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OPEN MINDS AND SUPPORTIVE CLIENTS – THE KEY TO HIGH PERFORMANCE DESIGN TEAMS AND LEADING EDGE BUILDINGS

DR GEORGE BAIRD

School of Architecture, Victoria University, PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand

ABSTRACT

In the course of a broader study of the architectural expression of thermal environmental control systems, the author paid personal visits to over thirty major buildings worldwide. In addition to touring and photographing these buildings, formal interviews were conducted with the architect and the environmental engineer responsible for most of them.

This paper describes the kind of design team collaboration involved in the production of some of these buildings, specific questions having been asked of those interviewed on the general philosophy of their design teams (all of whom could legitimately claim to be high performers) and the specific approach taken in these recently completed cases.

The paper summarises the results of an analysis of the (taped and transcribed) interviews in relation to the process and attitudes that underlay the design of these buildings - the common factors, the unique features, and the different issues faced by the design teams involved.

Two of the main characteristics that emerged were a determination on the part of the architects involved to keep the design process as open as possible, and the supportive role played by the client – hence the title of this paper.

KEYWORDS:

Design teams; Client role; Building survey; Environmental control; Case studies.

INTRODUCTION

During 1998 and 1999, the author carried out a study (Baird, forthcoming) of recent major building projects in which the systems of environmental control had been expressed in the overall architectural design.

It soon became evident that underlying many of these projects, all of which were at the leading edge of architectural and environmental technology, was a design process that was notable, not only for its openness, but also for the supportive role of the client involved.

The aim of this paper is to summarise how different design teams managed that process and how client involvement lent positive support to it.

THE PROJECTS, THE CLIENTS AND THE DESIGN TEAMS

The projects investigated, together with the client, the architect, and the environmental engineer (taken as representative of the team) included:

1. BRE Environmental Building, Watford, England, for the Building Research Establishment by Feilden Clegg Architects with Max Fordham and Partners

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2. Central Library, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, for the City of Phoenix by Will Bruder and DWL Architects with Ove Arup and Partners (California) 3. Commerzbank, Frankfurt, Germany, for Commerzbank AG by Sir Norman Foster and Partners with RP+K Sozietat 4. Cy Twombly Gallery, Houston, Texas, USA, for Dominique de Menil by Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Richard Fitzgerald Associates with Ove Arup and Partners (London) 5. Earth Port Building, Yokohama, Japan, for Tokyo Gas Company Ltd by Nikken Sekkei Ltd ( Tokyo) 6. Eastgate Centre, Harare, Zimbabwe, for Old Mutual Properties by Pearce Partnership with Ove Arup and Partners (Harare) 7. Exhibition Hall 26, Hannover, Germany, for Deutsche Messe AG by Thomas Herzog and Partner with H L Technik 8. Glaxo Wellcome HQ, London, England, for Glaxo Wellcome plc by RMJM (Robert Matthew Johnston-Marshall) London Ltd 9. Gotz Headquarters, Wurtzburg, Germany for Gotz GmbH by Webler and Geissler with Marcus Puttmer 10. Inland Revenue Offices, Nottingham, England, for the UK’s Inland Revenue Department by Michael Hopkins and Partners with Ove Arup and Partners (London) 11. Ionica Headquarters, Cambridge, England, for St John’s College, Cambridge University by RH Partnership with Battle McCarthy 12. ITE Bishan, Singapore, for the Institute of Technical Education by Akitek Tenggara II with Beca Carter Hollings and Ferner (S E Asia) 13. Menara Mesiniaga, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for Mesiniaga Sdn Bhd by T R Hamzah and Yeang Sdn Bhd with Norman Disney and Young Sdn Bhd 14. Menara UMNO, Penang, Malaysia, for the South East Asia Development Corporation by T R Hamzah and Yeang Sdn Bhd with Ranhill Bersekutu Sdn Bhd 15. New Scottish Office, Edinburgh, Scotland, for Victoria Quay by RMJM (Robert Matthew Johnston Marshall) Scotland Ltd 16. Powergen Offices, Coventry, England, for PowerGen plc by Bennetts Associates with Ernest Griffiths and Son 17. Queens Building, de Montfort University, Leicester, England, for the university by Short Ford and Partners with Max Fordham and Partners 18. RAC Regional Centre, Bristol, England, for the Royal Automobile Club by Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners with Ove Arup and Partners (London) 19. Red Centre, UNSW, Sydney, Australia, for the University of New South Wales by MGT (Mitchell Giurgola and Thorp) Architects with Ove Arup and Partners (Sydney) 20. RWE Headquarters, Essen, Germany, for Rheinisch-Westfalische-Electrizitatwerk AG by Ingenhoven Overdiek and Partner with Buro Happold and H L Technik 21. Schools of Architecture and Design, Wellington, New Zealand, for Unipol Ltd by Craig Craig Moller with Beca Carter Hollings and Ferner (New Zealand) 22. Sciencepark, Gelsenkirchen, Germany, for IBA Emscher Park by Uwe Kiessler and Partner with Ingenieurburo Trumpp 23. Torrent Research Centre, Ahmedabad, India, for Torrent Pharmaceutical Laboratories Ltd by Abhikram with Brian Ford Associates 24. University Building, Udine, Italy, for Udine University by Studio Manfredi Nicoletti

