TY  - UNPB
EP  - 79
TI  - Brief as virtual building: How configurational is a construction brief?
A1  - Gribble, E.
ID  - discovery4978
PB  - UCL (University College London)
N2  - This study explores current briefing practice and tests the proposition that a
construction brief contains sufficient prescriptive information regarding spatial
relationships to constitute a ?virtual building? with its own inequality genotype:
it asks ?how configurational is a construction brief?? Starting from the premise
that space syntax theory (Hillier and Hanson 1984) fills certain logical gaps in
the literature on briefing, it argues that current advice on the briefing process
which states that understanding the client?s organisation is critical, supports the
direct use of space syntax methodology in developing the brief. The research
methods used include an archival study of RIBA Client Design Advisor statements
on briefing, a questionnaire on the content of construction briefs, unstructured
interviews and a syntactic analysis of three generic briefs: government design
guidance on magistrates? courts (CSDG 2004), primary schools (BB99 2004), and
acute mental health units (HBN 35 1996). The findings suggest that architects
conceptualise the briefing process in at least 3 different ways and use a wide
range of techniques to elicit information from the client. That a high proportion of
construction briefs (in this study) include client attitudes and values with spatial
implications and reference to spatial relationships in terms of permeability,
visibility, intelligibility and control. And that generic briefs do encode meaningful
regularities between syntactic measures and institutional attitudes towards
different categories of building user. Despite recommendations that briefing
should start early and continue throughout the project, this study indicates that
in practice briefing is often separated from the design process. It is argued
therefore that the cultural content of a construction brief should be made explicit
so that informed decisions can be made regarding its validity and applicability.
The findings of this study indicate that space syntax methodology could be used
to this end. However, this proposition would need to be tested with a larger
sample of construction briefs before this could be asserted with any confidence.
Finally, further study is proposed into the circumstances in which the benefits of
using generic design guidance, briefing templates and standard briefs outweigh
the costs. It is suggested that this could draw on the ideas of transaction costs
and human error theory.
KW  - Space Syntax
KW  -  Construction Brief
KW  -  Virtual Building
KW  -  Inequality Genotype1
KW  -  Social Construction of Reality
N1  - Approved for UCL Eprints by Dr. L. Vaughan, Bartlett School of Graduate Studies
UR  - https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/4978/
M1  - Masters
AV  - public
Y1  - 2007/09/14/
ER  -