PHILOSOPHY

For Sparano + Mooney Architecture, great design is at the heart of our architectural practice. The office is focused on delivering thoughtful, innovative and contemporary design solutions to accommodate a client’s visionary, functional and budgetary requirements. The state-of-the-art design practice balances leading-edge technologies with timeless, sustainable design practices inspired by nature.

At its core, the firm’s work is derived from two complementary progenitors. The first is an exploration of hyper-specific cultural cues culled from a project’s client, program or site. Our team then uses this research to construct a conceptual heuristic device, which in turn provides the architectural order and transcends convention. The second lies in the effort to construct a more meaningful relationship between modern architecture and the experience of its inhabitants.  The firm’s work to this end revolves around the rejection of the notion that order is generated from geometric logic external to the observer. Therefore, the underlying organization of the work is a deliberate choice to position people at dynamic centers of architecture and to let space and form unfold around a continuous path of travel. 

With each project a set of core values and design objectives is developed, against which the project team judges the success of the work. The architectural design process is divided into four distinct phases: research and discovery; problem definition; solution development; and project delivery. 

The start of a project begins with an in-depth discovery phase in which user needs are identified and research is conducted. We encourage the project team to brainstorm and be open to a broad range of ideas and influences, from a variety of sources. This process leads to an initial idea or inspiration for the project, typically distilled from the client’s mission, program or site. 

This initial phase is followed by the definition stage, in which interpretation and alignment of a client’s needs are defined by an architectural scope of services. Key activities during this stage are program development, site planning and conceptual building design strategies. The next phase marks a period of architectural development where design solutions are iterated and tested. Typically, this multi-disciplinary effort engages the participation of the engineering and construction team.

The final steps in the design process are in the project delivery phase, during which the architecture is constructed and occupied. The architects follow a rigorous construction administration process to ensure key activities and objectives are met during this critical phase, including a post-occupancy evaluation. The firm has developed and tested internally this sophisticated process for seeking and delivering architecture, and the process is managed for consistently-successful results for its clients. The focus on user-experience influences both the architecture and the delivery process, and ensures that our clients have a positive experience in developing and occupying their projects.