The difference in communication between architects and engineers and the effectiveness within integral design

Traditionally the conceptual building design phase is dominated by the architect. However, due to the clear need for more sustainable solutions, building design is being transformed to a multi-disciplinary design team process. However just putting all the different disciplines together right from the beginning is not enough. Therefore a supportive conceptual design method was developed in cooperation with the Dutch professional organizations of architects and consulting engineers. After testing the method through workshops in the industry the method was applied at the department of architecture by masters students in their multi-disciplinary master project Integral design. This enables us not only to use the method for teaching, but also to use the workshops to look at specific characteristics. In this research the focus was on the differences in communication between architects and engineers within an integral design setting. It proved that the architectural students had more influence and were more efficient in relation to functions but for solutions there is not that much difference compared to the engineering students. The used analysis method makes it possible to detect teams in which the architects played a dominant role and as a result there was no real multidisciplinary team effort.