Raise the Hammer

Martin, while I would not use such vivid imagery to describe the new library/market, there is something called Post-Occupancy Evaluation.

POE is usually carried out "after the commissioning of use - by trained professionals who are independent consultant and who offer impartial assessment of the place undergoing evaluation - these consultants usually have a social sciences and workplace consulting background."

"Post Occupancy Evaluation involves systematic evaluation of opinion about buildings in use, from the perspective of the people who use them. It assesses how well buildings match users' needs, and identifies ways to improve building design, performance and fitness for purpose. It differs significantly from conventional surveys and market research. It uses the direct, unmediated experiences of building users as the basis for evaluating how a building works for its intended use."

Further there is something called: Facility performance evaluation - FPE is an extension of what had been called 'post-occupancy evaluation.'

"To better understand the impact of early design delivery decisions on long-term efficiency and effectiveness of buildings, and To better understand the impact of building delivery processes and decisions on customer response both initially and over the life cycle of the building."

These criteria should rightfully be used to establish awards for buildings.

The OAA and the CA in many cases fail to use such measures, and so surface form, glitz, and unmitigated fluff is what they end up celebrating - which then goes on to educate lay-people's opinions and tastes.

If such stringent measures as above were used to select award winning architecture - and such strong user feedback was included in this particular nomination, I am quite sure that the award results would have been quite different.

Mahesh P. Butani

Comment edited by Mahesh_P_Butani on 2011-11-25 10:26:09