Design Informed: Driving Innovation with Evidence-Based Design

By Gordon H. Chong, Robert Brandt and W. Mike Martin

The Power of Evidence to Create Design Excellence

This practical, accessible book—for design professionals and students alike—is about design excellence and how to achieve it. The authors propose an evidence-based design approach that builds on design ingenuity with the use of research in ways that enhance opportunities to innovate. They show the power of research data to both reveal new design opportunities and convince stakeholders of the value of extraordinary work. A guide for all designers who want to earn their place as their clients' trusted advisor and who aspire to create places of beauty and purpose, the book demonstrates:

• An approach to applying evidence to design that neither turns designers into scientists nor requires large-firm resources

• The wide range of types of evidence that can be applicable to design and where to look for it

• Direct, practical application of the evidence-based design approaches in use today

• Provides tools to distinguish strong evidence that can improve design decisions from misleading assertions resulting from weak research

• Benefits of evidence-based design, including improved human and building performance

Two featured case studies illustrate the theory and practice of evidence-based design. The work of the authors' 2005–2007 AIA College of Fellows Benjamin Latrobe Research Fellowship provided an empirical foundation for this book, and addresses the use of rigorous research methods to understand relationships between design choices and health outcomes. The California Academy of Sciences, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Chong Partners Architecture, and Arup, provides transparent evidence that enhances building technology performance in the context of a powerful design expression.

In-depth interviews and case studies are clustered around three research categories: modeling, simulation, and data mining; social and behavioral science and the physical and natural sciences; and including cutting-edge use of neuroscience to understand human response to physical environments. The twenty-two featured thought leaders include: William Mitchell, MIT Media Lab; Fred Gage, Salk Institute; Phil Bernstein, Autodesk; Sheila Kennedy, Kennedy & Violich; James Timberlake, KieranTimberlake; William and Chris Sharples, SHoP Architects; Vivian Loftness, Carnegie Mellon University; John Zeisel, Hearthstone; Paco Underhill, Envirosell; Susan Ubbelohde and George Loisos, Loisos+Ubbelohde Architecture-Energy; Chris Luebkeman, Arup; Martin Fischer, Stanford University CIFE; and Kevin Powell, GSA.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Sep 29, 2010
• ISBN: 9780470916407

Book preview

001

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 - Transformation

Not As It Seems

Time for a Makeover

What Will It Look Like?

The Authors’ Journey

The Road Well Taken

Chapter 2 - Models, Simulation, and Data Mining

Background and Context

Interviews of Experts and Case Studies

Lessons Learned: Models, Simulation, and Data Mining

Chapter 3 - The Social Sciences

Background and Context

Interviews of Experts and Case Studies

Lessons Learned

Chapter 4 - The Natural and Physical Sciences

Background and Context

Interviews of Experts and Case Studies

Lessons Learned

Chapter 5 - Putting It All Together

Background and Context

The Primary Research Methodologies Utilized

Chapter 6 - The 2005 Latrobe Fellowship

Introduction

Process Model and Methodologies

Literature and Experimental Findings

Credits

Chapter 7 - Applying What We’ve Learned

What Does This Mean for Design Practice?

Expanded Horizons

Strength of Evidence

The Right Methodology and the Right Metrics

Where Do We Go from Here?

How?

The Most Fruitful, Near and Long-Term Areas for the Application of ...

A Final Word

Index

001

This book is printed on acid-free paper. 002

Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brandt, Robert, 1948-

Evidence-based architectural design : case studies of applied evidence / Robert Brandt, Gordon H. Chong, W. Mike Martin.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-470-39562-2 (cloth)

1. Evidence-based design. I. Chong, Gordon H. II. Martin, W. Mike. III. Title. IV. Title: Case studies of applied evidence.

NA2750.B65 2010

720.1—dc22

2009049257

Preface

A QUIET REVOLUTION IS UNDERWAY, one that could change the practice of architecture for years to come. It isn’t being trumpeted at the design awards ceremonies, yet it is about design excellence. It hasn’t been widely embraced by the profession but it is relevant to all design professionals who wish to remain relevant. Corporate and institutional architects and interior designers will only thrive if they know how to create places of long-standing value to their clients and communities. This revolution in the way design is practiced is the means to ensure that level of design quality.

