding” something that we humans do as we perceive Read more

Throughout your architectural design process it is often the case that you need different tools at different points in time as you design. While some tools help you to visualize what goes on during your personalized architecture process, others help you to visualize what will go on within your final building design. So, what happens when these two worlds start to merge? Will your design visualizations be as immersive as the actual methods you use to communicate your designs to clients and other team members?

At different phases during your design process you explore different things. You engage in different levels of refinement and you solve an array of problems and questions that all have project-wide consequences and effects. You probably use a combination of both digital media information visualizations and 3D modeling methods. In fact, many architects today are delving into 4D information modeling techniques involving BIM leading-edge tools.

Whatever the case, it is paramount that your digital media design tools help to streamline your own architecture process. And a key to this is to make sure these tools are intuitive and promote creative thinking.

Digital Media Tools that Dig into the Minds of Your Occupants

Design project tools that reduce redundancy, error and cost during your architectural design process can go a long way toward increasing the quality and reducing the cost of your building — while also increasing the actual speed with which you can design. But there are a few things that come to mind when questioning how these tools can evolve, to get even better.

What if your architectural design tool could also help you extract Read more

Yes, findings stemming from the worlds of science and technology are painting a new era that we are already beginning.

When cutting-edge paradigm-shifts occur, like new perspectives on nature that make methods like Biomimicry and BioDigital Architecture possible, I still wonder how these, combined with other factors like culture, globalization, personal preferences, lifestyle trends and geographic land characteristics will impact what we, as architectural visionaries, paint for the future.

Well, the future is happening now and as different cultures help to mold, embrace and even reject what design visionaries bring forward, I find it fascinating to uncover how Read more

The notion of having dispositions, or records, that your brain keeps as it experiences architecture is quite an interesting thought. If every time your occupant has an architecture experience that can later be rewritten, then your role as an architect is to design for more than a real-time experience. You must also design for your occupants by incorporating what your architecture will say to them — what they will store in their memory, and how that memory will influence their future experiences.

Here is a quote discussing such dispositions from an article entitled, Science Studies How Architecture Affects the Brain:

“Architectural experience is recorded in what Antonio Damasio calls “dispositions” — records in our brain of a combination of sensory inputs, memories, emotions and any related muscle memories. Just below the surface of consciousness these dispositions wait for the next experience with which they can be paired. For example, each time we enter the office in which we work we are recalling a dispositional record of our last visit — including any emotional experiences we may have had. When we leave our office at the end of the day, our brain creates a new dispositional record that updates the one we came with that morning.”

The key word here is “update”. Previous architecture experiences impact the current, and the current will influence those which have not yet happened. Does this mean that you should design spaces that are less predictable? Or spaces where repetition and routine abound?

As an architect, it might be difficult to make a Read more

What will turn your architecture from merely being a place that people go to, into a place that people feel attached to — a space where they have made a connection and one that is meaningful? Many theories exist and contribute to what can make a place…well, more than a “place”.

In reading the article entitled What makes neighborhood different from home and city? Effects of place scale on place attachment, I found that this study determined that scale plays a large role when it comes to predicting and creating place attachment for those that experience it. So, this leads me to consider this notion of scale and its meaning for you, as an architect, when it comes to designing architectural spaces that attract — versus just standing to exist.

My personal notion about “spaces of attachment” also brings up the aspects of socialization. I deem that providing a community place within your architectural designs is important. The way in which your occupants interact not only Read more

How do you, as an architect, get to the bottom of what your occupants really need and want? Do you do this mostly be talking with them? Presenting different architectural design schemes to see which one they like best? Or do you study their behavior to understand what moves them with regard to the things that cannot be expressed by mere words?

I recently came across this quote that I thought might be an interesting place to begin a discussion about environmental psychology for architects:

“Research shows that only 5% of what the average person thinks can be expressed verbally. […] The other 95% is hidden deep within the subconscious.”

– Click here to read the article.

If the above statistic is true, then how do you as a designer wrap your head around the other 95% underlying what your occupants really want? Also, how can you increase the chances of creating a design that will, in fact, work — adding behavioral, emotional and intellectual response to what goes into making an architecture work functionally successful?

Five Techniques to Leverage Your Architectural Design Efforts

The following are five tips to help you, as an architect, incorporate key architectural psychology design principles while you design. These can be great starting points to shift your mindset — and can especially be coupled with your programming efforts: Read more

As Communication Technology Moves Ahead…

How will your building be used over time? I’m sure you already take into account how certain materials will look as they are continuously exposed to sunlight or are worn down by occupant use. But do you ever seriously consider how, when and why your building will need a “facelift” during its lifespan? Well, today there are a multitude of factors that can spark the need for such change — and a major one is communication technology.

Communication technology is spreading and evolving at a faster and faster pace — particularly noticeable in office buildings. The nature of the way employees communicate is having radical effects on the way buildings work. In fact, the cultures behind many architectural institution-types are morphing because of changes in communication — and their occupants certainly feel the differences.

With new technologies, people are able to Read more

Will Your Design Vision Work?

So often, as a designer, you must think about how your design vision will impact your occupants — planning for a not-to-distant future where your vision will be realized and used. For this, you may rely heavily on your own experience of what you think works and what does not, and you may probe into your occupant’s life to understand their likes, dislikes and so on.

Still, there is so much left to simply “hoping” you made the right design decisions for your occupant; and it is time that will tell the success or failure of your built work. Yet, there are new and arising fields that can and will help your architectural design process, as you strive to make informed and talented decisions with your building designs — helping you to stand apart from the rest.

These fields include neuroscience, biomimicry and nanotechnology.

Sharpen Your Innovative Edge

Eventually, new findings in neuroscience will meet head on with other rising fields like nanotechnology and biomimicry, and this meeting will certainly yield some new techniques for you, as an architect, to greatly expand upon (and in some cases completely revamp) what goes into your building design stages.

As it is, architects already must “predict” the future to some extent, but the best way to increase your probability of creating a successful design that works well is to learn more about Read more

Your architectural design reverberates.

Yes, architecture maintains walls made up of materials and even wayfinding systems that convey important information; but, the beauty and function that radiates from an incredible architectural work into the soul of those that experience it is often the culmination of seemingly invisible effects exuded by that designed “place”.

Pay much attention to the “invisible” and “intangible” effects which your designs radiate, as these things can Read more