The twenty-four projects listed above represent a spectrum of building types, from various kinds of headquarters buildings and administrative centres (about half the sample), through several kinds of tertiary education and research facilities, to some exhibition spaces and a major library. They range in size from 2,500 to around 40,000m2, and while most are less than five storeys in height, the Red Centre (7), Eastgate Centre(9), Menara Mesiniaga(15) and UMNO(21), and the RWE Headquarters(34) form a progression up to the 60 storey Commerzbank building. Images of each are appended.

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The climatic zones covered by these buildings is reasonably extensive too, from the cold temperate of continental Europe with wintertime outside design temperatures well below zero and an annual range of 35-40 deg C, to the warm humid conditions of south-east Asia with outside design temperatures in a comparatively narrow band around 28OC; with the moderately temperate conditions of the UK, northern Italy, and Japan, and the benign temperate of Sydney, and Harare lying somewhere between. Phoenix and Ahmedabad, although quite different in some climatic respects, are predominantly hot and dry with summertime temperatures reaching into the 40s Centigrade. While around half of the buildings are located between latitudes 45O and 56O, the others are spread between there and the equator - all but five are in the northern hemisphere.

Personal visits were made to each project during the period July 1998 to August 1999, in most cases touring them in the company of the building manager or a member of the design team (sometimes both), noting key features and comments. Structured interviews were conducted with a member of the architectural and the building services practices that made up the design teams for these buildings – the interview covering areas such as the influences on their approach to the design of buildings, the general philosophy of their practices, and the specific approach taken in the selected case study building. These interviews (generally of around 45 minutes duration) were taped, transcribed, and copies sent to the designers for checking. Analysis of this material focussed, inter alia, on the design process, the relationship between the designers, and the nature of the client’s involvement, as well as the design outcome itself.

In what follows, the intention is to give some flavour of the design approaches of these teams and the influence of the client.

THE DESIGN TEAMS

Generally speaking, while three of the projects were designed by two very well established multi- disciplinary practices, most of the others had been carried out by (also well established) architects and engineers whose otherwise independent practices had built up a relationship with one another over many years. Only in a few cases were the architect and engineer working together for the first time, but always against a background of long experience. In the majority of cases, the progression in their design approach was very clearly part of a developing continuum. The practices (both architects and engineers) varied considerably in size and nature, from the large multi-disciplinary scale of Nikken Sekkei and RMJM to the relatively small and specialised architectural and engineering practices of, for example, Will Bruder and Battle McCarthy, to the larger or trans-national engineering consultants such as H L Technik and Ove Arup. Interestingly, in the case of the non-multi-disciplinary practices, the size of the practice seemed to have no particular bearing on the composition of project teams – in other words, small architectural practices could find themselves teamed up with large engineering practices, and vice versa.

With few exceptions, the team members and their practices were based in the country in which the project was located. That is not to imply parochial attitudes; on the contrary, all of those interviewed were highly educated, well travelled, and experienced professionals. In this section, an attempt will be made to give credence to my ‘open-mindedness’ assertion, an assertion which is based on the responses received to interview questions about the relationship between architect, engineer, and building scientist during the project, the degree of cross-collaboration between the team members, the emergence of the basic concepts, and the nature of the design process itself.

