Module 1 - Design Project Brief: Design Inspirations & Big Feature Ideas

Module 1 - Design Project Brief: Design Inspirations & Big Feature Ideas

Focus

The focus of this first stage in the process of creating your integrated design project is to identify some big design ideas and creative building features that capture your imagination and that you’d consider exploring in your design:

  • Design Inspirations
  • Big Design Ideas
  • Innovative Building / System Features

Recommended Approach

At this point in the process, it will probably be most helpful to work with inspiration photos, web clippings, sketches, and snippets of ideas.  Don’t worry about creating detailed building models just yet -- that will come in future iterations after you’ve developed your design strategy.

For this check-in, focus on creative exploration and fluid thinking.

Thinking Ahead

In the weeks ahead, we’ll develop these big ideas into a detailed building design.  If it helps your creative process, you can start thinking ahead to:

Design Goals and Strategies (Module 3)

  • What are the big sustainability goals that you’d like to explore in you design?
  • How would you measure them?
  • What types of strategies would you consider for meeting those goals?

Building Form and Massing (Module 4)

  • Overall shape and form of your proposed design
  • What will work best for meeting the program requirements as well as supporting your sustainable design strategies

But don’t dive too deeply into those issues yet!  Keep this check-in very high level and focussed on potential ideas to explore in your design.

Progress Check-In / Documenting Your Design Journey

About Design Journal Entries

You’ll also be sharing your ongoing design process and progress with others in our class community through a posting in an online Design Journal using Notion.

Feel free to use whatever format best captures the ideas that you want to share -- text, images, sketches, photos of hand sketches, intermediate models, results of analyses, and so on.

For this class, your design process is as important as the final result.

Post a Design Journal Entry

Create a new posting sharing your first Design Journal entry on this linked Notion page:

✏️Design Project Check-In: Design Inspirations & Big Feature Ideas

Weekly Design Project Check-In

You’ll sign up for an appointment next week with a member of the teaching team to review your progress and share tips about how to proceed.