Because…
- People are both rational and emotional – both elements weigh heavily on their experience, decision-making, and behaviour within architectural environments.
- Failure to understand both the rational and emotional elements required for successful design results in design that fails to achieve its intended objectives.
- Accessing peoples’ conscious & rational requirements can be difficult – accessing their unconscious & emotional requirements is even more so.
- Neither architects or their clients possess the capabilities necessary to attain these requirements – it is neither their focus nor their area of specialty.
- Understanding is better – with insight into these requirements, architects and designers increase the rate at which environments successfully deliver intended experiences and achieve project objectives.
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Design Research for Architecture establishes the foundation and evidence required to build effective design strategy. It is the tool that enables architects and their clients to ‘see’ what is required for success in the mind of the people they design for (especially when those people cannot explicitly articulate it themselves). Emphasis and value resides in ‘what design could be’ rather than how things already are. This is where the rational and emotional elements of design come together – where art meets science.
This is not the conventional process of designing environments for people. This isn’t the status quo. But we believe that to think differently about creating meaningful experiences brings profound value to design and the people it affects.
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