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Image of Saviour of the Spilled Blood, Russian Orthodox Church, located in St Petersburg. It was built between 1883-1907

What’s the Common Denominator in Design Projects?

Written by Charles Nelson - January 29, 2025

Every design practice, its clients, project inputs, teams, and performance requirements, are unique. Yet our core processes, which produce unique outcomes, are remarkably consistent. That, precisely, is what defines our work as a profession.

I first saw this with absolute clarity on a tour of architects’ offices in St. Petersburg, 35 years ago. Here’s the backstory:

 

Image of Saviour of the Spilled Blood, Russian Orthodox Church, located in St Petersburg. It was built between 1883-1907

 

I was chairman of the committee for the RAIA National Convention in Melbourne and was also on the City of Melbourne’s Sister City Committee, so had contacts in the city’s management.

We convinced the City of Melbourne to sponsor the RAIA Convention, on the basis of inviting speakers from all of Melbourne’s Sister Cities. To select those speakers, I visited most of those cities and met with candidate design firms organised by the local Sister City committees.

St. Petersburg was particularly interesting, because at that point it had been completely closed to the Western world for 4 decades. Glasnost – the “opening up” of Russia coincided with my visit.

Touring 6 architecture practices in St. Petersburg, I was astonished to see that the way they were designing – the design processes used – was exactly the same as I had learned in the US, and as I saw operating in Australia.

Excepting only that drawing notes were in Russian, I felt I could have sat at any design position and been productive from Day 1.

Some moments in our lives are crystalline; you never forget them. That experience set me on a journey to map those universal design processes. WHY?

Notwithstanding that our design processes are universal, they are understood and implemented with widely ranging levels of consistency. None of us has perfected them. Many haven’t come close to mastering them. STEP 1 is to map them. Join me in this journey. It just might transform your design practice.

 

At every roadblock his teams encountered, Thomas Edison told them: “There’s a better way to do it – Find it”.

 

25 January 2025 | Charles Nelson LFRAIA AIA AECPM