Added value of good design

Abstract

The objectives of this paper are to review current research about the social and economic benefits associated with a well-designed built environment, to put the case for new methods that enable these sorts of benefits to be adequately captured, to speculate about what these new methods might look like, and, finally, to put forward an agenda outlining where new research is needed. Many reviews, primarily from the UK and US literature, are examined to illustrate the nature and diversity of recent, largely descriptive, research into the impact of good design on social and economic outcomes. It is argued that the likelihood of the research being taken up is limited because of the difficulty in capturing the value intangible benefits. The results from three workshops identified the types of value delivered by the built environment, the stakeholders to whom value accrues, the possibilities for new valuation methods and their implementation, and what new research is needed. Five groups of stakeholders emerged between whom value is exchanged; and six main types of value that the built environment delivers were identified: social value, cultural value, image value, economic value, use value and environmental value. Value maps, matrices and probability curves are put forward as possible approaches for exploring and capturing these varied sorts of value, while developments in brand valuation and environmental economics are identified as having potential application in the built environment. Although knowledge of the tangible and intangible benefits that arise from good design is growing, better information together with improved valuation methods and a new attitude towards evidence-based design are all needed if the built environment is to reflect the emerging understanding.

Il s'agit dans cet article de faire le point sur les recherches actuelles concernant les avantages sociaux et économiques associés à un milieu bâti bien conçu afin de présenter des arguments en faveur de nouvelles méthodes permettant que ces avantages soient correctement saisis; il s'agit aussi de spéculer sur l'aspect que pourraient prendre ces nouvelles méthodes et, enfin, de proposer un programme comportant de nouveaux axes de recherche. L'auteur examine un certain nombre de documents, extraits surtout de la littérature britannique et américaine, afin d'illustrer la nature et la diversité des recherches récemment menées, largement descriptives, portant sur l'impact d'une bonne conception sur les résultats sociaux et économiques. L'auteur fait valoir que la vraisemblance des recherches entreprises est limitée du fait de la difficulté de saisir les avantages intangibles en terme de valeur. Les résultats de trois ateliers ont permis de recenser les types de valeur fournie par le milieu bâti, les parties prenantes pour lesquelles la valeur s'accroît, les possibilités de nouvelles méthodes d'évaluation et leur mise en œuvre ainsi que les nouvelles recherches à mener. Cinq groupes d'intervenants se dégagent entre lesquels la valeur est échangée; six grands types de valeurs que fournit le milieu bâti ont été identifiés: valeur sociale, valeur culturelle, valeur de l'image, valeur économique, valeur d'usage et valeur environnementale. Des cartes, des matrices et des courbes de probabilité de valeur sont proposées comme méthodes possibles d'exploration et de capture de ces diverses sortes de valeurs; l'article recense également des travaux de développement dans le domaine de l'évaluation des marques et de l'économie environnementale qui pourraient trouver des applications potentielles dans le milieu bâti. Bien que l'on connaisse de mieux en mieux les avantages tangibles et intangibles qui découlent des deux conceptions, il convient également d'avoir de meilleures informations et de meilleures méthodes d'évaluation ainsi qu'une nouvelle attitude envers des conceptions basées sur l'évidence si l'on veut que le milieu bâti reflète la vision commune qui émerge.

Mots clés: valeur ajoutée, valeur culturelle, qualité de la conception, conception, valeur économique, valeur environnementale, valeur de l'image, biens intangibles, valeur sociale, valeur d'usage, méthodes d'évaluation.

Keywords:

• added value
• cultural value
• design quality
• design
• economic value
• environmental value
• image value
• intangibles
• social value
• use value
• valuation methods

Acknowledgements

The workshops reported here were organized as part of the project Better Designed Buildings: Improving the Valuation of Intangibles, which I led and which was made possible by partial support from the DTI under the Partners in Innovation programme. A steering group included representatives from CABE, the CIC, RIBA and RICS, and the project was managed on behalf of the DTI by Davis Langdon Consultancy. The paper also draws extensively on material that I compiled as author of the Be/nCRISP Value Task Group report – comprising both published material and the deliberations of the group at its meetings held between late 2003 and early 2005. I am grateful to Be's research director, Malcolm Dodds, for extensive assistance as convenor of the group. I am particularly indebted to Richard Saxon, who chaired the task group and who himself has written the recent industry guide Be Valuable (Saxon, 2005).

Notes

1. A notable exception is the Environmental Design Research Association, which has successfully continued to run conferences every year since 1969.

2. For example, the DoE's Partners in Technology (later the DTI's Partners in Innovation); Construction as a Manufacturing Process (EPSRC); Integration in Design and Construction (DoE/EPSRC); and Meeting Clients' Needs through Standardisation (DoE/EPSRC). The Movement for Innovation and Construction Best Practice programme were both started independently in 1997 and came together under the banner of Rethinking Construction before being consolidated as Constructing Excellence (CE). The Housing Forum was inaugurated to carry forward new process ideas into the housing sector. The Reading Construction Forum and the Design Build Foundation were each formed in the mid-1990s following the Latham (1994) Report, and were later consolidated as Collaborating for the Built Environment (Be). In early 2005, CE and Be merged to form Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment.

3. See the Building Research & Information special issue on ‘Design Quality’, 31(5) (2003).

4. See the Building Research & Information special issue on ‘Post-occupancy Evaluation’, 29(2) (2001).

5. A six-way model of stakeholder value exchange is given by Saxon (2005) and was devised simultaneously but independently of that given here. In Saxon's model, the stakeholders are staff, the occupying organization, the consumer, the facilities manager, the government and the investor, and all 15 bilateral exchanges of value between the six stakeholder groups are described.

6. As one delegate stated, ‘buildings are typically below the business radar’.

7. Ironically, evidence-based medicine is already being criticized as an over-used term! (http://ad-libitum.blogspot.com/2005/06/resistance-to-evidence-based-medicine.html).