Essay

Introduction

In today’s micro-lecture you will learn about a critical feedback loop which improves your architectural design process. Marked by three primary steps, this improvement cycle diagram will prompt you to start thinking about how you can better integrate an occupant-centered approach into your design process. Additionally, you will learn about three key innovation points where you can leverage your results, as you renew occupant experience within your environments. This micro-lecture helps you to simplify your architectural design process, to better understand where within that process you can leverage occupant-centered methodologies best.

Transcript

00:05 Maria Lorena Lehman: This is Maria Lorena Lehman, and in this micro lecture, we’re going to explore how to inject your architectural design process with an occupant-centered approach. So in the following diagram, I’m going to show you three steps that you can use to target primary points within your design process so that you can go about your design from an occupant-centered dimension. So the first step is to research and strategize. This step will help you uncover ways to better understand your occupant. Such researching comes from existing knowledge and from new design strategies that you devise. Now within this step, you’re basically setting the goals for your project as well.

01:01 MLL: In the second step, you begin to integrate sensory design. This is where you work to better understand how sensory effects impact your occupants. Now in the second step, you’re analyzing how to reach those project goals that you set in the first step.

01:24 MLL: Now moving on to the third step, which is impact study… This is where you study the impact of your design upon your occupants once it is in use. During the third step, you try to better understand whether your goals were met, what worked and what did not work will become important aspects that again feed into the first step which was research and strategy.

01:56 MLL: Now, between each of these steps are key innovation points. For instance, between steps one and two, you can innovate your project programming phase. By better understanding your research/strategy methods and sensory design methods, your project programming phase would be much better suited to make innovative advancements.

02:23 MLL: Another innovation point occurs between steps two and three. Here, with better information about sensory design and impact studies, you can create much more sophisticated solutions as you innovate your design concept and its development.

02:46 MLL: Now a third innovation point occurs between steps three and one, where, as you take information that you’ve uncovered during your impact study and apply that to research and strategy for future projects, for example, you can actually begin to modify and make improvements to the design process you use and this can be based on successes or failures that you’ve uncovered in your projects or other projects or design experiments that you’ve undertaken.

03:20 MLL: So, this micro lecture is to get you thinking about your architectural design process and how you can begin to integrate occupant-centered approaches into the various steps within your process. Now everyone’s process varies slightly, but as you begin to inject the way your design impacts its occupants and better understand what works and what does not work, you can make more steadfast improvements upon your design projects that will impact not just the building you’re currently working on but future buildings to come.