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Kirk’s Paradigm says, for a great project you’ve gotta have the right owner, the right program, the right site, the right budget, the right contractor, and the right architect. If one of these is missing, the whole project can suffer for it. If you can get all six things to come together, then you have an opportunity to make something great.

This month: Gotta Have the Right Site!

Kirk’s Paradigm is brought to you by Principal and project architect, Scott Simmons.

Location, location, location. The site of a building is one of the most distinguishing characteristics of any project, the greatest outside influence, both in potential design options and operationally over time. Many attributes of the site are permanent and unchangeable. If the design is for a prototype to be built on many different sites, like a branch bank, or franchise, the site may be the only distinguishing characteristic between two copies. In the case of a renovation, the existing building itself is its own site. Design is a dialogue of sorts between the existing conditions of the site, context, existing buildings, vision of the owner, and imagination of the designer.

What makes the “right” site? What Kirk meant was that a great project needs an appropriate setting. There are many examples of beautifully designed and detailed buildings on “wrong” sites. Sometimes we start a project with the program and are able to advise our clients as we evaluate different sites. More often, the site is a given. The solar orientation, views, adjacent roads, green space, water flows, are givens. Should the proposed building command the site, like the Parthenon on the Acropolis overlooking Athens, OR nestle into a hillside and be landscaped to blend in? Either way, the design must respond or choose to ignore, within limits, the attributes the site brings to the project. Asked another way, “The site, lot, land, existing building, etc. is a given – what can I do about it?”

First, as architects, we visit the site. Pretty basic, but surprising how often this first important step is skipped. You need to spend some time on-site observing. Each place is unique. Is it urban, suburban, or rural? South facing or shaded? Public or private? A design cannot respond to the context if it’s designed … wait for it… out of context. You can’t change where the sun tracks across the sky or whether there is an agreeable view. Listen. Look for natural features, research the history of the place, the geology, adjacent transit routes, view sheds, etc. Are there legal constraints? Wetlands? Incompatible neighbors or uses nearby? Consider where the people will arrive, park, walk, or view outside. A good reference guide for use on any project is the framework outlined in the Sustainable Sites credits in the LEED green building rating system.

Second, we consult with other professionals. At First Presbyterian Greenville, we helped the church expand by closing one block of a city street where the church owned all of the property on both sides of the street. Our site for the project was the vacated street, a parking lot, and a vacant bus station. Our civil engineer for the project, Joe Barron, said something like “Lay-people, meaning non-engineers, look out across the street and see wide open spaces. But a civil engineer looks out over the same street and sees an underground interconnected web of utilities, pipes, conduits, rights-of-way, easements, and drainage that all needs to be identified and either avoided, removed, or relocated and reconnected.” And we did.

Last, we stay flexible. When CGD was selected by Christ Church Episcopal School to help them plan for a new chapel, we looked at several sites on the 70 acre CCES campus for a new chapel. Initial thoughts were to place the chapel at a prominent entrance to the campus.

As design concepts started to evolve, the suggested siting of the chapel moved to be between two academic buildings. Ultimately, we helped the owner come to the consensus that the best site was in an existing quadrangle formed between the major academic buildings of the Lower, Middle, and Upper schools. The design solution evolved with each new site consideration and comments from the many stakeholders. With the chapel at the center of campus, at the crossroads of student traffic, CCES visibly reinforced their mission of Christian formation and values education.

I’ve heard more than one non-native English speaker refer to the “site” as the “situation”. I like that expression, in that it evokes a fuller understanding of the constraints, opportunities, history, and possibilities that each site or situation brings.

Obviously, depending on the situation.

Check back for Part IV: Gotta Have the Right Budget!

To read more about Kirk’s Paradigm click here.

Kirk’s Paradigm says, for a great project you’ve gotta have the right owner, the right program, the right site, the right budget, the right contractor, and the right architect. If one of these is missing, the whole project can suffer for it. If you can get all six things to come together, then you have an opportunity to make something great.

This month: Gotta Have the Right Program!

Kirk’s Paradigm is brought to you by Principal and project architect, Scott Simmons.

A building program or “brief” states the owner’s requirements for a project and presents the design problem in words, serving as a sort of “preamble” to the design effort. The “right” program, as it relates to Kirk’s Paradigm, is one that allows for creative interpretation, leaving room for the design process to bring about a more perfect solution. The “right” program says WHAT the product of the design process will be without prescribing exactly how it will be done in detail, e.g. an advanced manufacturing high school, a new worship space for a dynamic inner-city congregation or an adaptive re-use of a former mill building.

Programming is often compared to a recipe for a building. Like a recipe, a program contains a list of the ingredients, spaces and functions that must be part of the building. Like a great recipe, a great program is also the result of extensive research, personal experience, asking questions, and testing various combinations. A recipe prescribes exactly how to combine the ingredients, how long it should cook, and in what type of container. The goal of the recipe is to remove the guesswork and produce the same delicious results every time. This is where cooking and design part ways. Unlike a recipe, the right program is not so inflexible as to produce or replicate a presumed solution every time — unless, of course, you want cookie-cutter architecture. (Note: This is not a slam against design prototypes, replication, branding, pre-fabrication, etc., those are entirely different topics.)

Rather, I think the “right” program is more like the preamble to the Constitution, where the framework or ground rules are established for the design. The objective is to provide direction and freedom for the design team to perfect the design solution. The program should state the problem not the solution. Programming is the analysis of data, growth trends, usage patterns, personnel needs, and other issues to be considered while crafting a solution, whereas design is the synthesis of program elements into a cohesive solution. There is a natural tension between the analytical first step – programming — and the design process that follows. In a recent project for a small college, we helped guide campus planning decisions while programming for an arts center. Some program elements were removed from the new building program and conceptually placed elsewhere on campus thus altering the design. The seating capacity of the theatres also had to be considered as this has a ripple effect on all the support systems that are tied to the number of occupants, from the number of required parking spaces and size of the lobby to the width of stairs, the capacities of the HVAC systems, and the number of toilets.

