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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 what level of detail is included in the model. Too little detail risks missing relevant interactions. Too much detail may overcomplicate the model, making it difficult to understand the nature of the interactions. Simulation is generally referred to as a computational version of a model. Simulations are generally iterative. One develops a model, simulates it, learns from the simulation, revisits the model, and resimulates the condition until an adequate level of understanding of the relationships of the parts to the whole is reached.
Critical to both of these technologies is the willingness of the designer to create a hypothesis about an artifact to be tested, either physically or virtually, knowing the perception of the artifact is incomplete or maybe even wrong. The iterative process of testing and evaluation, modeling, or simulating transforms an artifact toward some specific articulated performance outcome, use/activity, light, behavior, etc. This process is not about rationalizing an idea or a vision, but one of transformation of ideas and visions to meet specific performance outcomes. The more rigorous and transparent the performance outcomes, the more transparent the design process will become connecting the artifact to evidence that supports increases in performance.
Data mining is the extraction of hidden relationships from large databases. This is a powerful new technology with great potential in helping organizations focus on the most important information in their data warehouses—their organization's intellectual capital. The literature refers to this process as "super crunching." The data used to capture and record these found relationships comes from many diverse sources (i.e., personal experience, completed projects records and documentation, and other artifacts developed to support organizational activity). This process of data crunching can suggest predictive future trends and behaviors, and the identification of important questions or hypotheses about future activities and directions within a project or organizational setting. This process of mining data allows organizations and individuals to make proactive and evidence-based, knowledge-driven decisions rooted on these predictive futures. Designers and their associated professions—engineering, construction, planning, and other design entities—have large sets of data, usually project-specific, but what is missing is the infrastructure to access and utilize this data in a longitudinal sense. Data mining and its associated tools provide a platform for creating this new infrastructure with the capacity to capture, share, understand, and utilize the existing data across and within our professions.
The use of evidence gained through study of the social sciences provides understanding of human behavior through scientific explanation. The process explores human desires, preferences, attitudes, perceptions, and motivations. Of most relevance to design are sociology and psychology. The discipline of environmental psychology specifically addresses the convergence of the two fields but other social science research, such as developmental and cognitive psychology, can enrich a designer's understanding of the behaviors to be supported—or transformed—by the environment. Social science contributes to informed design by providing methodologies with which place-behavior relationships can be studied, as well as knowledge about why people behave as they do and why they might respond to physical surroundings in predictable ways.
The Physical and Natural Sciences
Within the sciences, the physical and natural sciences are often seen as a single category that is contrasted to the social sciences. While the physical and natural are considered to be "hard sciences," using similar research bases and methodologies, they are in fact two very distinct sciences when related to architecture. The physical sciences, especially physics, have a long history that provides a foundation for architectural design of structures, mechanical and electrical systems, and the process of "making." Today, the physical sciences continue to provide a rich area of research in issues related to building performance.
In many instances, the incentive for this research is being driven by a global commitment to the design of more sustainable buildings that reflect energy-conserving approaches to design, improved building systems, and creation of new and innovative sustainable materials. On a global scale, research and advances in building sciences are being driven by a need for more advanced technologies to build taller structures with new systems and materials or new environmental technologies to respond to harsh geographic conditions. Sources for both of these advances come from research groups related to academic institutions, private industry manufacturers, and architectural practitioners seeking more responsive design approaches.
The natural sciences, with a foundation in biology, have had less of a direct impact on architecture than have the physical sciences. However, that's about to change! Within the past 25 to 30 years, the field of Neuroscience has blossomed and has stimulated an interest by neuroscientists in understanding how, why, and what parts of the brain respond to environmental stimuli and experiences, including light, sound, scale, proportion, perspective, and the like—all tools used by architects in design.
The focus of neuroscience and the cognitive sciences has unlocked a new domain for understanding human performance in physical settings. The research that is emerging from the disciplines of neuroscience and the cognitive sciences is providing new directions for developing and utilizing research evidence for use in an evidence-based design practice. By capturing the mental processes from scans of the brain, as a person moves, sees, hears, and experiences motion in space, one can correlate physiological measures with issues of stress, satisfaction, and emotion. This understanding can then be used as evidence to predict the impact of physical spatial attributes on human performance. This is a new arena for both the production and utilization of evidence; and it holds great promise for the future of the design professions.
If an understanding and collaboration with physical science represents the sophistication of tools available to us today, then neuroscience represents an equally sophisticated but yet untapped future for collaboration.
