From the vision to the experience, and back

Every project starts as a vision of how the place should feel, and it ends as the experience of someone who is actually there. Everything in between is how that vision survives.

Immerso uses that loop on every project type. Anthony Giacovelli sets the vision during preliminary concept design, designs it through to construction documents, and stays with it through construction. On a public project pursuit the vision may be partly established as part of the proposal, and it is a strong section of an RFP response when the goal is the win.

The test at the end is simple. Does the experience match the vision?

Vision

The vision is not a rendering. It is a decision about the place. Who it is for, what they are doing there, and which spaces are worth the money.

That decision includes a budget, set before concept design. On a multifamily site, the number comes from how many residents will actually be outside at once. The method is in How to set a multifamily amenity budget before design starts. On other sites the inputs change. The order does not. A vision with no set budget is essentially an unlimited budget, guaranteed to be misaligned between the pricing set and the owner’s funding. A number with no vision is just a cut list.

What has to carry the vision

Concept drawings are the vision in a form someone else can react to. A land seller, a city, an investor, a civil engineer, or the owner. The concept packages on Design Services exist for that meeting. They are not the end of the work. They are the base structure of the project, a clear runway supported by narrative, imagery, palettes, and visuals.

Construction documents are the same vision, written so a contractor can price it and a reviewer can check it. Planting, structures, paving, furnishings, lighting, and the soil and drainage under them. If a line on the plan does not serve the vision, it does not belong in the set. If the vision needs a space, the documents have to protect it from being valued out.

When the work sits inside a civil permit set, those sheets still answer to the same vision. The permit path is on For Civil Engineers.

Experience

Experience is what a person does in the place on an ordinary day, not what the rendering promised. The path they actually walk. The seat they actually take. The shade that is there when it is hot.

Construction administration is how that gets protected. Review, answers to contractor questions, site observation, and a punch list. Observation is not running the crew. It is checking the work against the vision that started the job.

Back to the vision

The loop closes when the built place is held up against the first decision. If the experience drifted, it usually drifted in a drawing, a substitution, or a cut that was never checked against why the space existed.

That is the process, on a multifamily community, a commercial site, a park, or a permit set. Vision, followed by the design, then the drawings that carry it, then the experience, and back to the vision again.

A first step, when the site is real and the vision is still open, is the free Amenity and Landscape Budget Review. It is a budget and priorities review, not a design.