AENA has developed unique architectural solutions by working closely with each client, understanding and analyzing the conditions at every project site, and identifying undiscovered parameters and opportunities for sustainable design solutions. By utilizing our integrated design approach we analyze our projects through multi-disciplinary interaction to find the most appropriate design solution within the context of the project parameters, goals, and expectations.
We believe each project brings a unique combination of site opportunities or constraints, client requirements, market responses, and oversight parameters, as well as specific architectural programs that present challenges from which grow interesting and varied design solutions. We pride ourselves on our ability to communicate and to listen while bringing the necessary level of experience to each projects development. We believe that these skills have contributed significantly to our success in implementing projects of all scales.
We follow a multi-step process for all of our design work: Context, Analysis, Options, and Design. During each of these phases, we asses the overall project direction and goals in relation to our initial decisions and thereby check our results to asses overall progress. We believe the process must be streamlined and efficient, and that both we and the client must make rational and timely decisions to maintain project focus and momentum.
Context is the collection of basic information such as project background, site review, team formation, and the first establishment of project goals and expectations. It is during this step that we form the basis and understanding that will be developed throughout the process into an appropriate design solution and begins to assure that we meet our project goals and expectations, or form an appropriate basis to modify those goals and expectations.
Analysis involves a comprehensive review of policies, goals, community issues, economic parameters, physical conditions and constraints. This important step concludes with agreed-upon design and development principles that establish the rationale for the overall scheme and guide the rest of the work.
The Options process entails the articulation of different design alternatives based on previously established project principles and culminates in the selection of a preferred option. Throughout this phase of the process, the emphasis is on building consensus within the design and client team, ensuring that key issues are resolved and agreement reached before proceeding to the next stage of work. Ideas are pursued through research and iterations of physical and digital models. We have organized our studio to facilitate an open exchange of ideas, allowing each project to be enriched by the perspectives and discoveries of other projects and maintaining a creative dialogue between built projects, competitions, and speculative investigations. To each stage, client comment periods are included in our work schedules following each major phase.
During these periods, the client can confer with others and provide additional responses to the team. Since work will proceed to the next stage only when consensus is reached, work on subsequent tasks can be properly focused, and there is a shared understanding of the goals throughout the entire project.
The Design is the result of a process in which both clients and the design team finalize their ideas and develop precise visual tools to truly understand what the end solution will be. This is accomplished through an intensive set of discovery meetings for the client to understand and comment on the progress of the design. Communication is imperative so that solutions are found that best suit client needs and reinforce the principles established and reinforced throughout the design process.
