BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: transposable knowledge withinarchitectural brief-forming
Harriet Harriss RIBA FRSA AA MA(RCA)Senior Lecturer/Architecture/ School of the Built Environment / Oxford Brookes
“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
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
Adapted from Vargo and Lusch 2004; 2008; and Ramirez 1999
BUILDINGS
Adapted from Vargo and Lusch 2004; 2008; and Ramirez 1999
“A good question is al-ways greater than the most brilliant answer .” Louis Kahn
service 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
Signifiers of desirable behaviours:
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
Brief forming: architects at their most creative
Practice based case study: King David’s school: ‘values and desires’ workshop with school governors
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…..
what is it that we really do that no one else can do that has relevant and lasting social and commercial value?
business strategy (Porter, Mintzberg, Brandenberger)
organisational theory (Follet, McGregor)
systems analysis (Schrage, Mc Gann)
Educational theory (Kolb, Schon)
Cognitive/behavioural science (De Bono, Gardner)
“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
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.