Great Building Design Guide (Part Four of Four: "Fit For Use")

The right training, tenacity and experience enables you to solve problems in ways that often cost much less. This is especially true when everything that is built is 'fit for use', without wasted space.


Apart from making your garden smaller, wasted space costs money to build. 

Good planning results in energy efficient buildings that also save time, making day to day living simpler and less expensive. Good design ensures that a site's positive attributes are emphasised while the negative points are overcome.

The end result is a building that is worth much more to both the owner and to future buyers.

Great Building Design Guide (Part Three: Why University? "The Long and Winding Road...")

A University course gives you the opportunity to develop the conceptual way of thinking.

It is a unique environment that allows you to think broadly without concerning yourself initially with the complex science and law surrounding building.

Gradually the understanding of energy efficiency, of construction methods, of local government rules and construction law, is included in the course, however it does take time. This is why the course takes five-six years long.

Through it all, we are slowly learning how to hold on to a precious idea (or concept) through the rigors of climate and the reality of commerce. Of course though, a degree is only the beginning of a life of discovering and balancing the idea hidden within a building site.

next time (final installment): "...wasted space costs money to build"

Great Building Design Guide (Part Two: "Maths, Music and Manners")

Like a carpenter's hammer or a brickies trowel, a designer's tools range from mathematics to music. The logic of maths and the structure, layering and rhythms of music are a good analogy for the process of design. Call the steady bass line the structure and press on from that grid...

Local government regulations represent good manners between neighbours, while the building code keeps everyone healthy and safe.

To pull all the issues together into a unified whole takes a concept. Conceptual thinking involves broadly and loosely considering the important parts of any problem and coming up with a unified artistic expression for the building. This is the joy of design.

Discovering a concept for a building gives you an overall vision that helps you make decisions in a structured way further down the track.

next time:  Why go to University?

Great Building Design Guide (Part One: "The Truth is Out There")

To design a great building, first of all know that:

"every problem carries within itself its own solution, a solution to be reached only by the intense inner concentration of a sincere devotion to Truth".
Frank Lloyd Wright (Autobiography)

Knowing this, we confidently begin. The best thing about building design is using your mind in a unique way to solve real problems. It is called thinking conceptually. Conceptual thinking starts with thoroughly understanding the problem. The 'problem' can be defined by two fundamental things: 

• The character and needs of the building owner and end user

          (the client)

• The good points and the bad points of the land on which the building is to be built 

          (the site)

Buildings are a complex arrangement of rooms or spaces whose uses may conflict with each other, especially as you consider light, ventilation, noise, views, access, safety and privacy.

next time: "...to pull all the issues together takes a concept. Conceptual thinking involves broadly and loosely..."