METHODOLOGY
Our fields of research mainly concern new tools to better develop projects within the office, tools to better connect with external and far away consultants who collaborate on various projects worldwide.
Among the engineering and digital innovations we had developed big scale 3D printer in collaboration with IAAC, physical 3d scanner for buildings. We use softwares for organization and scheduling of our collaborative projects where many stakeholders are involved, such as the Trello app or BIM procedures for 3d modelling since the very early stages to share informations and datas in real time with all the partners involved in the project.
We try to integrate the largest possible number of stakeholders at an early stage of the design process, to make more effective the feedback from each of them during the project. This strategy creates a high degree of support to the project and helps to encourage ideas that will lead to innovative solutions. To sustain a high level of diversity linked to the specificities of each project, we organize ourselves in several design teams.
We believe that the best value and the quality of architecture emerge from an intensive involvement of all the stakeholders interested in the project: clients, architects, engineers, consultants and manufacturers. It proceeds through a careful analysis of the constraints and specificities of each project as a main driver.
Work with rigor and precision, exploring all the technological possibilities applicable to contemporary architecture and be fully transparent about the applied procedures is the core of our operating policy.
We have a long history of collaborations with other architects, companies and consultants at local, national and international scale. These partnerships aim to optimize our work using specialist skills, guarantee performance and promote effective communication with all stakeholders.
A collaborative design process is structured as follows:
> Regular meetings with clients, consultants and other stakeholders
> Team strategically organized according to the objectives designated phase by phase
> Identify who will be responsible for day-to-day project decisions
> Identify the main objectives in the short and long-term project
> Establish clear lines of communication between stakeholders and to ensure that they are always open
A wide range of skills that reinforce and support our work, such as: 3D modeling, materials research, digital modeling, specialists in rendering and postproduction, as well as experts in communication, marketing, photography and printing are represented by our closer partnersWe strongly believe and offer to all the emplyees equal rights opportunities, our staff is energetic, multilingual and multicultural.
We joined the most important european programs of mobility and training as the new Erasmus Plus or Eurodisea program hosting in our Barcelona offices a selection of students from the best universities in the world.
Since 2015, Josep Wennberg is the co-director of the MAA in workspace design of the Barcelona Design University ELISAVA, Ravi Lopes is also visiting professor at ELISAVA and Pablo Ros is one of the senior MAA tutor at IAAC.
Besides the 4 directors we have a young, dynamic and motivated team supported by a network of external consultants and collaborators with who we share an extraordinary expertise.
SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainability is a key point in our design process all along. Each project seeks to integrate sustainability into the assessment of a global carbon zero economy and the evolution of sustainable design on a larger scale. A perfect solution for a building in Spain or Japan based on local climates and a full life cycle analysis may be inefficient for a similar program in the UK.
We have worked and will continue to work with the best consultants in the field of sustainability to generate design solutions that stand out not only as iconic reference architecture, but also as exemplary environmental programs. Our goal is the sustainability of the buildings we apply to every project these principles suggested by the RIBA:
> Improving biodiversity
> Support to the community
> Use resources efficiently
> Minimize pollution
> Create healthy working and living environments
Sustainability and energy efficiency criterias are a fundamental pillar of our design strategy. In this strategy, the architecture team establish a set of passive criteria (orientation, compactness, isolation, sun protection, selection of materials, etc.) as starting point of the project. Then we ask our partners to improve the energy performance of the building with the use of active measures and renewable energies (photovoltaic, solar, geothermal, pre-treatment of air, biomass, etc.) and optimization of building Conditioning, electricity, plumbing, etc.)
The choice of active and passive strategies are first considered by our internal experts in energy efficiency, helping us to take the right decisions by performing simulations through softwares, results are implemented in the BIM model.
We have previous experiences as sustainable architecture consultants for BNR Energia Srl, a company that deals with renewable energy production at different scales and with photovoltaic, wind and solar systems, mainly in Italy, Germany and UK.
We have planned several photovoltaic power plants, and included in our projects Aerotherm systems of different sizes and power.
FACADE EXPERTS
The projects and research of Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Farshid Moussavi focus mainly in the definition of the “envelope” of the building, either as an essential part of the architectural organism for its energetic behavior, as an active element for the creation of urban spaces/city, but also as an “expression” and representation of a company or public institution to the public.
Josep M. Wennberg, Pablo Ros and Ravi Lopes Calamita took part in many of these projects and studies, acquiring knowledge from the initial stage of the project until the execution on site.
In COLLABORATIVE ARCHITECTURE MAKERS we believe that the external appearance of a building volume, its skin, represents one of the earliest and most primitive architectural elements which materializes the division between inside and outside and therefore we consider it necessary to charge this partition element of a political significance and study it for its real value.
Once studied the functionality of the interior spaces and defined the shape of the building we mainly focus on the definition of its facades. The basic form of a building largely determines its function, and its impact on the urban environment with a variety of results ranging environmental to political, economic to social issues.
Thanks to the studies carried out in recent years and the wide range of projects we have developed through analyzing the shape of the building we can get a wide range of information about the political and social implications that a facade of a building can have, we can then take decisions with greater attention and awareness, rather than just follow trends.
Josep M. Wennberg has prior experience as an expert consultant facades along with Xavier Farres and José Fernandez, highlighting all of the construction of a double brise soleil automated skin for offices enterprise GAES in Barcelona.
One of our collaborators Manuel Tavora was in charge for the design of the John Lewis facade pattern in Birmingham among others and Ravi Lopes Calamita was in charge of the parametric design of Birmingham New Street station north facade reflective double skin.
In an era of subjective approaches to the architectural project a vision oriented to sustainability and functionality is a refreshing counterpoint to the contemporary architectural scene.