Award Winning Industrial Architecture

Developing a Methodology for Investigating the Design of Award Winning Industrial Architecture Anthony Holness & Bob Giddings he aim of this research project is to Theme: Workspace Design II designer's method and the quality T identify possible common themes This paper reports on research cur• of the design proposal and, in the design methods used to generate rently being conducted to investi• • the form and quality of industrial a selection of exemplary industrial buil• gate the methodological structure of buildings. dings. Once identified, the next stage the design of industrial buildings. A of the research will be to establish the comparative analysis of a selection of The research project extends existing nature of these common approaches exemplary industrial buildings is be• studies in the area of general human and determine the influence they have problem-solving, by using the find• ing used to investigate the relation• both on the design process, as a whole, ings of previous studies to analyse and ship between the design process and and the quality of the building. For explain a specific example of problem- the quality of the design proposal as this purpose, four areas for comparison solving, namely the design of indust• realised. The evaluation of any reali• across the case-studies have been pro• rial buildings regarded as the best of posed. They are: sed design remains as tangible evi• their building-type. Figure i illustrates dence of the success or otherwise of how this research project relates to • the structure of the design process the design process that generated it. previous studies in this field of know• itself and the mechanisms utilised Therefore, to develop a conceptual ledge and extends the hierarchy of re• by the designers of each building to framework linking design methods search into design activity as a parti• generate and develop their design and building quality should contri• cular incident of the general pheno• proposal, bute to a greater understanding of menon of design. • concepts of what constitutes quality how the designer's interpretation of a Modern architecture generally and in the design of industrial buildings, design problem influences the struc• industrial architecture in particular, and the use of value-judgement in ture of the design process. The effec• has been thought of as (Richards 1950, design decision-making ', tiveness of the design process in pro• p. 14) deriving; • cause and effect in design; the na• ducing industrial buildings of high Its nature from the acceptance by archi• ture of the relationship between the quality can also be evaluated. tects of the principle that the process HOLNESS & GIDDINGS: ... AWARD WINNING INDUSTRIAL ARCHITECTURE 79 THE RELATIONSHIP HIERARCHY BETWEEN THIS RESEARCH INVESTIGATION AND PREVIOUS STUDIES 1. Part of the general area of investigation into various HUMAN PROBLEM-SOLVING (e.g. Newell & Simon, 1972) aspects of cognitive activity. DESIGN PROBLEM-SOLVING 2. Design as a specific example of problem-solving (e.g. Simon, 1973) activity. 3 At this level the study of design problem-solving mechanisms is placed into various contexts. ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN ENGINEERING DESIGN COMPUTER SOFTWARE DESIGN (e.g. Akin, 1978) (e.g. Stauffer & Uliman, 1991) (e.g. Malholra, et al 1987) Industrial Building Design At the level of a particular building type, investigations can attempt to compare particular sets of design problem-solving strategies with the assessment of the proposed solution from a number of different aspects • quality attainment and quality measurement, • technical resolution, Retail Building E>esign • information usage, etc. This is because the nature of the building type has a significant influence over how Leisure Building Design each of these aspects of a design are established and their relative importance Housing Design Figure 1. of designing a building begins wirh a This would suggest that the original teenth centuries saw the increase in close analysis of the needs it is to serve. nature of the industrial building design the number and importance of indust• process was not entirely based on deve• rial buildings. Prior to the mid nine• However, industrial building has a long loping forms logically derived from teenth century, it was engineers who history; some of the earliest examples the building's functional requirements, lead the way in "uncompromisingly being medieval granaries which drew but was in part based on a process of functional" design. Again Brockman heavily on the forms and details of other making analogies with existing buil• (1974, p. 20) has rationalised this po• contemporary building-types. With ding types. Broadbent (1988, pp. 30- sition by saying; this use of existing building-types as 35) has termed this "analogic design"; The services engineers were much in precedents, Brockman (1974, p. 15) and occurs when the form and detail demand for one very solid reason; commented that; of an established building archetype once the industrial revolution had got It is not, therefore, surprising that the (i.e. church) is used as the basis for the under way and steam became the forms and structures of the grear spans design of a new building type (i.e. normal source of power, it was the of medieval churches, supported by granaries). The designer makes an engineer who was employed to prov• stout walls, where rhe tendency to over• analogous connection between some ide the engines which produced it turn under the thrust of a timber roof specific aspect of the function of one and also the machinery it served. In was countered by buttressing, were with the other. mosr cases rhese engineers knew very adopted by rhe builders of rhese early The rapid industrialisation that took well how to provide rhe structures warehouses. place during the eighteenth and nine• which supported the long runs of 80 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1996:4 machines, floor by floor, and the brick man hours, lead time and the like, or lastic in its lack of relation to the real and masonry walls and timber roofs a better product. In these terms a met• world, its concerns and motivations. which enclosed them. hod is only better than another (what• Of the few studies that have been car• ever it may be) if it produces a better It appears that from an early stage in the ried out in the area of quality assessment building or environment. The concept Industrial Revolution, an understan• in building design, Murta (1991) has "better" involves judgement - better ding of the potential of the new machine found some evidence to suggest that a than something else - and is related to technology, together with the know• non-contingent relationship does exist goals and values as well as knowledge. ledge of how to utilise new materials to between method and design solution provide suitable internal spaces to One reason for the lack of any sustained quality. He concluded that (Murta accommodate this technology was an attention being given to this question, 1991, p. 799); essential part of the design process. and implicit in Rapport's statement buildings of quality have a design However, such an approach to the design above, is that building design quality procedure which differs from the of industrial buildings was usually assessment is as complex and proble• conventional plan of work, particu• adopted by engineers. It was not before matic a question as that of the nature larly in the way in which basic crea• the mid nineteenth century that archi• of the design process itself2. If the ass• tive work is applied to the problem. tects began to adopt similar principles essment of design quality was mentio• in designing industrial buildings. Up ned at all then, not unexpectedly, it However, this relationship may not be to that point architects, when involved was in terms of quantifiable perfor• a simple linear causal one, as Murta in the design of industrial buildings, mance measures. Indeed, in response (1991, p. 801) goes on to imply; were pre-occupied with the application to criticism made about the lack of In the context of motivation an essen• of various styles and the aesthetic expres• interest in the evaluation of the quality tial ingredient is knowledge and under• sion derived from them, rather than of completed buildings, Moore (1970 standing of what constitutes quality, the pure functional requirements of p. Xll) conceded that the papers presen• and the pre-familiarisation with the manufacturing. ted at the First International Confe• inherent attributes of quality should rence of the Design Group, took a Design Quality Assessment narrow behaviourist approach to the form part of the first stages in any in Design Methodology question of quality assessment. They methodology which is intended to produce fine buildings. The question of the evaluation of design focused exclusively on the measurable methods is one which has rarely been performance attributes of building If Murta is right, then ideas about what confronted by design methods resear• quality. However, the reflections of constitutes quality in building design 3 chers. It appears to have been taken as many design researchers affirm that does play an important role in design an act of faith that adopting systematic it had always been their primary objec• method formation, whether the desig• procedures would inevitably lead to bet• tive to improve the quality of designed ner is conscious of this or not. There• ter design solutions; but how are better artefacts and not just the efficiency of fore, a detailed description of recurring designed products to be judged? the process. They could also readily quality themes could certainly contri• Rapoport (1969, p.136) was among acknowledge the interpretation made bute a new dimension to our under• the first to draw attention to this by Rapoport (1969, p. 136), in his cri• standing of how quality achievement question, when he wrote; ticism of design methods research that; relates to various methodological approaches to building design.

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