The 2020 AJ100 survey found that post-occupancy evaluation is ‘always’ done by just 4 percent of AJ100 practices and ‘frequently’ done by 22 percent, while a quarter of firms never do so and around half (48 percent) only seek to evaluate the performance of their projects ‘occasionally’. — Architects' Journal
Philip Watson, director at HLM Architects, reflected on the survey, writing, "Too often it seems, architects want to design a building, take pictures prior to its occupation – without the messy inconvenience of having people and their clutter in them – and move on to the next project." Post occupancy evaluations allow architects to understand the implications of their design to the user. This, Watson argues, would be a powerful way to utilize an evidence-based approach to understand the value of design, which in turn could aid architects in communicating that value to clients.
To address the issue, RIBA and the University of Reading have recently launched the Social Value Toolkit for Architecture to help the profession understand the social impacts of design.
23 Comments
This headline is pretty bombastic take, yes? I love post-occupancy evaluations. I think they should be widely done. But I have to ask, as an employed architect negotiating fees for service: who is going to pay for one?
I agree, Donna. That most clients just want the design and to move on. And most architects don't have the resources to fund their own post-occupancy evaluations. I think the implication from the author of the original article is that larger firms (that were part of the survey) that can do the evaluations don't seem to do so, and so that would implicate their level of care. Most architects I know care deeply about post occupancy satisfaction. But I think the data from this (limited) survey is interesting.
Why would a large firm spend the money to gather data that the rank and file ignore for the most part? When I worked at a large firm I would revel in the amount of good information available only to have my local superiors tell me to ignore it and do it their way.
fwiw i work at a large firm. doing POE's has been something the executives have been pushing for years as an absolute must. but they still happen only occasionally and mostly on the kinds of projects (hospitals, office interiors) where there is an ongoing and close working relationship with the owner and operations team. the hangup is the logistics of executing a thorough POE. and for the most part the data isn't very remarkable - we usually know what things were compromised and function poorly later. it's usually due to some combination of budgets and scheduling. knowing the problem doesn't necessarily help solve it.
I agree with Donna - it's not that I don't care, it's that I (/firms I've worked at) don't have the resources to follow up officially.
^This. Bad headline above.
Replace "don't seem to care" with "are not paid to engage qualified researchers necessary to objectively investigate".
We do care, most of us.
Not only is it an issue of being paid, but typically owners don't provide access to end users as required for post-occupancy evaluations. The only times I have even experienced them occurring on projects is with larger institutional projects where a scope for post-occupancy evaluation is negotiated into the contract...and typically within a very specific goal of evaluating energy efficiency performance. I mean, it's not like architects don't want to know how their projects perform. It's more like we're lucky to still be getting paid and allowed access by a client at that point in the process.
This terribly misleading headline, caused me to read it, I guess. I was even going to forward to colleagues... until... i read the article. Not now. Architects generally all care. De facto post occupancy evaluations happen via referrals to future projects, and with casual conversations with client and users. A formal POE is rarely done, if it is a big official report,..like all say above....it is expensive..and rarely done. Usually you only hear about complaints, but sometimes compliments. Like yelp reviews...It does not mean we don't care. I hope national media does not pick this up. Bad on the author/editor.
Even if architects had unlimited funds to pay for post-occupancy reviews, they would likely be limited in scope to whatever criteria the "evidence-based" reviewers were using, which end up only reflecting the values of the person paid. I'd presume those that do pay for PO reviews can easily sway the reviewer to their own set of criteria. So the question is how do you do an unbiased review?
Jeez, Chemex. You have trust issues.
The financiers/developers don't even operate the buildings sometimes - the users are many steps removed from the architect's deliverables. Exceptions include signature corporate headquarters and institutional buildings. WeWork had promised a closer bridge between design and end-user experience - though that never contributed much to the bottom line before the current crisis struck.
right, my first thought too. i design spec commercial buildings. my clients sell them on to asset managers or businesses who manage them and sub lease to tenants whose customers or staff use the building. there's about 4 degrees of separation between me and the end users. getting the permission to survey the employees of all the tenants and their customers when i have no relationship with the owner isn't straightforward.
