Design is currently understood as a highly complex process that requires the support of multidisciplinary design teams. In a recent work at the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, in order to aid this multidisciplinary process, a supportive design approach. Integral Design (ID) has been developed. ID combines an engineering design method with an innovation strategy, thus creating new possibilities for reflection in action for building design. This synthesis between architectural concept and engineering functionality is, as such, a good example of integrative design. The ID process approach results in transparency of the design steps and the design decisions. Within this approach, during the design process the prescriptive methodology of ID, guided by the logic of C-K theory, is used as a framework for reflection on the design process itself. Morphological Overviews (MO), which are produced by combining morphological charts, provides a tool to structure and give an overview of the communication and reflection between design team members, while C-K theory supplies the theoretical framework for the reflection on the ID itself as an example of ID.

Buildings can no longer be designed by an architect alone. A whole design team is needed to cope with the complexity of the design problem and come up with the right design solution. During the building design processes, in order to reach the ever higher targets for sustainability and user comfort, synergy between the different disciplines involved in the design process is necessary/essential. Due to the complexity of design problems today, problems which arise on the level of details can no longer be solved on the borderlines of disciplines.

There is a pressing need to view all the different aspects of building design in a more integral way, resulting in an integral approach to building design, engendering synergy between the design disciplines involved instead of conflicts between them. Traditionally, the architect has played the role of a creator, making designs for the engineer to analyze, test, optimize and make buildable (Speaks, 2008). Due to the growing complexity and scale of design processes in architecture and building services engineering, as well as the growing demands on efficiency, throughput time and quality, traditional approaches to organize and plan these processes may no longer suffice (Aken, 2005). This has to change—within a design team it is not enough just to engineer, engineers have to participate as proactive designers too. Such a proactive approach requires support and structure. Through the integration of these features, the Integral Design (ID) approach could offer the necessary support to reach a synergy between engineering and architectural design. Within this setting for integrative design, methods, processes, techniques and technologies are formed from the cross-axial combinations between disciplines.

Architecture Journal, Integral Design, Multidisciplinary Design Teams, Morphological Charts, Architectural Design, Mechanical Engineering, Integrated Product Development, Morphological Chart, Design Process, Autonomic Creative Mental Process, Morphologic Overviews, Morphological Structuring Process, Knowledge Development Process, Architectural Management.