The genius of architects is their ability to imagine building form and then give physical structure to their musings. Architects should never relinquish this mastery of art and technology; it defines them as professionals. The question is how even greater and more sustainable beauty and utility can be created. The revolution that is gently but inexorably changing architecture looks to science as the means to better design outcomes.

Architects and other design professionals typically depend on intuition and personal project experience to make design choices. That works at some level but is limited by the self and the past. New things might be tried but there’s no basis to predict how well they’ll work, if the only criteria come from the designer’s prior experience.

The time has come to move on from this self-limiting approach. Picture this instead:

• Using a computer simulation, you discover a way to reduce your client’s space program by 30%. They reinvest part of the capital budget in an upgraded design and use the rest of the savings to do a project they otherwise couldn’t afford.

• You’ve claimed that you can help your client increase productivity through some creative new design ideas, but they need data to convince their stakeholders to change what they’re used to. By providing compelling evidence to back up your claims, you succeed in getting approvals and move forward with some breakthrough design concepts.

• Bio-medical research connecting daylight and health convinces your client, a hospital administrator, to build a narrower footprint building. You design a place that is enlivened by light and views, instead of an artificially lit, enclosed space. Patients and staff thrive and you’ve aided the healing.

• Prototyping demonstrates innovative ways to use a metal skin. You use the test data to design a unique building form with extraordinary beauty and free expression.

The vision of what might be seems unlimited. Aesthetics, experience, sustainability, cost reduction, improved operations, well being….Designers can break through and do great work. All that’s needed is evidence to understand how specific design strategies might affect building performance. With evidence, we can predict and convince.

Evidence-based design (EBD) is slowly changing how the design is practiced by design professionals and valued by their clients. It can improve the quality of design, especially in ways that benefit clients. However, EBD is also often misunderstood. Many architects think it will be overly prescriptive, rather than informative. Others who like the notion don’t fully grasp how to assess if evidence is strong or weak, and in what contexts the evidence is valid.

This book is about the authors’ journey to find an approach to EBD that will co-exist with design creativity, increase innovation, and lead to improved building performance. Think of this as Informed Intuition—a healthy mix of the professional’s instincts and a broad, deep knowledge base from many sources.

Along this journey, the authors encountered a number of experts and asked them to share their experiences and perceptions related to EBD.

1. Is the use of empirical evidence appropriate to design? If yes, under what circumstances and to what benefit? How does the use of evidence in design differ from that in other professions?

2. What constitutes evidence for design? How much is enough and how rigorous does it need to be? What methodologies—qualitative or quantitative—are required for it to be credible and defensible in informing design decisions?

3. What are the appropriate types of evidence and how might they be obtained? Are there successful precedents? What architects are doing it with great outcomes and can others also succeed in spite of time and budget constraints? Does the search for evidence, in lieu of pure instinct, diminish creativity?

4. Will my practice improve if I adopt an evidence-based design approach to my projects? Is it for all types of firms?

Several major themes emerged from this dialogue. Considered together, they describe an approach to EBD that’s both broader and more demanding than much of what’s in the current literature.

There are many sources of data that might serve as evidence of design impacts. Post-occupancy evaluation surveys, often cited in discussions of EBD, is only one method for seeking evidence. Computational, social and natural sciences are rich resources. This book addresses all three.

Strength of evidence (i.e., how much you can rely on the data to predict design impacts on your projects) is often not understood by designers, yet it is critical to applying evidence reasonably. Architecture lacks the research standards and protocols necessary for widespread development, application, and dissemination of research that could serve as evidence. As EBD develops, design education will need to better prepare professionals to appreciate research quality standards and all practitioners will need to hone their capabilities to assess what evidence might be used in making better design choices.

