I’ve recently been shown this little book which I find quite interesting and actually quite fascinating. It’s called "Dear Architect: A Vision of our Future School" and it was apparently written by students of this new school for the architect.
The book is quite well illustrated. It contains an awful lot of very good information that a designer, or architect who’s a designer also, could certainly use. This booklet is really dedicated to a lot of very helpful information that an architect certainly should digest and understand from a student’s point of view and from other’s points of view of just what it is we’re trying to do.
That's the first question that needs to be asked in a good brief. This is an excellent presentation of, what is it we’re trying to do and why is it needed? And it’s done very very nicely with the graphics, with some photographs. It’s an easy read, it’s a pleasant read, and it has an awful lot of rich information, more than you’d ever probably put in a brief.
So, you know, if I were using this, and I would in a proper design brief, I wouldn’t re-copy it, I would simply say in my opening paragraph of the background of the project: "...and please refer to this little booklet which will give a great deal of information about why we’re doing this and why it’s needed." So I would refer to this in the very beginning of the brief saying, you know, please read through this. And then as I went through and talked about target audience and what’s going on in the industry, I might even make references back to certain sections of this. But it’s too well done and too comprehensive to totally re-copy into the brief.