Nobody sets out to become a real estate decision.
What every organisation says
Whatever set it in motion, the story told internally is almost always the same: the decision came from within, and it is for the sake of the people.
It has to be. Which means the building now has to make that true.
New build, relocation, expansion, consolidation.
Four situations, and the same eight stages in each.
What each one costs when it goes wrong, what gets decided in the next few weeks, and where the work of an engagement actually falls.
What it costs when it goes wrong
Every situation has one mistake that costs more than the others, and it is always paid for later: in rent on space that does not work, in a fit-out done twice, in people who leave. Naming it before anything is signed costs nothing.
Every decision is still open, and each one gets more expensive to change from here.
Daylit workspace measures 5–6% higher productivity, and the floor plate settles that before an architect arrives.
A better address can come with a worse building, and the rent goes up either way.
Deeper floor plates, less daylight, worse acoustics. None of it is argued over during a move, and all of it is paid every month for ten years.
You pay for floor area and get no more capacity.
Doubling outdoor air per person raises cognitive scores across eight of nine domains. Adding desks to the same air handling does the opposite.
The money goes into the entrance, and the saving never shows up.
How much space a person has is the strongest single predictor of satisfaction, at an odds ratio of 1.57. Cut it to hit a target and the cost moves from rent to turnover.
Decided in the next few weeks
A handful of decisions commit most of the money, and they are all made before an architect is appointed. They get taken quickly, by whoever has time, and everything after them follows from them.
- Where, and where exactly.
- How much space, on growth you cannot test yet.
- What you sign, and for how long.
- How the first thirty people work, which becomes how three hundred work.
- Where. It narrows everything after it.
- How much space, on an assumption about how people will work.
- Take the building as found, or change it.
- What you carry over, and what you leave behind.
- Extend, add, or move.
- One place or two.
- How much of the growth is real.
- What happens to the people already there.
- How much space to release, and which parts.
- Bring people together, or thin out.
- Improve what remains, or only reduce it.
- What that tells the people who stayed.
Where the weight fallsOur reading
The same eight stages run in every situation. What moves is where the decisions are actually made, and that is where advice is worth buying.
What we gradeOur reading
We hold every building to the same eight conditions. Which of them are worth specifying and defending through the whole project changes with the situation.
How much changesOur reading
Every situation can end in more than one way, and each ending changes a different amount of the organisation. The more that is new at once, the more of it can be set now.
01A new site, a new building
02Your own site, a new building
01Taken as found
02Changed to fit
01New site, new buildings
02New site, additional buildings
03Your site, a new building
04Your building, extended
01The building you have
02A smaller one, elsewhere
The three graded rows are our reading of the four situations. The figures are published in full at The Built Review, each with its study, its DOI and its grade.
Two organisations in the same situation need different buildings.
The situation tells you what is about to be decided. Not what the answer is. Most projects proceed as though those were the same thing. What separates one organisation from another is internal. Known inside, and almost never written down in a form a project can use.
- What you are for
Your purpose, your values, and how the organisation is actually structured around them. Every building serves one thing before the others — research before teaching, care before throughput, focus before collaboration. Decide which, or the site decides for you.
- What you actually do
How the organisation behaves, not how it describes itself. Who needs to be near whom. Where the work actually happens. Which values show up in a calendar. The building gets built for whichever version is written down.
- What you are becoming
A building fixes a set of assumptions for thirty years. Fix the ones you are moving towards, not the ones you are moving away from. Most projects specify the organisation that existed when the budget was approved.
Where this sits
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Situation
Which of the four events brought you here, and what it settles.
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Organisation
What the project has to carry, and what it must not fix in place.
You are here -
Expertise
What the published research supports, graded, for this building type and these people.
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The brief
What the architect and project team work from. In writing.
Evidence tells you what buildings do to people in general. Alignment tells you which of those effects matter for yours.
How we do that →We start with a Decision Brief.
We take three weeks and charge a fixed fee. The report is yours even if we stop there.
What that involves →