Knowledge gained from an assessment of one project’s performance outcomes might have great potential value for other projects. However, without shared research standards, we can’t tell if that knowledge is of good quality nor if it can be generalized from one project context to another. The design professions also must support knowledge sharing far better. Our current systems to categorize, store, and retrieve data/ knowledge are few and far between.

As our concerns for human response, behavior, and performance become more complex; environmental impacts more important; and fiscal resources more constrained, clients and communities are demanding more understanding of the value of design. Will design professionals be able to make a strong case for high-performing buildings and the ability to use design as a lever to achieve high performance? To remain relevant, architects must…and can with the right evidence to back up these assertions of added value.

This book, one in a series by John Wiley & Sons that explores the concept of evidence-based design, is not about being a researcher; it is about being a better designer and a better architect who uses evidence as one approach to informing design.

The book raises as many questions as it answers but it reveals sources of evidence both internal and external to architectural practice, and addresses how and why to apply them. You won’t find the ten steps to developing an evidenced design practice but you will find ideas that will stimulate your own thinking about the use of evidence in your design practice. The revolution won’t stop but every practitioner can have a voice in shaping how the design professions evolve.

In this book, the authors share some ideas about what the use of evidence might mean for a design practice…how evidence-based design might expand your horizons, bolster innovation, and reposition you to become your client’s trusted advisor. Simply, the book is about where we might take the journey from here with a somewhat different dialogue than we’ve heard before.

This book will help the practicing architect, client, and students of architecture through three types of learning.

1. Background on research methodologies: Intended to help you decide what is most appropriate for your application. Discussion of these methodologies is intended to be absolute but rather provides a broad context of possibilities for your consideration, as you consider your own needs. Our book does not support a single, prescriptive approach.

2. Application examples: Interviews and case studies are intentionally diverse in scale, approach, and research methodology so that you can learn, analyze, pick and choose, and envision how they may apply to your design question, skill, and resource. There is not a case of one size fits all, but rather, many approaches from which to choose the most appropriate. The examples illustrate actual use in current project work and specific types of research being conducted for application.

3. Thoughts about the future: When speaking about the use of evidence, many architects are fearful that the process will inhibit creativity. Our observations challenge that fear and open a dialogue about expanded possibilities as architecture joins other valued professions by integrating the best of the traditional intuitive approach with an empiricism that enhances design outcomes.

Acknowledgments

With thanks!

We wish to thank The American Institute of Architects, College of Fellows for awarding the 2005 Latrobe Fellowship to Chong Partners Architecture, the University of California, Berkeley, and Kaiser Permanente. This two-year study formed the genesis of our thinking and permitted the research for this publication to ask a higher level of questions in our search for innovation and excellence.

We also wish to thank the many brilliant individuals who generously shared their thoughts, time, and experiences with us. This publication is a reflection of their many great ideas and thoughts.

Lastly, we thank John Wiley & Sons for inviting us to do this work, which we believe will add to a greater body of professional knowledge for the betterment of the profession and the public we serve.

Special Thanks

With special thanks to Professor Michael Bednar, of The University of Virginia, who encouraged me to believe that Design and Behavior really can be One; Michael Gulash and our colleagues at Intuit, who patiently supported my Work: Book Balance; and my sister, Pamela Robin, who told me I could write, before I could.

ROBERT BRANDT, AIA

With appreciation to John P. Eberhard, FAIA, for introducing me to the possibilities of neuro-architecture as a means to inform design; to The Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture for sustaining that interest and to my wife, Dorian, for encouraging my intellectual curiosity.

GORDON H. CHONG, FAIA

I dedicate this book to my wife, Pat, and our two daughters, Brandi and Cally, for offering hope, encouragement, caring, and love for all things that matter.

W. MIKE MARTIN, FAIA, PHD

1

Transformation

Figure 1.1 Evidence Development and Application

003

ARCHITECTURE STARTS WITH VISION AND PASSION—VISION OF A PLACE THAT WILL INSPIRE OUR SENSES AND A PASSION TO CREATE IT. THIS BOOK IS ABOUT TAKING THAT SPATIAL, GEOMETRIC, AND AESTHETIC STARTING POINT AND EXPANDING IT TO EMBRACE BUILDING AND HUMAN PERFORMANCE.

