brief encounters: transposable knowledge within...

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: transposable knowledge withinarchitectural brief-forming

Harriet Harriss RIBA FRSA AA MA(RCA)Senior Lecturer/Architecture/ School of the Built Environment / Oxford Brookes

Transposable Knowledge: exemplary behaviours codified & made explicit

potential VALUE....beyond the profession

“Ironically it is at the most creative stage in the process that society expects architects to work for free and often to compete for commissions by the preparation of “free” designs.”

‘Does working for free devalue the profession?’ John DeatonPlan Magazine, 9 Nov 09

‘The one certain way to make a living in this world: to create value for your clients, and then keep some of it, the road to respect and reward follows the creation of value.”

‘Creating value is the road to reward.’ Paul MorrellBuilding Design, 22 May 2009

apply the knowledge within alternative discipline areas and sectors to generate new creative, social and commercial values

Exchange Value versus Value in use

Adam Smith 1723-1790

Exchange value

Services (in the plural) are

what products are not

Value chains

Value is embedded in objects

Value in use

Service (in the singular) is the

fundamental process through

which value is created

Value constellations

Value is co-created in dynamic exchange relationships

Goods-dominant logic Service-dominant logic

Adapted from Vargo and Lusch 2004; 2008; and Ramirez 1999

BRIEF FORMINGExchange value

Services (in the plural) are

what products are not

Value chains

Value is embedded in objects

Value in use

Service (in the singular) is the

fundamental process through

which value is created

Value constellations

Value is co-created in dynamic exchange relationships

Goods-dominant logic Service-dominant logic


BUILDINGS


“A good question is al-ways greater than the most brilliant answer .” Louis Kahn

service dominant logic:

the perils of goods dominant logic:

The research will not seek to define architectural knowledge per se or question how we acquire it but instead consider ....

The research will not seek to define architectural knowledge per se or question how we acquire it but instead consider ....

What our implicit or tacit expertise is AND how it could be re-engineered or applied to increase strategic capability?

“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair a house, a room in a house, a house in an environment in a city plan.”

Eliel Saarinen, Architect

..... an organisation, a professional body, an industry.....?

Eliel Saarinen - from cultlery to the decentralization pattern of Helsinki.....

Signifiers of desirable behaviours:

Transposition & application : Jet Engine to Washing machine

TRANSPOSING STRATEGIC THINKING into other applications


buildings...... but also business systems, social networks, knowledge capital, products, services, diagnostics, interactions, strategy......

Jonathan Hill The Institute of Illegal Architects (1996) Visual index of the transcient elements

knowledge transfer and adaptation


C’est ne pas un jet engine

Architectural behaviours: a series of cell mutations

distinctions in a modular program

distinctions in a modular programViolette Leduc (1816)

Brief forming: architects at their most creative

Practice based case study: King David’s school: ‘values and desires’ workshop with school governors

before the building....?

Architectural education?


Maths, geography, English, engineering/physics, poetry, Bacchellard, philosophy/sociology, dissertation writ-ing, Heidegger, Pallasma, law, ergonomics, human-centered frameworks, Legislation & policy, graphic design, rapid-prototyping, research,Holl, graphics, fashion, art, culture, validation, politics, economics, tectonics, in-novation, invention, tentacity…..

generalism or specialism?

what is it that we really do that no one else can do that has relevant and lasting social and commercial value?

Architect’s defining architecture?

business strategy (Porter, Mintzberg, Brandenberger)

organisational theory (Follet, McGregor)

systems analysis (Schrage, Mc Gann)

Educational theory (Kolb, Schon)

Cognitive/behavioural science (De Bono, Gardner)

Defining the DNA: Frank Gehry & Matt Fineout

“We proved we could do it, now we can think about how we want to do it.”

“Engineering, medicine, business, architecture are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent – not how things are but how they might be, in short – with design.”

Herbert Simon, Nobel Laureate in economics

Thinking in 3-dimensions: visualisation of strategy

Source: Hutchins, Edward (1996) ‘Cognition in the wild’

Source: Hutchins, Edward (1996) ‘Cognition in the wild’ visualisation of strategy: ‘persuasive artifacts

strategically acute brief formation and knowledge transfer

THE architecture-KILLER APP?

Workstage atrophy: the increasing formalisation of the brief forming process constraining how answers get asked and answered leading to ill-informed decision-making and ineffi-cient, unsustainable solutions.

This ‘design attitude’ ‘extends beyond default solutions to problems by creating new possibilities…and assumes that it is difficult to create a good alternative, but once you have de-veloped a truly great one, the decision about which alternative to select becomes trivial.” Boland & Collopy (2004) ‘Design Matters for management.

“If I knew how it was going to turn out I wouldn’t do it.’ Frank Gehry

CE FIN

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