Houses and open space in the Accordia development.
Photo by David Millington Photography.

Creative input from a range of practitioners

Clients should be open to different ways of thinking about the design professionals they work with. They need to weigh up the advantages to project management of using a single design team with the creative input and variety that can be gained through working with multiple designers.

For the Accordia housing scheme in Cambridge – winner of the Stirling Prize in 2008 – developers Countryside Properties appointed Feilden Clegg Bradley architects for the masterplanning and detailed design stages. Upon appointment, FCBa proposed that, while they would keep control of the masterplan and the largest development area, they would subcontract large parts of the development to other architectural firms – Alison Brooks Architects and Macreanor Lavington. Although the developers had some concerns about this approach and FCBa had to take full risk and responsibility for overseeing others, the quality of the result shows the benefits of getting multiple designers involved.

See also the Accordia example 'Using a development brief to set quality requirements' in Developing mechanisms to deliver quality.

The CABE website has a full case study of Accordia.