The How”
Prioritizing
Through the use of simple digital tools and a multi-level creative process involving people, all needs and desires (even those not expressed) are collected, selected, and transformed into priorities. These data are used to deeply understand the requests that the project must address, without any preconceived notions or ideas to impose on anyone.
Testing
Multiple embryonic ideas are generated and tested based on the previously defined priorities agreed upon with people, as well as cost parameters, energy performance, and other macro-themes dictated by the context. This phase generally leads to several creative cycles, each informed by the previous one, resulting in a deeper understanding of the context, needs, and available or potential possibilities. The ideas that best meet the people’s needs are further developed, and among them, the objectively more promising ones are selected. This phase is developed rapidly, using various tools, starting from simple conversations, potentially incorporating AI, and even relying on irrational intuition. No idea can move forward beyond this phase without the numbers that demonstrate compliance with the predetermined priorities.
Deciding
Which of the selected ideas are telling something about people? The one that can hold value even when it becomes obsolete. Ultimately, if we remove all the technical and practical aspects for which the idea was conceived, and the idea still conveys something (an emotion, a story, a meaning, a reflection, a connection, etc…), then it’s the right idea to develop. It also happens that the best idea may not be among those on the table, but emerges in this phase through the synthesis of what has been learned throughout the process.
Gamification
The project is developed as a modular system, composed of various elements, each of which is created in different compatible versions. Each version addresses the same needs with similar performance, but is generated from a different mindset, so it looks different compared to the others. The various versions are not mere acts of imagination, but interpretations of potential different viewpoints of people.
Optimization
At every scale and phase of our creative process, the project is analyzed using various specific software tools. Some of these analyses are always performed, such as parametric cost control, solar irradiation study in the context, verification of energy consumption indicators, spatial efficiency indices, etc., while others are selected based on the project and what is relevant to its successful implementation, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for carbon footprint, analysis of natural lighting inside the building, sound propagation, etc. The result is an optimally designed project from the very beginning, with the production of high-profile construction details aimed at achieving the desired performance, while also being aesthetically coherent.
Inclusion
Once the project is ready, people still have the power to influence it by choosing from the different versions of the elements that make up the system, creating their own composition. Each version is compatible with the others and represents a different way of seeing the world. People’s choices can be made carefreely, as costs and performance remain unchanged regardless of the option chosen, and there is no restriction on different mindsets coexisting within the same composition. There is no right choice, only their choice. Freed from any material conditioning, people can focus on a simple question: What is my point of view? Of course, we are not completely neutral. As humans, we have both a technical and artistic role in creating architecture. The artistic aspect generates ideas for the overall layout, the system, and the versions, but ultimately people decide the path, first with their priorities and then with their choices, creating a composition that is not determined by us. We believe these will be the traditional architectures of tomorrow because the context is not the physical space (that belongs to the past), but the people who inhabit it.