The agenda is a TRANSFORMATIVE one. It builds on what architects do best—make form. Our education as architects is dominated by a language of spatial principles: shape, scale, color, texture, pattern, symmetry, balance, accent. These are the things we are taught and should always be central to what we design. The question is Are they enough? Our answer is No!

This is a very exciting time for our profession. Every day, more evidence is being created that demonstrates the power of architecture to affect human experience and environmental outcomes. Extraordinary innovations in building performance and materials science are now also possible due to evidence-producing processes.

Today’s technologies and challenges feed opportunities to refine, expand, and improve our abilities to make form.

In the transformation we envision (see Figure 1.1), professional practice will still be based on our values and traditions as architects; yet our aspirations and capabilities will go beyond designing only spatially inspirational buildings. In this future, in addition to form-making, design professionals will positively influence human well-being and effectiveness and will contribute to the health of our planet. For this to be our future, our profession must acknowledge that the means to this end is being able to predict design outcomes. We must be able to rely on evidence to anticipate the effects of our work. In order for this information to help us make a high impact, positive design choices must be transparent, accessible, understandable, and applicable. What follows in this book is a journey to define what such evidence might be and how we might develop and apply it.

"Evidence for Design or Evidence or Design?"

During a 2008 interview on National Public Radio, New York Times political commentator David Brooks referred to some of the people being considered for his administration by then President-Elect Barack Obama as being evidence-based. This characteristic, according to Brooks, created potential bridges between Obama and people with sometimes divergent opinions. Disciplined consideration of the facts (evidence) enabled them to make reasoned decisions, with the advantage being that they would bring multiple perspectives into consideration to make better choices. Since his election, President Obama has often referred to his reliance on knowing the facts before he makes decisions. While it remains to be seen if an evidential process or blind ideology will prevail in our political system, we’ve seen the power of evidence to break down inertia and enable new ideas to advance. If it plays on Pennsylvania Avenue, why not in Architecture and other design professions?

Design is often cast as an act of intuitive creativity, uniquely owned by the designer and set in a context of ambiguity and uncertainty. Many architects shroud their decisions under a cloak of mystery, inaccessible even to their clients, who are expected to approve their designers’ recommendations through acts of faith. The idea of making transparent the basis on which design decisions are made is unsettling to many designers. They don’t think of evidence as a freeing agent. Instead it’s considered an obstacle to simplifying an essential design parti. With this mindset, rather than evidence for design, there is seemingly a choice between evidence or design.

Fear of evidence isn’t because designers haven’t used it before. Every design decision, no matter how small or complex, is informed by evidence found in experience, drawn from intuition, or (less often) based on rigorous processes of inquiry. THE CONTINUUM OF EVIDENCE, WEAK AND STRONG, SURROUNDS US. Architects are used to materials performance specifications, codes that were developed based on testing and performance history, and equally comfortable drawing upon their knowledge of their own previous work.

The issue is that most architects don’t think of the current design process as being evidential, whether it is or not. Yes, they use technical data and reflect on other projects; but they feel in control of the process. When that sense of control is lost, such as when a program is very complex and constraining, or a client doesn’t accept the designer’s preferred concept, the work seems less creative and personally satisfying. Even more troublesome, when the evidence comes from disciplines beyond architecture, it might be fascinating, but there’s no clear way to directly apply it. Once again, a choice is set up between evidence and design.

SIMPLY PUT, MANY DESIGNERS FEEL THAT THE NOTION OF EVIDENCE IS FOREIGN TO THE DESIGN PROCESS THEY KNOW. Over several years of looking at attitudes about evidence-based design (EBD), the authors have found a number of consistent concerns (and myths).

• EBD is too scientific. Creativity is not all about facts. The process of creating is subjective and inductive. It starts with a spark of inspiration. Science is deductive and all rational.

• EBD is reminiscent of a legal process. There are rules about how to consider evidence and decisions must follow the rules. It’s about right and wrong. Personal judgment is diminished.

