Page 24 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

2 THE RECIPE FOR SUCCESS IN HIGH-PERFORMANCE PROJECTS

that shows how people are going to be integrating and talking among themselves;
when they’re going to be talking about it; why they’re talking; and the interim deliv-
erables and step-by-step analysis they owe to the team. It’s a very detailed map. It’s
not a critical path; it’s an integration roadmap. Without that, people will fall right back
into their old practice patterns.
We find that by having a road map, a new person [on the project] can just pick up
where another person left off. The road map is very detailed. It says who’s meeting
whom, when and for what purpose. It bundles the analysis process for all major sys-
tems: energy, water, materials, habitat, marketing, construction, master planning,
architecture, project management, renewable energy. All of those systems are identi-
fied as line items and then brought together into the whole system as the design
process moves from concept through schematic design. By the way, if you aren’t done
with these analyses by schematic design, you’ve likely missed opportunities for the
most environmental and cost effective solutions. It can get quite complex but if you
don’t have it, the team will likely fall back into isolated decision making and overly
simplistic dis-integrated ideas.
Integrative design is simply doing research—applied and direct research—and com-
ing together and talking about the discovered opportunities. Then you look for
greater systems optimization by questioning all assumptions and go back out and do
more detailed analysis and more research, come back together to discuss and com-
pare, and so on. This is a process that requires taking the time to reflect on a deeper
purpose, which is the core reason why we are doing a green building, and then let-
ting the genius of the group emerge from that research and questioning assumptions
process.
Typically we find three to five charrettes are required for the average building project.
Anybody that says they are doing integrative design with one charrette doesn’t know
what integration requires. One charrette is not an integration process.
Most new practitioners to green building don’t know what they don’t know. So how
can they create a reasonable fee proposal for this work? Even though we maintain
that the basic design services cost the same with integrative design, the costs are
front-loaded because you’re spending a lot more time in pre- and concept design.
However, the rest of the project goes much more smoothly because the process is
well coordinated.

You can see from Reed’s explanation that the integrative design process is really a
fundamental challenge to the notion of the “better, faster, and cheaper” approach that
characterizes many design projects. Owners just assume that architects and consult-
ants know what they’re doing. By contrast, this approach to integrative design recog-
nizes that good work takes good thinking. For many architects, the hardest part of the
process might be to resist the urge to take up a pencil and start sketching. Reed’s
emphasis here is on creating a fully functional team that does investigations and
reports back; in this rendition, the process is highly iterative and is based on discov-
ering hidden relationships and possibilities.