The “right” program will also balance the quality and quantity with the budget for the envisioned project. We’ll dig into budget in a later post but it should be mentioned that programming is where we have the greatest leverage over construction cost.

Another type of “right” program could almost be called “no program”. Some owners are looking for ideas and concepts for a development, parcel of land, or a “test fit” — sort of combining programming and schematic design in a design dialogue where one informs the other. Not quite “I don’t know what I want or like, but I’ll know it when I see it”, but close.  This approach can work if a high level of trust exists between the architect and the owner, who is seeking his trusted advisor’s advice or “instincts”. Conversely, it can also work in a “courting relationship”, when the parties haven’t worked together before, but both understand that eventually, there will be a program that states what and how much.

With apologies to our forefather and my fellow architect, Thomas Jefferson:

“We the Architects, in order to design a more perfect Project, establish Function, insure spatial Proximity…”, you get the idea.

Check back in May for Part III: Gotta Have the Right Site! (<–click here)

To read more about Kirk’s Paradigm click here.

Kirk’s Paradigm says, for a great project you’ve gotta have the right owner, the right program, the right site, the right budget, the right contractor, and the right architect. If one of these is missing, the whole project can suffer for it. If you can get all six things to come together, then you have an opportunity to make something great.

To kick it off: Gotta Have the Right Owner!

Kirk’s Paradigm is brought to you by Principal and project architect, Scott Simmons.

The nature of good design is in not presuming the answer at the beginning of the process. Design is an iterative process that evolves after a period of inquiry, dialogue, and information gathering. Possible solutions are tested, refined, erased, recombined, prototyped, and tested again. The beginning of the design process can feel uncertain even frenetic as ideas are “tried on for size” then refined or discarded. If the end product is known or presumed, then design and innovation have little hope. The critical role of the Owner is to trust that the process with the Right Architect (more on that later) will arrive at the optimal solution.

The “right” owner is the project’s advocate, the anchor for the WHY are we doing this? WHY are we investing precious time and human resources in this project? Great owners can articulate a mission statement that says what the organization does and why they do it. The Right Owner is engaged in a meaningful endeavor, be it raising a family, teaching children, building community, staging theatrical events, gathering for worship, or serving awesome food. The Right Owner is driven by the optimism that the future holds an as yet unknown solution that can be found through the design process.

Architects refer to their clients as “Owners”. Owner is a good word. The owner, be it an individual, committee or board acting as a fiduciary for the end-user, “owns” the possibilities and liabilities of the project for the long term. By comparison, architects are engaged for a brief but formative season in the life of a building, shepherding the Owner through the design and construction process. The Right Owner can dream a little (or a lot), has faith in the power of good design, and allows the design process to unveil the best response.

For those who find the design process to be unfamiliar territory it is our task, as architects, to develop trust in small steps. Fostering relationships that lead to meaningful dialogue with owners will help frame a mission and vision for desired outcomes. New information or changes in the project requirements will often present opportunities to test and improve the design. With a strong Architect/Owner foundation, solutions are adapted and developed, increasing the Owner’s confidence in the design process.

In the Netflix original series The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes, there is a scene where an architect voices over panoramic video of a beautiful house in a remote desert location and says “There is always a moment when you feel fear. It’s our role. We are Architects.”

The answer to fear is trusting the design process to lead to a beautiful solution as we step into the unknown.

Read Part II: Gotta Have the Right Program! (<–Click here)

1. Pike Place Market – Start the day off right and jump on the buzz wagon of visitors, vendors, street performers &, ‘when in Rome’, coffee from the original Starbucks.
2. Seattle Central Libary – You might not think to visit a library on vacation, however, this one is a post-modern work of library wonder – the light, the geometry, the scale – a show stopper among many Seattle attractions.
3. Chihuly Garden & the Space Needle – With one local Chihuly sculpture here in Greenville, SC, visiting the Chihuly Garden and Glass under the Space Needle was an obvious ‘must see’. Experiencing the variety of forms and details in a large, localized body of Chihuly’s work was magnificent – each glass element tells a tale in the natural setting of the gardens. On up to The Observation Deck, we found the Space Needle is undergoing a massive renovation called the Century Project. “The renovation aims to reveal the historic tower’s internal structure and harken back to the original conceptual sketches, all while expanding and improving its views” according to www.spaceneedle.com. Meanwhile, the restaurant is completely closed, undoubtedly no small feat to phase and sequence a renovation with their kind of foot traffic.
4. Starbucks Roastery Reserve & Tasting Room – An impressive example of architecture & branding, this new Starbucks concept was methodically detailed from copper clad equipment and merchandise displays to reflective glass in the bathroom that overlooks the roasting room to leather wrapped handrails. Housed in a renovated historic building, Starbucks has adeptly blended old and new architecture to create an experiential showcase of coffee for their fans.
5. Amazon Go – An unexpected spectacle, we stumbled upon three glowing, geodesic-like orbs that are part of Amazon’s campus. These urban botanical gardens are primarily for employees but, even from the outside, allow one to re-imagine the urban fabric of a corporate campus.

Thanks for reading and many safe travels!

Stu

Additional Recommendations:

Breakfast – Biscuit Bitch

Lunch – Pike Place Chowder

Snack – Piroshky Piroshky

Drink – Rachel’s Ginger Beer

Happy Hour – Radiator Whiskey

Dinner – The Pink Door