1. Goals— What does the client want to achieve, and Why?
2. Facts— What do we know? What is given?
3. Concepts— How does the client want to achieve the goals?
4. Needs— How much money and space? What level of quality?
5. Problem— What are the significant conditions affecting the design of the building? What are the general directions
the design should take
Establish Goals
Goals are important to designers who want to know the what and why of things rather than a list of spaces. They won’t find
inspiration in a list. They will find it in goals. Project goals indicate what the client wants to achieve, and why.
However, goals must be tested for integrity, for usefulness, and for relevance to the architectural design problem. To test
them, it is necessary to understand the practical relationship between goals and concepts.
If goals indicate what the client wants to achieve, concepts indicate how the client wants to achieve them. In other words,
goals are implemented through concepts.
Goals are the ends. Concepts, the means. Concepts are ways of achieving goals. The relationship of goals and concepts
is one of congruence. The test for the integrity of goals depends on their congruence with concepts.
Practical goals have concepts to implement them. Lip-service goals, on the other hand, have no integrity and should be
disregarded. They may well be faithless promises in a public relations publication with no plan to keep them. Regardless
of good intentions, it is not always what the client says but what he or she really means.
No one can argue against ‘‘motherhood” goals. They are unassailable; however, they are too general to be directly useful.
Who can argue against the goal “to provide a good environment?” or the goal “to get the most for the money?” There’s
nothing wrong with including a few “motherhood” goals, especially if they can be processed to be specific enough to clarify
the situation; however, intellectually hard, clear project goals are absolutely essential.
On the other hand, a few “motherhood” goals are needed to inspire designers, who like ambiguity to trigger the
subconscious in their search for design concepts.
Do not forget that trying to mix problems and solutions of different kinds causes never-ending confusion. To put it
positively, a social problem calls for a social solution. After there is a social solution, then it can be part of a design
problem for which there will be a design solution. You cannot solve a social problem with an architectural solution.
Programmers must test goals and concepts for relevance to a design problem and not to a social or some other related
problem that cannot be solved architecturally. This test for relevance includes testing goals and concepts for design
implications that might qualify them as part of a design problem.