Whether or not they were part of a multi-disciplinary practice, virtually all of the architects interviewed saw it as essential that a multi-disciplinary design team be assembled at the earliest possible opportunity, and in several instances this had already been the case at the competition or professional selection interview stage which had preceded many of the projects. In other instances, the team had been assembled as soon as practicable after the architect had received the commission.

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Despite architect Rem Koolhaas’ (1995, p664) fears about the ‘sabotage of the engineers’ and the ‘masochistic surrender of the architect’ to the ‘decorative posturing’ of “high tech”, the responses of the architects interviewed here were almost unanimous in terms of it being essential to have total team cooperation, to involve the engineers in the design process straight away, to be completely open to the involvement of the other disciplines, and to see the process as one to which everyone was expected to make a contribution. One architect went as far as to say that he saw his engineering collaborators as his mentors, another that he saw working closely together more demanding, but essential for the wellbeing of the discipline of architecture. In fact, the increasing move towards predominantly passive and mixed mode environmental control systems, manifest in the majority of the buildings studied, tends to make such close collaboration almost inevitable. Even Koolhaas (1995, p667), referring to some of his working with one of Ove Arup’s structure and services units, admits to eventually surmounting his earlier fears and accepting a ‘growing intimacy with each other’s disciplines – in fact, a mutual invasion of territory – and the corresponding blurring of professional identities (not always painless)… ’. More recently, Eiji Maki (2000, p11), President of Nikken Sekkei, has noted that ‘It’s essential that the team be unified in the practice and execution of the project on a daily basis from the very early stages’.

In virtually all of the projects investigated, the building services engineer and/or environmental design specialist was involved from the earliest possible stage – and was expected to make a significant contribution to the overall design process. In a couple of cases this had not been feasible, but it was certainly not the architect’s usual or preferred practice.

Several of the architects interviewed emphasised the importance of their not conceiving or proposing a solution until all the issues involved in the brief had been thoroughly explored with the other key members of the design team (hence the necessity for their early appointment). This was expressed in a variety of ways by different architects, from a description of early design team meetings at which there was no architect-driven pre-emptive concept to which the rest of the team must conform, to a statement that the design process starts with all the disciplines round the table discussing the main issues, clarifying their understanding of the brief, analysing the culture of the client, and determining where the particular emphasis of the project should be; from an assertion that too many firmly held preconceptions (on the part of any member of the design team) just serve to inhibit free discussion of the issues and the generation of ideas by the rest of the team members, to the expression of some pride in having the discipline not to preconceive a solution before a thorough exploration of the issues prior to embarking on the design, and the view that technical issues helped to form the solution.

That is not to suggest that the architects involved were by any means relinquishing their traditional role as leaders of the design team. On the contrary, all assumed full responsibility for the overall design, several expressing the view that the team approach strengthened the process and its outcome. One saw this as offering architects a return to their role as creative innovators (as opposed to stylists) and main coordinators of the team; another saw one of the architect’s roles as getting the specialists to work together equably and effectively; another stated that the team responded well to the rigour of the integrated approach he brought to the process; yet another saw the role as very demanding but potentially restorative of the discipline of architecture.

It goes without saying that frequent and regular meetings of the various design teams was the norm, usually with a blank sheet of paper on the table or, perhaps more often, on the walls of the room, particularly at the early stages in the process. The potential advantage of the multi-disciplinary practices, in terms of casual meetings in the corridor was noted – some were arranging for all the disciplines involved in a particular project to be housed together in the same studio, rather than in their separate departments, even if it meant refurbishing their premises. The importance of being able to sketch one’s ideas or proposals during the different stages of the process was also emphasised - by both architects and engineers. In a few cases, perhaps too few, the designers had the luxury of a comparatively long design and development phase (nearly two years in a couple of cases) – the benefits of this require little emphasis.

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All of which, in the opinion of many of those interviewed, tended to produce robust design concepts and developed designs, capable of presentation to the most demanding of clients, in the full confidence that all of the key issues of architecture, structure, and services had been addressed and resolved in an appropriately well integrated fashion to meet the brief – and in the cases investigated produce leading edge, predominantly environmentally responsive, buildings.

