Image: lumaxart | Flickr

Over the decades, architectural design methods have been intrinsically linked with new tools that architects use to turn their visions into realities. New tools like virtual computer visualization techniques and remote computing while on a construction site allow architects and designers to have a new way of not only “drawing/modeling” how a building should be assembled, but also to innovate new building materials and construction methods.

But using these tools to their fullest requires optimizing your design process to its fullest, both at the beginning of early programming stages all the way past bidding, negotiation and even well into construction stages. So, how do you know when to use what tools and for what reason? How do you know you are really leveraging them during your design process to streamline your efforts — lifting the quality of your design, the speed at which you design and lowering your final building cost?

Where Are Your Leveraging Points

In many ways, it can be said that you gain the most leverage at the very onset of your architectural design process. The earlier you are in your design process the more leverage you have to affect the overall design quality of your building project. As your design process continues the less leverage you have over design quality.

Conversely, as your design process continues into bidding stages, the more leverage you have over the overall cost of your building. So, in the beginning you get the most “bang for your buck” over design quality, and toward the end you get the most “bang for your buck” over design cost. You can say, leverage is all about getting both design “bang” and “buck”.

How to Leverage Your Design Process

Leverage is as much about maximizing good results as about preventing bad ones. The main idea is to get rid of that which holds back your design process the most, which in turn will maximize what does work in your design process. So, a big part of leveraging your design process is to fix Read more

Image: Ben Chau | Flickr

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

Image: Ardonik | Flickr

Different architects and architectural teams work in different ways. Their design processes vary not only within their own artistic styles but also with each project type that they embark upon.

So how you do you decide which design process is the best one for you? Are you wasting valuable time and money by working with the wrong or not quite right architectural design process? Should a design process be specified by each designer or be carried throughout your entire firm? Or should it be based on your building-type? Your client preferences? Or some other parameter?

Whatever the case you should always design consciously, being well-aware of what your design process is, and how its limitations and capabilities can constrain or empower your design abilities. For starters, here is a simple run-through and illustration of common design process styles. Take a look at this slideshow, just to get you thinking:

Fix What Doesn’t Work, So You Can Amplify on What Does

When you experience a problem in your design process, your business will subsequently experience some negative symptoms. Yes, that is bad news because these symptoms compound and ripple through all aspects of your work. However, these same symptoms can be good because when you pinpoint them, they serve as major clues leading you to the biggest constraints (or problems) in your architectural design process and/or business.

Did you know that your biggest strengths are tied to your Read more

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When designing, do you begin with a preconceived idea of what your final design will look and feel like? Do you gain inspiration and insight from things that surround you, like nature or someone else’s design? Or do you start a design not knowing what your own creative process will give birth to? In other words ——

As you design do you work toward an “end vision” or do you take on a more “experimental” design approach where you test design outcomes? Do you predominantly do one of these, or both?

These are interesting and important questions to ask yourself, whether you are a seasoned architect or are just beginning your journey as an architectural designer — particularly because as new technologies and design paradigm shifts present themselves, you should want to be well equipped to engage in both at the right times and in the right ways during your design efforts.

New Design Technology Tools Can Enhance Your Design Process

Yes, you can crunch through various design schemes and options at speeds limited by the quickness of your design abilities and your computer technologies, but as an architect it is your responsibility to become the best critic of your own work, especially as new Read more