Methodology

Design is more than the product of any single person’s vision—it should be the result of a collaborative process that elevates the goals of the stakeholders beyond the specifics of each independent requirement into a cohesive whole.

For over thirty years, we have developed a design methodology that adapts to a project’s limitations and transcends them. Essential to our methodology is the idea that design is more than the product of any single person’s vision—it should be the result of a collaborative process that elevates the goals of the stakeholders beyond the specifics of each independent requirement into a cohesive whole. Lead Designer, Rafael Viñoly’s role is to interpret as much as it is to inspire, anticipating the consequences of each stakeholder’s view in physical and performance terms in order to produce a building that is functional, economical, efficient, and secure as well as inspiring, transparent, welcoming, and appropriate.

An efficient and integrated design process should address the natural need for exploration of design alternatives. We create a matrix of variables that defines those alternatives. Our methodology is based on the concept that consensus on good design is reached through the systematic exploration and evaluation of alternatives that address and emphasize different aspects of a project.

The designs are evaluated against parameters of functionality, operations, construction cost, urban significance, civic compatibility, and schedule. Each design is studied three-dimensionally in models and rendered in plan and section. The goal is to build a structure based on the principle that the disciplines of planning, programming and architectural design are inextricably woven with engineering and other specialized services such as lighting and acoustics. Issues are addressed in their totality as a composite of aesthetic, functional, social, technical and economic factors.

Openness in explaining the mechanisms of architectural thinking is the way to avoid exerting an exaggerated control over the process and to generate a sense of collective ownership in the decision-making process. We form a Project Team in order to achieve a design; that Team is responsible for the delivery of the project. User groups, project leadership, consultants, construction managers, cost estimators, and designers are part of this team. The design process should not be based only on the exchange of information and the seeking of partial approvals, but on interactions that develop a true creative environment that fosters imagination and encourages learning. The shared knowledge that is accumulated through the development of alternatives and the critique of their conceptual origins becomes the criteria for selecting a final design direction, not the opinion of an external jury.