THE CLIENTS

The projects themselves had been instigated by a wide range of clients, from speculative developers to owner-occupying organisations, from national and local government agencies to national and multi- national private companies, all with their own philosophies and agendas. In this section an attempt will be made to explore the nature of their involvement and the extent to which they were supportive of the approach taken by their particular design team.

Given the nature of the buildings investigated, it was perhaps not surprising to find that in general, this group of clients had a particular interest in having low energy use buildings and were well disposed towards environmentally conscious design solutions. Many knew what they wanted (in these terms) and were open minded about how they got it – but were sufficiently knowledgeable and discerning to require convincing arguments from their design team. Most of the clients had used a competition or selection process to decide on their preferred concept or designer – only occasionally had the architect been approached directly.

The clients themselves ranged from the cautious and the consultative, through the specific, to the experimental. While fully accepting of mixed mode and natural ventilation, for example, the more cautious clients tended to ensure that adequate space and other relevant provision was made for full air conditioning to be installed at a later date, should future users require it. In some instances, the consultative process was taken to extraordinary lengths, involving not only direct users of the building, but meetings with a wide range of community groups as well – pity the poor architect charged with the task of housing two university departments of architecture and of design in the same building!

Specificity came in various forms, at least in terms of environmental control, for this group of clients. Despite their low energy aspirations, several required full air conditioning, setting the design team the challenge of minimising the loads on the HVAC plant; not unexpectedly, several clients required there to be no air conditioning, though inevitably there was at least one change of heart during the construction process. In several cases there was a requirement that the building users have some direct control of their internal environment – clearly, the message was getting through that many building users prefer it that way.

It was interesting to observe that those clients categorised as experimental tended to be research and development orientated organisations. In these cases there was a readiness to take the time required to explore potential, frequently unconventional, solutions to some depth, and even to wait and see how a particular solution worked in practice (i.e., following occupancy) before adding further layers of environmental control, say.

As might have been anticipated, most of the clients for this group of buildings had an important influence on the outcome. In many cases the nature of the brief (requiring optimum use of natural ventilation and lighting systems, together with low energy overtones, or even explicit directives) was a key driver of the design

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CONCLUSION

While all of the buildings investigated were notable for their use of low energy strategies (as well, of course, as the expression of their means of environmental control, whether passive, active or mixed- mode) it was found that almost without exception, a high level of cooperation between the various design specialists had been vital to the success of the vast majority of these projects. It seemed that exploration of low energy design strategies and solutions went hand-in-hand with the highest level of integrated design processes and outcomes, a point which has also been made in the context of green building design (Cole, 2000).

In an ideal world, perhaps this would not be a surprise, given the closely interlinked roles of the architect and the engineer (structural as well as environmental) in relation to thermal environmental control. In the real world, however, the interfaces between the various disciplines have tended to become barriers. It is heartening to see that an increasing number of open minded and confident practitioners are at last breaking down these barriers and are willing to take a holistic, cross- disciplinary view of the design process.

The role of the client in setting the agenda was crucial in most instances – most were supportive of environmentally conscious design in one form or another, in terms of their company’s policies or as a direct result of the activities in which they were engaged. In that sense, most of these clients were at the experimental end of the spectrum – all were supportive, but equally, all required considerable convincing that the experiment was going to be a success! The evidence suggests that this has in fact been the case.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank all the architects, engineers, and building owners who gave so freely of their time in connection with this project, and acknowledge the support of Victoria University of Wellington in enabling me to pursue it over the last three years.

REFERENCES

Baird, G. (forthcoming) 2001. “Architectural Expression of Environmental Control Systems”. Spon Press, London.

Cole, R. J. 2000, Cost and Value in Building Green. “Building Research and Information”, (2000), 28, 5/6, 304-9.

Koolhaas, R. 1995. “Last Apples”, in Koolhaas, R. and Mau, B. “S, M, L, XL, O.M.A.”. The Monacelli Press, New York.

Maki, E. 2000. “Sustainable Architecture – an East-West Perspective” in Ray-Jones, A. “Sustainable Architecture in Japan”. Wiley-Academy, New York.

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IMAGES - BUILDINGS 1 to 6

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IMAGES – BUILDINGS 7 to 12

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IMAGES – BUILDINGS 13 to 18

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IMAGES – BUILDINGS 19 to 24