181R_Built environment prototyping for design-value (research summary)

Are you interested in how to make prototypes for the built environment?

Summary of the article titled Built environment prototyping for design-value from 2023 by Darcy Zelenko and Duncan Maxwell, published in the Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023.

This is a great preparation for our next interviewee, Ted Baillieu in episode 182 talking about why experimenting with the built environment is very important.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how we could use prototyping to trial specific solutions. This article proves the prototyping is a value-adding activity but there are inherent fragmentations for the built environment disciplines.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

Prototyping in the built environment, less common than in industries like engineering or software development, plays a crucial role in refining complex designs before construction, underscoring the need for its wider adoption and more integrated methods.
While prototyping enhances design quality, communication, and decision-making efficiency, its underutilization in the built environment limits knowledge sharing and the adoption of efficient construction methodologies, such as Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA).
There is a significant opportunity for advancement in the built environment by developing an integrated prototyping model that combines idea conceptualization and physical implementation, tailored to its unique requirements, which could transform practices and lead to more efficient, resource-saving buildings.

Find the article through this link.

Abstract: The built environment is hindered by issues relating to laggard productivity, with practitioners looking to pursue sector-wide industrialisation and digitisation to improve this issue. Contrastingly, industries that have achieved widespread industrialisation and digitisation also possess developed prototyping cultures. Within these industries, prototyping approaches are tailored to suit the nature of the specific output product. Prototyping in the built environment acts as a tool for representation, testing, and communication. Prototyping approaches vary across the constituent disciplines with a lack of influential approaches or methods of the kind illustrated in other industries. This paper uses critical analysis to review prototyping literature from influential approaches found in engineering design, software development, and design management. These are compared to approaches used in the built environment disciples of architecture, engineering, and construction research. The findings confirm that prototyping is a value-adding activity, but suggest that prototyping cultures and outcomes in the built environment are inhibited by fragmentation that is inherent in the discipline. Future research could surround the development of prototyping approaches that enable practitioners to get the most out of the process. Such a protoyping approach would that also recognises that the creation of buildings requires both idea conceptualisation, and physical implementation to deliver quality outcomes.

Connecting episode you might be interested in:

No.168 - Interview with Jennifer George about experimenting instead of trial and error;

You can find the transcript through ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠this link⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.

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