Design is a process not an aesthetic outcome: just as there is a lot more to culture than Art and Opera.

Design is totally reliant on knowledge: extensive knowledge about the environment. The environment is everything (biophysical, social, cultural and experiential). Architecture is designing a small functioning part of the environment. This broad knowledge cannot be held by a designer (although they usually understand experience, perception, space, functional relationships and aesthetic outcomes well) so design has to be inclusive, even social –more heads.

The environment is complex (interactions/ecologies) and design is way people deal with complex situations.

Design is iterative: knowledge/understanding allows proposals which are tested in numerous ways. This testing is also reliant on knowledge and inclusion. The outcome of this testing is changes, importantly, new knowledge/understanding and a fuller understanding of the design “problem”(brief). So, design is a heuristic: we learn, understand what we’re doing and communicate what we’re doing through design.

Gall & Medek exploit these aspects of a proper design process to develop design outcomes for a wide range of project types. The projects we have worked on illustrate this. We engage with sources of knowledge (operational, technical, etc.) by bringing people to the design process. We, form a Design Team early in the design process.

Our work in sustaining/ sustainable development requires broader knowledge than normal architecture (which seeks to reduce input rather than gather it). Therefore we have expertise in the application of the design process rather than technical expertise related to specific building types.

To facilitate the design process we have developed a knowledge structure. This simply sorts out the types of information being brought to the design process.

The outcomes of our projects are varied at a number of levels (materials, form, etc.). We do not a have an office look”. This is because the design process delivers response to particular places, people and priorities. And sustainable responses to the various environmental impacts of a building will, to a large but not total extent, deliver an aesthetic direction.