• EBD is prescriptive. It limits options and stifles innovation.

• EBD is too expensive and time-consuming for most practitioners.

• EBD requires sharing of knowledge that is better kept proprietary for marketing purposes.

• EBD uses facts to evaluate design success. This exposes our work to criticism and could harm our relationships with our clients or even expose us to legal problems.

To what extent are these concerns based in truth? Are there benefits to EBD that make it worthwhile, even if it demands a new mindset? Is there a model for evidence-based practice that is specifically right for the design professions?

Not As It Seems

The first step in getting past the myths and fears is deciding if EBD would be of value. Is there even a good reason to rethink how we design? THE VALUE OF EBD CAN ONLY BE UNDERSTOOD IN THE CONTEXT OF THE VALUE OF DESIGN AS A CONTRIBUTOR TO SOCIETY.

Architectural form that delights has great value. But more is possible. The public may be enamored by a structural tour de force or a landmark design that captures their spirit, but when they put on their client hat, they know they are responsible for delivering value to their organization or institution. Rarely will a new design for a hospital, school, or office building be judged by the client on the basis of aesthetics alone. The value of the facility will be attributed to how well it helps attract and motivate talent, support the needs of customers, and achieve financial targets. Will the design foster healing, learning, collaboration, creativity, productivity, or profitability? Will performance outcomes be enhanced by the design or is it merely a beautiful expense? WITH THE RIGHT EVIDENCE, DESIGN CAN DELIGHT AND SERVE.

Intuitively, many designers and their clients sense that students learn better, patients heal faster, and office workers produce more in certain types of environments; or, in fact, that the physical environment can influence human well-being and performance. There is mounting evidence that we can influence organizational performance through design but rarely is evidence used to guarantee those outcomes. Why?

In part, we don’t have access to credible, applicable evidence, or we aren’t aware of how to find it. Most of us aren’t educated as researchers and can’t tell whether what we read is good evidence or misinformation. (There’s no TRANSPARENCY about how it was developed and the qualifications of the person who developed it.) Research takes time. If a client doesn’t demand it, why do it? Then there are the fears: loss of control and creativity.

THINGS ARE NOT AS THEY SEEM, IF ONE THINKS THAT THE PROFESSION CAN CONTINUE AS IT IS WITHOUT CHANGE. Clients do expect more than traditional form-making. They are accountable to their organizations to provide more. Designers who offer more are hired; those who deliver more are hired more than once. Designers who don’t accept their clients’ mandate to deliver functional and financial value have been finding their roles diminished.

We must reevaluate how we design and change the tide of how we are perceived. If we can back up our design recommendations with credible evidence, our judgment will appear more dependable and our recommendations will more likely produce the results we’ve promised. Whether that’s merely fulfilling our professional obligations or enhancing our relationships and quality of work is an interesting argument. However we view it, for the design professions to remain viable, the use of evidence that will help us satisfy our clients’ needs on their terms and create places that really work well for people is inevitable.

Things are also not as they seem in terms of the fears we discussed previously. Creativity does exist in science. Intuition plays an important role. Professional judgment will always be needed. Our past proves that we can incorporate evidence without the design process becoming prescriptive. That’s because evidence is not prescriptive. Just as in the legal context, evidence only informs judgment, making it better. Anyone who has served on a jury knows that deliberations are anything but black and white. Lastly, sharing knowledge and learning by doing are ways we can access more evidence, which is indeed sometimes hard to find without great time and effort.

Time for a Makeover

In recent years, a number of design professionals have embraced the notion of evidence-based design practice, as a model for rigorously seeking or conducting research to predict how well specific design proposals will support desired performance outcomes or conversely, inadvertently cause harm. We’ve tried to learn from similar movements in other professions (i.e., medicine, education, engineering) and we’ve questioned the relevance of lessons from those fields to the architectural profession. We’ve challenged both the quality of nonscientific evidence and the applicability of scientific method.

