Arbor’s Design Philosophy
We started Arbor Architects with a desire to design beautiful, contextual buildings which are inherently sustainable, and crucially, to work with our clients’ closely through the process. We love to design, and we love to work as a team, believing strongly in the power of shared thinking to arrive at creative and robust solutions. Over the years of working together we have honed our design skills, which enables us to utilise many different media (hand sketching, energy modelling, physical and digital modelling to name but a few of the techniques we use) to bring our clients an enhanced service that helps them visualise proposals and input into their shaping and refinement.
From the early seeds of a project, we carefully analyse the site, in terms of social, contextual, heritage and environmental aspects. We work closely with our clients to ensure we understand their brief, and then we process these findings– creating ‘Design Drivers’, which effectively become the project brief we work to and constantly check back against through the design process.
A strong principle, driving our design approach right from the early stages, is building performance; we want all our buildings to perform exactly as they’re intended to at design stage, eliminating the performance gap that exists widely throughout the construction industry. To achieve this, we often adopt the Passivhaus standard which provides a rigorous, whole building approach to high quality construction, setting clear measured targets that provide a quality assurance process. We see this approach as inherently good design and use our knowledge and experience of the Passivhaus standard in all our projects, whether or not they intend to achieve certification.
Over the years we have amassed a considerable knowledge of bio-based materials; materials that haven’t been heavily processed (we try to avoid products containing plastics, formaldehydes or VOC’s for reasons relating to both occupant health and environmental pollution), and instead we look to use materials that can store carbon. Inherently, these materials are vapour open, allowing a building to breathe and regulate moisture. These bio-based materials also allow us to celebrate texture and the play of light over rich, natural surfaces, introducing an element of biophilic design to our buildings interiors.
As people we are constantly striving to be honest and authentic, and this is definitely reflected in our design approach. This is probably best summarised by the Japanese philosophy of Wabi Sabi – seeing beauty in imperfection, appreciating simplicity, and accepting the transient nature of all things.
Whilst we hold these values strongly, we try not to impose a design ‘style’ on any of our clients. Instead, and we hope this is evident in our project portfolio, each of our projects reflects a unique response to client brief, place and environment. Our services are always tailored to our client’s specific requirements; meaning each project is unique and a journey we embark on together.