Comprehensive and Integrative Architectural Design

Julius Chiavaroli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000569278
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture Design

Comprehensive and Integrative Architectural Design addresses integrative design – design that bridges the gap between architectural design and architectural technology. With its roots in sustainability, and with the universal acceptance of data driven design, it is widely acknowledged that integrative design completed in a comprehensive way is the process that will lead to a more sustainable and responsible built environment.

Organized in order of the design process itself—pre-design, schematic design, and design development—this title demonstrates and instructs how design and technology are integrated. Another important feature of the text is how it clarifies the different ways in which the collateral organizations in architecture approach the discipline. This textbook brings together all the variations of terminology and the perspective of each organization in support of creating a comprehensive and integrative architectural design.

Comprehensive and Integrative Architectural Design provides architecture students and faculty a definitive resource to assist them in executing an integrative solution to an architectural project. There are literally thousands of decisions that must be made when designing a building, from pre-design to schematic design to design development. With over 150 color illustrations, this text provides a framework for both instructors and students.

1 PROGRAMMING & ANALYSIS (PRE-DESIGN)

What's the purpose?

The pre-design analysis defines the scope and parameters of the project through the eyes of the client and all the users. It provides the necessary data the designer needs to execute a schematic design.

Who is it for?

The primary beneficiaries of pre-design documents are the designers themselves as well as the client. In practice, the transition between pre-design and schematic design phases is a checkpoint. The client approves the work and pays that portion of the design fee at that time.

How is it conducted?

The amount of pre-design work is highly variable depending on the scope of the project. This is not to be confused with the scale of a project because large but simple projects might require less pre-design work than smaller but more complex projects.

Even in moderately complex projects, pre-design work usually benefits from a considerable amount of teamwork. This is true in practice as well as in architecture school.

Common Mistakes

Ignoring the importance of the phase.

Some students see the pre-design analysis as a school exercise that limits their design aspirations. It takes time to appreciate that an architect’s job is to primarily satisfy client needs, not personal needs. Architects must also satisfy greater societal directives.

While architecture school usually encourages very creative thinking and often disregards budget, the amount of design freedom in practice is contained within the boundaries set during the pre-design phase.

Chapter Objective

Given an architectural design project, conduct a pre-design analysis that culminates in an architectural program that fully informs the design.

Overview

The Programming & Analysis phase of a project is the first major step in solving a design problem. Both the AIA name for this phase (pre-design) and the NCARB name (programming & analysis) are important. Pre-design is the overall activity, but the main result of this phase is an architectural program, and it is achieved by a thorough analysis.

This phase is the necessary foundation for the planning and design phase. Tire design team analyzes available data and creates a program that will inform the design. Like a computer program, an architectural program is, in a sense, a set of instructions for the designer to follow to solve the given design problem. It needs to contain all the data the designer needs to commence the design process.

How important is the program? Albert Einstein stated that if he only had an hour to spend on solving a problem he would spend 55 minutes studying it and 5 minutes solving it. Since few of us have Einsteins intellect we need to spend more time on the solution. However, the point is made that a good solution hinges on understanding the problem.

Programming

The most basic way to understand a program is to say that it needs to establish quantitative and qualitative requirements. The quantitative portion of the program involves identifying space needs; sizes, adjacencies, and form and light requirements. When many speak of programs, this is the portion that they often focus on, sometimes to the exclusion of the qualitative portion. For a financial institution headquarters, for example, the list would include a specific number and sizes of offices, meeting rooms, open support staff areas, and service needs; bathrooms, storage, stairways, and kitchenettes. A childrens museum would have several exhibit rooms, perhaps classrooms or activity rooms, administrative offices, and utility rooms as well.

Qualitative refers to the non-measurable needs that the client requests. The client of the financial institution noted above may want a design solution that exhibits “strength” and “stability” On the other hand, the childrens museum would want to exhibit “playfulness” and “fun.” Other characteristics may include sustainability, affordability, or lowmaintenance materials. Like qualitative research, these characteristics can only be quantified indirectly. Sustainability for example could be defined as earning LEED certification or meeting Passivhaus standards.

But a program is not based solely on client needs. It also needs to address how the client and particularly the architect must respond to existing conditions of varying types. The illustration below demonstrates this concept. The farther one moves out from the physical space needs the more difficult it is to quantify given the complexity of the two outer realms, site, and greater context.

To continue our example, after documenting space needs and character, the financial institution along with the architect need to determine how the solution will respond to its “place” in the world; the site, the surrounding community, its region, and even in the world. Some responses are more discrete than others. Environmental regulations are very direct, but how does a financial institution respond to a national goal to reduce - reuse recycle? It may not be legally required, but a corporation might commit to the sustainability movement by requiring all new construction to achieve LEED certification.

The greater context is very broad, ranging from very exacting legal requirements to larger societal concerns. Society has evolved such that many legal requirements are in place and must be met. There are zoning codes, building codes, historic preservation requirements, material standards, and so forth. An architect is well versed in the more discrete ones, it is the more obscure ones that are difficult to capture for a program. How does the financial institution respond to the culture it serves with its building design? Will the design contribute to the overall well-being of the immediate and larger community?

The graphic model presented above portrays components of a program in a nesting form. Each nest represents a larger scale and an area more difficult to quantify because it requires the analysis of complex, interrelated data. This approach resembles Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that starts with physical human needs and ends with selfactualization - achieving one’s maximum potential. What better goal for a project than for it to achieve its maximum potential at many levels.

However, a project financed with private money might not value or be able to afford an environmental and/or social design response, thus the program would not contain any mention of them. On the other hand, many civic projects, i.e. those built with public funds, would almost certainly consider these more complex elements. And what about the architect’s need to be creative? Some projects allow for a great deal of creativity, while others may only offer little more than the ability to make a small splash.

Contrary to what many beginning architecture students may think, designs are created to satisfy client needs, not personal ones...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Programming & Analysis
• 2 Project Planning & Design
• 3 Project Development & Documentation: Overview
• 4 Construction & Evaluation
• 5 Summary and Conclusions
• Index