THE HEALTH OF OUR PROFESSION, MEASURED BY THE PERCEIVED AND DELIVERED VALUE OF OUR SERVICES, DEPENDS ON OUR EMBRACING OUR CLIENTS’ MANDATES TO PROVIDE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTS THAT SUPPORT ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES. IN THIS WORLD, THE IMPACTS OF DESIGN ON THE PEOPLE WHO USE THE ENVIRONMENTS MUST BE ANTICIPATED AND RESOLUTIONS PROPOSED THAT INCLUDE VALIDATION THAT DESIGN WILL FACILITATE PROMISED OUTCOMES. EBD CAN DO THIS.

Many proponents of evidenced-based practice agree that we need to look beyond our individual practices and share what we learn across the profession, just as we have traditionally worked together to create and document technical data in codes and standards that provide performance standards for determining appropriate action. Much can be learned from program analysis, client web surveys, and other techniques that are project-specific based. But evidence-based practice must ground itself in broader, deeper data, feasible only from a system that enables us to draw evidence from sources beyond the individual project.

PREVAILING LACK OF KNOWLEDGE OF RESEARCH METHODS IS ANOTHER HURDLE TO JUMP. Few design professionals are trained as researchers or even sensitized to critically evaluate research quality. Our academic settings and professional practice rarely place value on rigorous methodologies for creating and interpreting the information used to inform design. Even the basic steps of scientific method—define the problem, create a hypothesis, test, and document—are seldom followed by designers. Hopefully, the profession will make clear to our educational system that we demand some level of research knowledge as part of basic design education, because it will be as important to our professional success as design and technical capability. In the interim, we can share experience to establish a baseline of professional credibility in EBD.

All of this dialogue (with and without agreement) makes this an exciting time to develop a forward-thinking approach for evidence-based practice, including creating the infrastructure to produce and archive evidence. The profession has progressed to a point where there is interest and awareness of its potential, despite the hesitancy as to how these future opportunities will influence practice. There have been some successes that have established a foundation for additional research. AHEAD OF US AS A PROFESSION IS THE NEED TO ESTABLISH A SET OF STANDARDS AND GUIDELINES TO ASSURE HIGH-QUALITY EVIDENCE AND AN EFFECTIVE SYSTEM FOR CREATING, ARCHIVING, AND DISSEMINATING THIS EVIDENCE.

It is our judgment that this will be the next major transformation of our profession. It will create a context for significant multidisciplinary dialogue and collaborative work between the academies and the profession. These opportunities will excite the research-oriented professionals more than others but we will share the benefits of transformation. But it is a time for our total profession to engage its future.

What Will It Look Like?

William Sackett, a proponent of evidence-based medicine, identifies a core principle of evidence-based medicine as the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of evidence-based medicine, according to Sackett, integrates individual clinical experience with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research.

A similar definition of EBD has been proposed by Kirk Hamilton. Evidence-Based Design is the process of basing decisions about the built environment on credible research to achieve the best possible outcomes. (The Center for Health Design.)

Conceptually, EBD advocates a balanced integration of the skills and experience of the design practitioner, the client’s needs, and critically assessed evidence of various types. THESE INCLUDE EVIDENCE GROUNDED IN RIGOROUS SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY AS WELL AS A CONTINUUM OF LEVELS OF EVIDENCE INCLUDING PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND INTUITION. Art and science of designing are both respected but interpreted each according to its strengths and weaknesses as predictors of design impacts on human outcomes. Both are central to making these outcomes transparent to all of the stakeholders.

Perhaps the most important lesson for EBD from evidence-based medicine is the notion of strength of evidence. By definition, architects integrate various types of evidence—cultural, technical, and artistic. In the practice of architecture, it’s unlikely that the act of designing would deliberately avoid valuable inputs, or at least so it would seem. To the contrary, architects and other designers frequently claim to care about the outcomes of their work. They say they create hospitals that heal, schools that help students learn, and offices that enhance productivity.

Standards vary across and within disciplines. Some give credibility to multiple types of evidence, developed with various methods. Others show a bias for rigorous, systematic, and objective methods, such as randomized experiments—the gold standard of scientific research.