Have never met an architect that didn't care what the users thought of their buildings, but met plenty of architects that didn't care what the client thought of the building...but users? Always.
I've met architects that spent 3 years living in one of my first projects and it's ALWAYS illuminating to hear their thoughts. Not always gratifying, as it wasn't a perfect project, but I love those conversations every time.
no survey can top that!
ok i actually read through the toolkit the linked article promotes. it indeed exemplifies the worst tendencies of "dataism" the fallacy that everything important can be easily measured along a quantifiable scale, and actions predicated accordingly.
i think we've all experienced the nuisance of gimmick surveys from companies after every flight, hotel stay, or even restaurant meal where they send you a survey with a series of specific yet irrelevant questions to rate on a 1-5 scale. they generate no information and provide no insight on challenging problems.
this is inane and i hope architects can resist the hopeless groupthink that celebrates such non-actionable junk-data. are we going to address climate change or inequitable city planning by surveying the public on how strongly a restaurant fit out contributes to their "positive emotions?" how do we evaluate essential yet nimby buildings like power plants or migrant worker dormitories on a scale of "niceness"?
really the key role of the architecture critic is to do exactly this hard work, analyzing built works and developing a holistic and thoughtful understanding of how they serve the public. more thought less data please!
"The problem is architects building structures to impress other architects --but plumbers don't act on impressing other plumbers. Any activity where agents impress peers (architects, academia) rather than satisfying the needs constituents ends up rotting" - Nassim Taleb
#SkininTheGame
i suppose he wasn't writing that in address to his students though... limiting your activities to satisfying end users really limits your career choices.
also consider who is checking the plumbing installation in new-build works. it's certainly not the end users...
but if i'm honest the person i'm most concerned with satisfying in a project is myself. i just hope the end users sympathize with my goals.
i have to defend sean here. yes, i'm sure in their hearts many architects would like to care about users post-occupancy, but to be frank that means little in terms of the way the profession is situated in relation to development, clients, and the eventual users. mentally/emotionally caring and materially caring though the work are two very different things, and the sad fact is that due to the over professionalization and the shirking of much legal responsibility, the discipline is alienated from many historic aspects of architecture (the building, the craft, and increasingly the drawings, among many other things), the result of which is a job that has little to no interaction with buildings and their users once they are finished, which many have alluded to through the fact that they are not paid to care. in other words, this is the way the profession (and the business of architecture) has designed its work.
so, while we may want to care, and many here are signaling that they do, the actions of our work speaks otherwise, and will continue to do so until those fundamental relationships change.
I'd add that we are not taught to care what the layperson thinks or feels to begin with. I've debated with many on this thread who look down their nose at those who like McDonalds and Brittney Spears, so why should we care about their thoughts on architecture. This is the dumbest attitude you can have and the same one that brings us the likes of Donald Trump.
Thayer, I have had many a spirited (and not always nicely spirited) disagreement with you, but when you're right, you're right.
Here's my hot take: If architects cared enough, or valued the information to be gained from POEs highly enough ... we'd figure out a way to get them done.
Of course, the other side of the coin is that the information isn't really valuable and at best it satisfies some minor curiosity without being useful in practice. If that's the case, we should stop pretending like POEs have any practical purpose.
The problem with POEs is the arbitrary nature of so much of the product. I think the vast majority of us care about architecture and building because we've experienced some great buildings (or terrible buildings) at some point in our lives and felt like we could contribute to the profession. Now, take custom residential for instance. The evaluations from the client are more times than not so subjective as to be useless for the next project and next set of clients, because of the nature of custom design. The best case of POE I've seen used is in healthcare projects and firms specializing in healthcare. This is because they have capable clients that are willing to foot the bill for evidence-based design along with the already vast amounts of quantifiable hospital statistics already in existence. This makes healthcare ideally suited for such tasks. Commercial firms and their clients are poorly suited for POEs because capital is king in that arena. The clients are unwilling to set aside the money for additional evals because they have already done the financial ground work before the commission (pro formas etc.). However, higher profits don't necessarily mean better buildings. We architects tend to think of ourselves too highly in the economic food chain sometimes, as evidenced by this article.
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