Architecture serves a purpose. It seems simple, yet often this is forgotten. What are the client’s goals and how will they know they are successful? This understanding is why Jerry Baysinger originally called the firm Baysinger Partners. He wanted each employee to be a partner with the client and add to their success.
Each business, non-profit, or even a family has a path to their success. If everything worked as it should, this would be the model. This model form should be supported by the project. We need to understand what about their operation makes them successful. This guides our choices from layout to materials.
Anyone around Jerry Baysinger knows he can tell a good story. Narrative is an important way to share values. Places tell stories and well-crafted design communicates the right narrative to the most people.
Any Design Process requires a team. We need to have representatives of all the stakeholders and the decision makers active in the design process. This is the best way to start to ensure success. We guide meetings with clear objectives and agendas. The right team ensures input will shape the space and integrate the vision into the application of the space.
The vision statement must address what a successful project would achieve for the organization and define the organization’s aspirations. We start each subsequent meeting with this vision at the top of the agenda to make sure our goals for each meeting are working toward the vision. If the vision needs to be altered, the whole group will be a part of that change. Making sure a project has a firm definition puts focus on the task at hand and places the emphasis on the team and organization.
Space design must serve the business operation and business model of the organization. We start with what functions will occur and what space they take. Sounds easy… Making sure the team has thought about the multitude of tasks takes communication and time. Baysinger has a process to bring questions out into the open and make sure you are creating space for your vision.
The “look and feel” of a space communicates the values, brand, and aspirations of the organization. The team brings images to the table and judges likes and dislikes concerning how they work with the vision statement. We look at existing images and what details to keep or discard.
This step makes sure everyone is thinking about the everyday flow of the space. We design adjacencies and spaces between functions. Interactions are the building-blocks of retail or business. Good retail spaces encourage the right interactions and discourage the bad.
The last step in the design process integrates everything we’ve learned and we create a space plan and concept design. The concept is not only the layout, image and materials of the space; it is also the direction, preliminary schedule and preliminary estimate to take the vision and make it reality. We provide computer model walk-thrus that put the team into the space to make sure everyone understands the final product.