Building design theory:morphology in the conceptual design phase

The increasing complexity of sustainable building design makes it necessary to consider different ways to design. More and more requirements are made on the operation of the product, with minimal energy depletion and environmental pollution. Increasingly, the need is felt to achieve early integration of disciplines and parties. However this is difficult to achieve and this is why the Dutch professional organisations of architects and consulting engineers started together with TU Delft the project Integral Design in 2000. This lead to research with workshops organized with professionals to test a specific design method based on Methodical Design and the extensive use of Morphological Charts and Morphological Overviews. The concept of the integral design workshop for professionals was implemented within the start-up workshop of the multidisciplinary masters’ project of the Faculty of the Built Environment of the TU Eindhoven. The basis of this project, which serves as a learning-by-doing start-up workshop for master students with different discipline backgrounds, is the Integral Design method with its use of morphological overviews. The student’s workshops were used to investigate specific intervention within the design process such as the participation of an experience professional during some of the sessions of the workshop