Design Intent Gap Summit to Address Lost Architectural Reasoning in Documentation

Architectural documentation often captures the final design solution but loses the reasoning behind it, a problem termed the 'Design Intent Gap.' This gap grows through undocumented conversations, phase transitions, budget cuts, and substitutions, leading to misunderstandings during construction and value engineering. To address this, the Design Intent Gap Summit will convene on September 18 at SOM's office in New York, gathering architects, engineers, specifiers, contractors, and others. The summit aims to promote documenting intent as deliberately as solutions, using tools like System and Performance Descriptions. David Stutzman, founder of Conspectus, the largest independent specifications consulting firm, authored the article and calls for industry-wide change, emphasizing that design intent is a deliverable. The event is not product-focused but seeks to preserve the thinking behind design choices.