ABSTRACT
Again like people, places don’t mean much to us until we feel something about them. We, therefore, still as a group, consider what moods the place’s parts have. What feelings do these induce in us? We now make coloured ‘mood maps’ to supplement our biography and/or experience-sequence maps and physical-description annotated maps. Through these three layers, a place begins to reveal its essence, its spirit-of-place. We are now ready to ask how, in human terms, the place would describe itself. This is about what the place says – the subliminal message everyone responds to, though few are conscious of. And we, as a group, have reached this conscious recognition through consensus. This brings us to the obvious question: ‘What should the project say?’ Whether thought about or not, this value-message lies at the heart of every project. If we can’t agree this, nothing will ever get off the ground. We try therefore, to encapsulate it in a few words. What activities will take place? Each activity has a different mood ‘colour’. This activity-mood is further differentiated: an exclusive cellar restaurant feels different from a fast-food bar; a Rembrandt-like library from a Mondrian-like one. To support the spirit-of-project, what mood should each activity have? Where on the site does this activity-mood belong? The previously pegged out ‘mood-boundaries’ form the limits of these activity-mood-places. The actual form of each place, however, needs a gesture to support the chosen mood. Because this gesture isn’t about personal preferences, but is servant to mood, which in turn is servant to spirit-of-project, it’s easy to agree. For context-affected developments, both place-moods and gestures must accommodate likely futures. Where experience sequence is critical, we ask: ‘What flow of movement would support the
The Consensus Design Process
Place-Study Stage
First impressions (in silence)
Physical description
Biography: past → present → future
and/or Entry journey: spatial sequence
Constituent-places’ moods
What does the whole place ‘say’?
