It's a Team Work

This week we zoomed into the roles of various stakeholders in the planning and design process. Two speakers , Allan ; a real estate developer and Cindy; a transit designer introduced to us their spheres of activity. Any development is carried on for returns, only the nature of expected returns varies. If the private sector wants monetary returns, the government seeks the goodwill of people. They are the fount of capital for the project and therefore its essential that they are convinced of the value of the project.

The designers need to know their demands and stakes to make a project feasible. To the government, enhancing quality of life, creating employment opportunities might be top priority and the project needs to support these. As a student, this introduces me to the real world where the design is much more than its 'aesthetics', its attributes much wider than what we often address in the studio.

One good piece of advice we got from Allan was to be very blunt with our clients in communicating the viability of the project . The market is studied to know whats legally, physically and financially feasible and the project aims to maximize their value . However, if after the analysis, the project doesn't make sense then it got to be communicated to avoid any complications later. Its all about making sense of the work we do and to check that nothing goes without a good reason for its execution.

Cindy further elaborated on this by highlighting the importance of conducting our case studies in a scientific manner and approach our design based on these. She explained that since we don't work in a vacuum we need to know the preexisting conditions and problems to address them when we design. Listing various methods of study, she explained how the proposal is a pure product of analysis, identification of issues and resulting solutions. One major challenge of urban design i see these days is to achieve a pedestrian friendly environment and yet to allow for a smooth flow of vehicular movement. The various layers of movement exists in a city and its a challenge of the designer to coordinate to achieve the maximum functionality and synchronize them to achieve a unified system. Its here that we need to bank on the expertise of the transit designers to help solve this effectively and creatively.

The seminar this week left me feeling very connected to the actual design process and comforted in the knowledge that we have the support of such experts to ensure that design is taken care to the last detail.