THE DIALOGUE THAT WILL CLARIFY A DIRECTION FOR THIS NEW INNOVATIVE AND FORWARD-THINKING FUTURE IS CRITICAL, AS IT WILL DEFINE OUR ROLES AS DESIGN PROFESSIONALS. IT WILL ALSO SET THE AGENDAS FOR OUR ACADEMIES, WITH WHICH THEY WILL ESTABLISH GUIDELINES FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF EVIDENCE-BASED PROFESSIONALS.
The primary goal of this book is to focus on the future of evidence-based practice and the mechanisms that would produce a new direction for the future of design professionals. The book does not look back at where we have been, but intentionally looks forward to help chart a map that moves into that future. The chapters that follow document the richness of work currently being undertaken by researchers and practitioners in a variety of fields that are establishing that new future.
The people that were selected are individuals who focus on innovation by utilizing twenty-first-century technologies, methods, and disciplinary content to explore this new frontier. The questions they are asking, the methods they are utilizing, and the outcomes they are producing, are making major contributions to redefining the landscape of design, architecture, and construction. In the majority of cases these are people who are working on projects that are organized around interdisciplinary teams or are creating new transdisciplinary organizations. They are applying new computational technologies, scientific discoveries, and organizational agendas to resolve the challenges of the day—sustainability, human performance, environmental degradation, and transportation alternatives; at the same time as they are developing new models of work—innovative research methods, fabrication technologies, and performance-predictive tools.
The next three chapters document the interviews with the selected individuals. Each interview was guided by a set of eight questions. These questions represented only the beginning points of the dynamic process of engaging each of the interviewees in a dialogue about their work and how evidence is a major component of their process of working on critical design issues. These base questions helped facilitate further discussion about the interviewees' contributions to specific projects and to an infrastructure for producing evidence. The base questions listed below were only launching points and the detailed questions in each interview were a means to bore deeper into the interviewees' work and process.
How do you use research in your work and how does it inform design?
How is evidence produced and how does evidence influence your work?
What are the core methods, skills, and values needed to do evidence-based design or to produce evidence in your practice or institutional setting?
Does the use of evidence inhibit or enhance the nature of your work?
How does interdisciplinary collaboration play a part in your work?
How much evidence is enough and what makes it credible?
How are the outcomes of your work translated so that they can be generalized and used by others?
From your perspective what should be the future models of education and practice to support an evidence-based practice?
In some cases the interviews are followed by case studies that address four important questions:
What was the research question?
What was the research method?
What were the research outcomes?
How did they inform design?
Following the three chapters about the three categories of evidence-based design are two major case studies. One is of the new California Academy of Science and the second is a summary of the outcomes from the 2005 College of Fellows of American Institute of Architects Latrobe Fellowship. The first case study documents an important new building where formal visions and ideas are supported, refined, and strengthened by bringing evidence from other disciplines to increase building and human performance, and enhance the human experience through architecture.
The second case study, The 2005 Latrobe Fellowship, was awarded to Chong Partners Architecture (now Stantec Architecture), Kaiser Permanente, and the University of California, Berkeley, to explore the use of evidence from the social and physiological sciences to better understand human response to design, and thereby make better design decisions.
The research focused specifically on health-care environments and the question of whether design can aid healing. (Reduced "time to heal" and medical errors, in turn, increase hospital financial performance.) Credible evidence of design impacts on healing and errors does exist; but so do assertions based on very weak indicators. The Latrobe research sought a model for creating evidence that would be reliably strong. Chapter 6 summarizes the processes and outcomes of that research effort conducted in a collaborative format.
IT IS CLEAR THAT INNOVATION IS ALL AROUND US. EXTRAORDINARY EFFORTS TO BETTER DESCRIBE AND APPLY EVIDENCE ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN DESIGN AND HUMAN PERFORMANCE ARE BEING UNDERTAKEN BY PEOPLE FROM VARIOUS DISCIPLINES AND WITH DIFFERING PERSPECTIVES AS ILLUSTRATED IN THE INTERVIEWS. THESE EFFORTS WILL MOVE FORWARD THE ACCEPTANCE OF EBD AS A PROCESS; WILL ENLARGE THE BODY OF KNOWLEDGE AVAILABLE TO THE PROFESSION; AND WILL IMPROVE OUR ABILITY TO ANTICIPATE, IF NOT PREDICT, WAYS TO USE DESIGN TO ENRICH LIVES.