Design CREATIVITY is interactive

participation from the BOTTOM UP...

Our interactive DESIGN WORKSHOP PROCESS involves the
the real experts of your project - YOU !!!

DESIGN "UNFOCUS" GROUPS

Our talent and passion since our founding in 1987 is focused on creating SUSTAINABLE particpatory assembly environments. Every single one of these images you see here in our web pages represent a dynamic integrated design process alongside over 200,000 people DIRECTLY INVOLVED in the design process with "Design Unfocus Groups".

That's why they all look so different !

We know that a facility, at the end of the day, well... facilitates, in this case, the gathering of peolpe, LITURGY a.k.a. - a way of doing things together - in our postmodern culture, both SECULAR and SACRED.

Our eyes and ears are windows into our SOUL SPACE which is an inherent FUSION DESIGN of connecting the short distance, yet great chasm, between our head and our heart.

The BODY LANGUAGE for PERFORMANCE is to "sit back relax and enjoy the show", but the BODY LANGUAGE of PARTICIPATION is about recovering the lost art of intimacy and connectedness in assembly environments.

WHY UNFOCUS ?

Well, frankly, because FOCUS is what got us in this modern mess to begin with. The "MODE" of the thankfully shortlived "modern" movement sought to streamline everything to the same approach whether secular or sacred with an intense focus on linear singularity. Now that we've seen how that turned out, there is a movement to reconnect with our NON-LINEAR forebears before the attempt at all this sameness began, hence the Post-Modern world in which we now live together.

Connected in ways as never before it is important to UNFOCUS a little - take off your glasses, remove your contacts, blur you eyes a little - ZOOM OUT so that we can more clearly see the bigger picture. Only then do we have the perspective to ZOOM IN and back down into the here and now in light of the constantly changing world around us.

Post-Modern is an overused word so lets just refer to it as A LA AMODE...in the style of what used to be, to which we've returned all the wiser. Now it's possible to design as our forebears before electricity did - from the INSIDE-OUT and the OUTSIDE-IN at the same time...

NATURAL ASSEMBLY ENVIRONMENTS

In the "STANDARD" architectural design process for an assembly space, the steps are linear and compartmentalized: an architect designs the space and then turns it over to engineers to design the "sound system". By then however, in such a modern REACTIVE design process, any impact that the natural acoustic and natural lighting qualities of the space that COULD have leveraged your creative DNA are significantly reduced – often to a small fraction of what they could be. And these natural acoustic qualities are difficult, EXPENSIVE and, in some cases, IMPOSSIBLE to recover with technology. In short, you begin at Minus 20 and your creative arts folks constantly struggle over the life of the facility to even get close to Zero, creative energy lost forever in the abyss of the muddy ECHO of REACTIVITY.

However, in OUR PROACTIVE DESIGN UNFOCUS PROCESS we actually BEGIN like designers did hundreds of years ago...

Much more PROACTIVE by framing your functional creative desire FIRST, then fashioning the natural qualities of the assembly environment and THEN and ONLY THEN designing the Audio, Video and Lighting technical systems around THAT. Inherent in this process is an ongoing discussion seeking a PHILOSOPHY of TECHNOLOGY based on your DNA which forms the basis for the project design and more importantly the potential future functions of which we often have little clarity this far into the past.

So we seek much more than the limited eyesight of mere FLEXIBILITY (what might be in a year or so), to the 20/20 foresight of full on ADAPABILITY - what our kids are going to do ten years from now, of which frankly, we haven't a clue.

WE DON'T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS...

Let's face it, we don't even know what the QUESTIONS are (yet).

But we do know how to COLLECTIVELY and COLLABORATIVELY come alongside you to help you create a CONTEXT for helping you formulate the questions and the ANSWERS will then come easy. This will be important throughouot the life of the facility becasue the questions will change often.

So, if this INTUITIVE, INTERACTIVE, INTENSE, PROACTIVE DESIGN PROCESS sounds familiar, it actually is.

It is very similar to how facilities were planned, designed, built and paid for before everything and everyone became modern, but disconnected specialists in the last 100 years you know - before electricity. We’ve simply added back the singular integration of the ancient world while honoring the plurality of the specialty disciplines of our global post-modern world. And we've restored the collaborative factor where those who will actually use the building are involved in its creation in light of its FUTURE FUNCTION.

One size does not fit all, so we spend time together fashioning a right-sized design process tailored to your specific DNA. Our role is that of "PARACLETE" (Greek) – coming alongside you - in a co-creative role. You have heard it said that it’s all in the timing? Well, the real key is timing AND balance in the daily juggle of life in the reality of a postmodern world.

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