Good design is good business
When I sit down with a client, the first questions I hear are usually, “What will this look like?” or “How much will the design cost?” One client asked me those questions ahead of plans to double their workforce, assuming they also needed to double their building footprint. The question I wished they had asked is, “What value can we create together?”
Jane Cassidy Distinguished Technical Leader - Director, GHD Design
I explained that by reworking their existing space, they could avoid an expensive and potentially wasteful new build. Good design earns its place early in these conversations by testing assumptions before a project gathers speed. In this case, it saved the client billions of dollars — not just in the financial and environmental costs of a needless new build, but also in the lifetime running costs of those buildings. Architecture’s value is as much about experience as it is finances. We instinctively understand the importance of the user experience in the world of technology. Buildings are no different. They shape how we work, learn and connect every day. For centuries, architects have been weighing how much money, environmental impact, risk and time a project will take against how people experience the value created. Much like the best CEOs, good architects lean into that complexity early, making decisions without complete information to steer a project away from overspend or redundancy. In other words, good design is good business. It’s a maxim coined by IBM’s midcentury CEO Thomas Watson Jr., who turned design from an afterthought into a core corporate strategy. The worlds of tech and product have cleaved to it ever since, integrating design into boardroom discussions as second nature.¹ The built environment has just as strong a claim to encapsulating the value of that idea. This is easy to forget in a world where public (and often client) thinking is shaped by social media trained us to judge a building by how well it photographs. Treating architecture as purely cosmetic misses an opportunity to create value for clients and communities.
Doing so also ignores architects’ roles as optimisers and integrators. Our value proposition to clients is that we know how to “do more with less.” Of course, beauty matters, but design is strongest when it comes from clear business decisions about value and use. Commercial discipline is inherent in that applied creativity. A study by Accenture’s creative and technology arm found that 81 percent of business leaders say their organisations can generate creative ideas, but only 16 percent turn them into growth. Like that 16 percent, architects can generate creative ideas and are trained to apply them, delivering better outcomes.² Understood properly, good design delivers better assets long before concrete is polished or engineered oak is installed. The highest cost on any project is not construction; it’'s making decisions too late. The later the decision, the higher the cost Later-stage changes become more expensive, disruptive and carbon-intensive.
Early-stage design decisions have the highest
influence on value and the
lowest cost to change.
4 | GHD | Nexus Magazine
Nexus Magazine | GHD | 5
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