In May, 2002, we (MG Taylor and AI with SFIA Architect-Master Builders) started three projects, one in California, one in Tennessee and the third in Maryland. Different parts of our organization and the Habitat Makers ValueWeb has worked on each of these projects.

These projects could not be more different in purpose, scale, scope nor basic character. Yet, they each have many elements in common and each has been instrumental in providing key insights to the others. Each have been the means to bringing into physical reality some ideas that have waited their time for a very long time.

These key points of integration are: developing Armature; extensive use of Design/Build/Use and FasTracking methods; an intimate relationship between the architecture, use of the spaces and the work processes to be employed; client/users who see the environment as a tool to advance their work, as well as, a thing of beauty and quality. All three projects have extremely tight time schedules to get to move-in and first use. With each project, after occupancy, work will continue to evolve the environment, for an extended period, in a “timeless way” (Alexander)

In addition, each project makes extensive use of ValueWeb architecture as a means of execution and each has embedded, in their program requirements, intrinsically interesting and difficult architectural challenges. All are redoing existing spaces to a scale where genuine architectural space is being created where there was none before.

The Vanderbilt project is a MG Taylor NavCenter designed to support a specific health care industry-wide initiative, The Vanderbilt Center for Better health, is being created by Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. The present scope of the NavCenter portion of the VCBH project, which will be called the VCBH Innovation Center, is about 8,000 square feet. The NavCenter will support internal and external client design events, internal research and design teams and project management processes for the entire initiative and the ValueWeb that will be built around it.

The Joseki Offices are in Menlo Park California and this location, itself, has a significant impact on the design. This office design has to support a wide variety of functions including the running of one enterprise and the creation of new ones. What message it sends in the present business circumstances of Silicone Valley is an important element in the design.

Besides these general common points, there are several specific areas where one project “informs” the other. The Vanderbilt project required that we design, develop and install a new Armature System in less than a month. This system had to be at a lighter scale than any we had created before. Joseki required the exercise to be repeated: even faster with the client team moving in within 10 days of starting and us then working in their space every night for several weeks. The Joseki work is functioning as a prototype for an entire interior system, a variation of which, will ultimately make the basis for retrofitting the Sojourner-Douglass school buildings into a modern facility while keeping their basic character and charm.

Of the three projects, Sojourner-Douglass is the largest and will take a significantly longer time to realize. Like the others, however, it has an extremely tight first-use move-in date. Joseki had to be usable by the first of June, Vanderbilt by the 6th of June and SDC ready for August classes.

Note: for a variety of reasons The Property and Loan closing for the project took place on the 27th of August. After closing, all budgets had to be revised. The move in date remains agressive but is, of course, pushed back, now, until late November/early December.

These three Armature types pus the 3rd level as employed in the Palo Alto knOwhere Store make a complete system of Armatures capable of serving the vast majority of architectural challenges. The exploration of this technique started in 1990 and it has taken 12 years to get examples built and tested. The first employment of the idea, by me, not as a “furniture” solution - as built in place architecture and component “kit” system - was the Affordable Housing Project of 1980. With the completion of these three projects, it will be possible for people to see how many Armature layers can work as a system of environment shells, each self-contained, each leading to the other, each possessing an intrinsic work process support and human psychological component.

I titled this piece Intimate Building - the Armature of Design Build Use because there is a process side and organizational aspect to the Armature concept. That is the ValueWeb architecture. And, within the construct of the ValueWeb architecture, there is an intimacy that is both required to build this way and results from building this way.

Extraordinary work requires extraordinary clients. Not just good conventional client relationships. It takes clients that work as ValueWeb members to produce the architecture not just “take it” when the work is done. These three projects have this kind of interaction and trust between the Design/Build/Use team members. Because of this, it was possible to take design and manufacturing risks that typically cannot be taken.