ABSTRACT
The importance of weaving an analytical approach through a creative design process was advocated by Louis Kahn, who called for a greater integration of the unmeasurable and measurable in the building design process. The built environment cannot and should not be designed without addressing its physical, social, cultural, economic and environmental context. It is important to establish collective goals for a design firm upfront, both in terms of process and convictions as well as desired outcomes. Although firm-wide, many different environmental analysis tools are used by HOK’s design teams, a general lean has been towards analysis tools that are easily integrated with design software. Once the tower massing was more or less finalised with the client, the team turned its focus to developing a design for its skin that carried the design idea of a vertical volume while ensuring that it responded to its external environment.
