Eclipse has a long standing interest in the impact of the built environment on social and economic outcomes. These include the often intangible benefits of good design and equally the disbenefits of poor design. Both areas are explored at length in the edited book Designing Better Buildings. A supervised PhD student examined 20 primary schools constructed between 2000 and 2005 to examine stakeholder awareness of the potential benefits of good design on educational outcomes. He found wide variety in their perceptions and identified how lack of awareness fed through to the school designs.
We have undertaken a variety of studies of the design process, including the value judgments and trade-offs made by individual designers, and their use of experience and information sources. We have an abiding interest in collaborative design, and have examined the patterns of interaction between team members as they communicate and collaborate. We have written a number of publications and papers on integrated design, interdisciplinary collaboration, and effective teamwork in the built environment, together with the resulting benefits. We have also reviewed designers’ use of IT-based design tools, including electronic communication, simulation modelling, and shared project databases.
We also contribute to the Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment part-time masters course at the University of Cambridge.