“Informed” executive designs: research and professional practice to improve the built environment

Abstract

The contribution of technological innovations to design choices, like in many industrial sectors, does not always correspond to controlled improvement of the built environment. Integrating feedback from the physical and cultural context of construction is a challenge for the future of the profession.
International studies dedicate resources in order to monitor constructions and to develop executive designs that are evidence-based. Professional associations, research institutes and universities experiment with models for integrating specialist skills into a commitment that is unsustainable for most architects. Based on these experiences, this contribution considers an informed and reliable process of ideation-construction in pursuit of build quality.