How We Work
We feel that our best work comes from a collaborative, supportive environment where everyone feels that they have a chance to be heard. Great design shouldn't be the product of arrogance and ego, but a generative, supportive process, where the end result reflects the input and ideas of everyone involved.
Integrated Team
We run an integrated team, with those in leadership positions involved from inception through completion. We find this continuity of knowledge creates a more efficient design and construction process, provides consistent contacts for the client for the duration of the project, and gives our architects a stronger sense of responsibility for the final outcome.
An Open Design Process
We encourage an open, collaborative environment within our office. Great ideas can come from anyone on the team, and design inspiration from a range of sources, including art, science, history or philosophy. We also see our design partners and clients as part of that collaboration: we never walk into a meeting with a preconceived notion of how a project should work, look, or feel. Instead, we try to understand what our client's priorities are, and then we develop a variety of possible solutions that best meet those needs.
We don't show up with a design in mind and try to force it on our clients.
We Work Iteratively
Our process is iterative. Our typical workflow begins with an intense dialogue between architects and stakeholders on how to create value for a particular site. We create a list of priorities based on what our client is looking to accomplish, and then we explore dozens of options to test performance and gauge the impact on those priorities of each possible solution. This process provides data about the value of one scheme over another, and helps our clients to make an informed decision about design direction.
Design Technology
Handel Architects is at the forefront of delivering the benefits of technology to our clients. While some of the evaluation criteria require a qualitative analysis by our team, we are able to analyze others quantitatively using our in-house expertise in computational design. Our Computational Design Team leverages computer scripting to study design approaches through simulation, performance analysis, geometrical modeling, and numerical evaluation.