Integrative Design
Our deep philosophical commitment to implementing integrative design sets 7group apart. In fact, we note in our new book, The Integrative Design Guide to Green Building, that most design professionals will contend that they are “integrating”, when really they are achieving merely a higher degree of coordination between disciplines. By contrast, a truly integrative design process optimizes the interrelationships between all the elements and entities associated with building projects in the service of efficient and effective use of resources.
This includes money. Simply stated, buildings that significantly reduce energy consumption and environmental impacts do not need to cost more. In short, 7group has a proven track record of helping teams design high performance buildings that cost no more to construct than conventional buildings, yet cost much less to operate.
We accomplish this by facilitating a design methodology that constantly examines the tradeoffs between sustainable goals and the benefits that are derived from achieving them. Design decisions are based upon analyzing, quantifying, and evaluating the synergistic interactions between building systems. This requires whole systems thinking (and doing), a process that asks us to rethink a century-and-a-half of producing buildings by using siloed specialization to design building systems and subsystems as fragments in isolation.