Lastly, the practice of EBD must be based on transparency. Design practices often try to use what we learn for competitive advantage. They are reluctant to be scrutinized. In contrast, the culture of peer review that science embraces ensures quality improvement. Self-conducted research is sometimes publicized but the methods by which data was collected, variables controlled, results analyzed, and findings interpreted are seldom fully revealed.

Without transparent, clear, and complete communication, it’s inevitable that findings will be taken out of context, misapplied, and overgeneralized. All of these ultimately serve clients badly and discredit the process of using evidence. Designers don’t have to become researchers but they do need to understand the basics of how to use research correctly. With greater transparency, practitioners will have greater access to useful knowledge and the ability to effectively judge if the knowledge applies to their project.

The Authors’ Journey

We set out on a journey to explore our theories about evidence-based design in the context of work being done by leading experts. We started with some assumptions and questions:

• Many research methodologies have merit in their respective disciplines. Our assumption is that design can be informed by many of these. The work discussed in the following chapters explores how different methodologies can be used effectively to address different types of design questions. We need to go beyond only postoccupancy evaluations of our own projects to achieve the richness of the examples covered in this book.

• Are some methodologies better suited to most questions that typical design practitioners confront? Some research requires depth of knowledge, time, and funding that most projects can’t sustain. The work in the following chapters makes evident that we can develop some useful evidence during projects that will be sufficient to spark an innovation or provide assurance that client needs are being addressed. Other research, also of value, will have to be conducted outside of project timelines and fees but can then be applied to great benefit.

• We’ve observed a disconnect between some research and the evidence designers need. We’ve presented examples of architectural research that was focused on application and also were reliable in predicting how specific design elements might impact outcomes.

• There is a need to expand beyond our associations with architects, engineers, and contractors to interdisciplinary collaborations that would bring new research methods to the production and translation of evidence for application in design. The work in the following chapters illustrates the benefits of collaboration across disciplines.

• Our premise is that it’s fallacious to depend upon intuition and experience alone. Doing so does not serve our profession well, especially because few architects obtain systematic feedback on actual performance outcomes. There is limited systematic knowledge transfer from project to project or from project to generalized knowledge into the intellectual capital of the profession. We’ve sought and found examples of other ways to develop the knowledge base.

• Once validated evidence is developed, there needs to be an organizational and systematic infrastructure created to store, archive, and provide open-access to individuals, firms, and the profession as a whole. This issue is discussed by experts in the interviews that follow.

• There is a need to establish clear and accepted standards and guidelines for what constitutes credible evidence, how it is nested in terms of other related evidence, and what are the methods and processes for its creation and application.

The work we found on our journey loosely falls into three large categories as a framework for discussion. The focus here is how these three categories of evidence could enhance building performance and human experience, as well as enrich the formal process of designing and making physical environments. Some subcomponents of each of these categories have evidence that is robust and is already used regularly. Others are quite new and are only beginning to have an impact on design decision-making as guarantors of performance outcomes. Still others are only in the incubator stage but show great promise.

1. MODELING, SIMULATION, AND DATA MINING

Modeling is a set of activities that structures innovation, collaboration, and creativity in design by creating physical and virtual models of objects under investigation by designers. This activity is guided by a hypothesis or question that enables the designer to test components or systems as a thinking-by-doing activity. It is an iterative process that provides the framework for testing performance of materials, construction strategies, and other physical phenomena at various scales including scaled models to full-size representations. This process is sometimes referred to as reflective practice—the working through of a design question by making artifacts that represent the intended outcomes, rather than just thinking about the challenge. This approach points out that physical action and cognition are interconnected. Successful designs result from a series of conversations with various phenomena, with the conversation being between the designer and the medium of design, virtual drawings and models, paper, clay, chipboard, and real materials, constantly making and testing the outcomes to observe performance indicators.

Simulation is a process for understanding the interactions of the parts of a system and the system as a whole. A system is an entity, which maintains its existence through the interactions of its parts or components. A model is a simplified representation of the actual system to promote the understanding of the performance of the parts in the context of the whole system. Since all models are simplifications of reality, there is always a trade-off as to