Begin with Discovery
This Article apeared in the September 2020 Committee on the Environment Newsletter
In 2019, the AIA adopted the COTE measures as the 10 principles of the AIA Framework for Design Excellence. We’ve been exploring the principles in a series of posts. We asked Corey Squire to share his thoughts about Measure 10: Design for Discovery, which reads:
Every project presents a unique opportunity to apply lessons learned from previous projects and gather information to refine the design process. How can the design process foster a long-term relationship between designers, users, and operators to ensure design intentions are realized and the building project performance can improve over time? How are performance data and experiential stories shared, even if the findings fall short of the vision? What strategies promote a sense of discovery and delight?
The last principle of the Framework for Design Excellence is Principle 10: Design for Discovery. Focusing on an ongoing accumulation of knowledge, Design for Discovery ensures that the profession continues to advance, producing better and better buildings over time. Though the order of the principles is not meant to denote a chronology, Discovery is often thought of as something that happens after a design is complete. To conduct a post-occupancy analysis, we revisit a completed project to see how it all turned out. Though the goal is to collect insights that will inform future work, the Discovery is often practiced as a backward-looking exercise.
As important as it is to understand the outcomes of design decisions after the fact, the real value of this principle is when a project begins design with a process of discovery. In most professional fields, including science, medicine, and law, an inquiry will begin with a literature review. This allows decisions to be informed by the experience of others who faced similar decisions in the past. Unlike a precedent study which only shows what was done, a literature review also reveals the outcome and consequences of those decisions. Absent this process, we’d repeat mistakes perpetually and new impactful ideas would have a much harder time gaining prominence. Beginning with discovery provides the context necessary for evidence-based design.
We can imagine the state of medicine if doctors knew what treatments had been administered, but not how they performed, or the state of law if lawyers knew the argument that had been attempted, but not how the case was decided. This has been the recent state of sustainability in architecture. Architecture has not had a strong culture of post-occupancy and has yet to generate a “literature” of the outcomes that could be reviewed, but what we have in place of casebooks or medical journals are buildings--lots and lots of buildings.
Starting a design process with discovery means seeking out the buildings that have faced similar challenges, whose designers faced similar decisions, and visiting them to see the results of those choices. There is a literal city of knowledge surrounding us at all times and the architecture profession could reap real benefits by engaging existing buildings during the design process.
This idea is even more powerful at the level of the firm. With mounting crises and an increasing desire for climate action from the architecture profession, firms everywhere are looking to develop skills and expertise around sustainability. Often, these firms begin by jumping into energy modeling. While obviously valuable when used in the right context, energy modeling is a poor debut into the world of sustainable design. The real opportunity is to start with discovery. Firms are sitting on a wealth of untapped knowledge in their own completed projects. Before attempting to simulate the energy performance of a new building, teams should start by understanding the energy performance of a previously completed project. Make an effort to study the entire portfolio. This can be as easy as calling up a former client and asking how the project is doing, taking a look at a year or two of energy bills, or visiting a building with a critical eye.
Many firms have little knowledge of their projects in action and because of this, there is often a surprisingly weak correlation between how a firm speaks about its work and the actual performance of its portfolio. When firms begin their sustainability efforts with discovery, some will be pleasantly surprised at how well the projects are performing. Others may find that many of their go-to solutions require rethinking. Progress in architecture is when discovery reveals that our intuitions are at odds with reality and we choose to update our intuitions to align with the outcomes we want to achieve.
I began my architecture career with discovery. On the first day of work at my first job out of school, I read electrical meters. At least one day a week for the following year, I was out in the field, reading meters, measuring daylight, or asking people for their thoughts on the spaces they occupied. This experience led me to be curious about the outcomes of any design decision. When choosing a window spec or laying out a floor plan, I think about the electrical meter that will be turning, faster or slower, some years from now, based on the decision I make today.
You can find more stories in this series here: Measure 1: Design for Integration (by Kira Gould, Allied AIA); Measure 2: Design for Equitable Community (by Gould); Measure 3: Design for Ecology (by Gould); Measure 4: Design for Water (by Julie Hiromoto, AIA); Measure 5: Design for Economy (by Billie Tsien, AIA); Measure 6: Design for Energy (by Kjell Anderson, AIA); Measure 7: Design for Wellness (by Liz York, FAIA); Measure 8: Design for Resources (by Dennis Rijkhoff, AIA); and Measure 9: Design for Change (by Nakita Reed, AIA).
Image credit: The adaptive reuse of Ortlieb’s Bottling House by KieranTimberlake employed passive strategies that cut reliance on mechanical systems by 70 percent (COTE Top Ten Award, 2018). Photo by Michael Moran/OTTO.
Ortlieb’s Bottling House (COTE Top Ten Award, 2018) is now home to KieranTimberlake. Photo by Michael Moran/OTTO.