What You Really Need: It's all in the Brief

_Brief development beyond functional requirements._ You're sitting at your kitchen table with a notepad, trying to write an architectural brief. "Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, open-plan living, double garage." The list feels hollow, like describing a symphony as "some violins, a piano, and drums." You sense your regenerative building should emerge from something deeper than room counts, but how do you articulate values and life patterns to an architect who's expecting square metres and door swings? Most architectural briefs read like shopping lists, functional requirements divorced from the life they're meant to support. They specify "home office" without explaining that you're writing a novel requiring absolute quiet. They request "entertainment area" without mentioning your monthly community dinners that feed 20 neighbours. They demand "sustainable" without defining whether that means lower bills, carbon sequestration, or creating habitat for the Gang-gang Cockatoos that used to nest on your street. This chapter will help you develop a brief that captures not just what you need but why you need it, not just individual requirements but community connections, not just building functions but ecological relationships. You'll learn to read your site's own needs, engage stakeholders you hadn't considered, and set regenerative goals that transform your project from private shelter to community asset.  ## **Starting with Life Patterns, Not Room Lists** Your daily routines reveal more about spatial needs than any standardised program. Start by documenting how you actually live, not how magazines suggest you should. When do you wake? Where do you drink your morning coffee? Which spaces draw you in, and which do you avoid? These patterns, accumulated over years, contain design intelligence no architect could guess. Consider a Northcote family who initially requested a standard renovation: new kitchen, extra bedroom, extend the living area. But when they documented their actual patterns, different needs emerged. They discovered they never used their formal dining room, preferring to eat in the garden eight months of the year. Their teenagers did homework at the kitchen bench, not in bedrooms. Extended family visited monthly, requiring flexible gathering space more than guest bedrooms. The resulting design eliminated the dining room in favour of a covered outdoor room with a wood-fired oven, creating their most-used space for half the cost of internal extension. Map your patterns across different time scales. Daily routines reveal circulation needs and spatial relationships. Weekly patterns might show that you work from home Tuesdays and Thursdays, requiring acoustic isolation those days but not others. Seasonal patterns expose when you need heating versus cooling, which spaces you abandon in summer, where you gravitate in winter. Annual patterns include celebrations, visits, and life changes that standardised housing never anticipates. Pay particular attention to friction points, those daily irritations that seem minor but accumulate into major frustration. The bathroom door that blocks the hallway when open. The kitchen corner where everyone collides during dinner preparation. The glaring afternoon sun that makes the living room unusable from 3-6pm in summer. These aren't just problems to solve but design drivers that will shape your regenerative building's success. Document your storage needs honestly. Most briefs underestimate storage by 50%, leading to cluttered homes that undermine wellbeing. But also question what you're storing. Those boxes untouched since 2019? The exercise equipment gathering dust? Regenerative design isn't just about efficient storage but questioning consumption patterns that drive storage needs.  ## **Understanding Your Site as a Living System**  _Developing a regenerative mindset for site understanding_ Before determining what you want from your site, understand what your site wants from you. This shift, from site as resource to site as partner, fundamentally changes how you develop your brief. Walk your site at different times and seasons. Where does water flow during storms? Where does it pool? These patterns reveal natural drainage that your building should work with, not against. A Castlemaine client discovered their site's subtle ridge directed water into two distinct catchments. By positioning their home along this ridge, they created dual water-harvesting zones without earthworks, collecting 40% more rainwater than a centralised system would achieve. Notice where existing vegetation thrives versus struggles. Those struggling plants aren't just "unsuccessful landscaping" but indicators of soil conditions, water availability, and microclimate. The thriving plants reveal your site's natural tendencies. A Ballarat site showed distinct zones where exotic ornamentals failed while indigenous grasses flourished, revealing soil variations that informed both building placement and garden design. Document sun and shade patterns throughout the year. That corner that's uncomfortably hot in summer might be perfectly warm in winter. The spot that feels cold and damp in July might offer cool relief in February. These microclimates, often varying by several degrees across a suburban block, can eliminate or dramatically reduce mechanical heating and cooling needs when properly understood. Listen to your site's sounds. Traffic noise, bird calls, neighbour activities, and wind patterns create an acoustic landscape that profoundly affects livability. A Coburg site revealed that morning traffic noise came from the east while afternoon noise came from the west, information that completely restructured the internal layout to preserve bedroom quiet while maintaining living area connection to the garden. Consider your site's history beyond property records. What grew here before development? How did water naturally flow? Which animals lived here? This isn't romantic nostalgia but practical investigation. Pre-development patterns often reassert themselves, seasonal flooding returns, native plants emerge from long-dormant seed banks, and traditional animal pathways persist. Understanding these patterns helps you work with rather than against your site's natural tendencies. If your site has Aboriginal cultural heritage sensitivity, and much of Victoria does, early consultation with Registered Aboriginal Parties reveals deeper patterns. Traditional Owners might share seasonal calendars different from Western four-season models. The Wurundjeri recognise seven seasons, each with distinct characteristics affecting building comfort and garden productivity. This knowledge, accumulated over millennia, offers design insights no amount of contemporary observation could provide. ## **The Art of Stakeholder Mapping** Your building affects more people than those who'll live or work in it. Understanding and engaging these stakeholders, from immediate neighbours to the broader ecosystem, transforms your brief from individual wishlist to community contribution. Start with obvious stakeholders: family members, including those who don't live with you but visit regularly. Each person's needs matter, but they're not all equal. Your teenager's desire for complete acoustic isolation might conflict with your need for family connection. Your partner's home business requirements might compete with children's play space. Mapping these needs visually rather than listing them reveals overlaps and conflicts that generate creative solutions. Extend to less obvious stakeholders. That elderly neighbour who struggles with garden maintenance, could your design include visible productive gardens that inspire and educate? Local families with young children, might your front yard include nature play elements that create informal community gathering? The local Landcare group working to establish wildlife corridors, could your garden provide stepping-stone habitat? Consider non-human stakeholders. The Rainbow Lorikeets that feed in neighbourhood flowering gums need year-round nectar sources. The Blue-tongue Lizards require safe ground-level passage between gardens. The remnant River Red Gum depends on water and root protection zones. These needs aren't constraints but design opportunities that enrich your brief. A Brunswick project exemplifies stakeholder integration. The owners mapped 23 distinct stakeholder groups, from immediate family to local food co-op members to urban wildlife. This mapping revealed that their "private" renovation could include a street-facing productive garden with public herbs, a tool library in their garage, and habitat corridors connecting to neighbours' gardens. The resulting project strengthened community connections while actually increasing privacy where needed. Engage stakeholders early, not after design completion. A Fitzroy North co-housing project held monthly dinners during their two-year design process, inviting neighbours to share concerns and ideas. This early engagement transformed potential opponents into supporters, with several neighbours ultimately joining the project. Their brief evolved from individual units to shared facilities that reduced individual footprints while improving amenity.  ## **Setting Regenerative Performance Goals** Vague aspirations like "environmentally friendly" or "sustainable" provide no measurable targets. Regenerative briefs require specific performance goals that push beyond compliance toward net-positive impact. Energy goals should exceed seven-star NatHERS requirements. Specify net-positive energy generation, perhaps 105% self-sufficiency minimum as required by Living Building Challenge, or 150% to support neighbourhood resilience. Define whether you want complete grid independence or grid-interactive systems that support community needs. A Hepburn Springs home generates 180% of its needs, selling excess to neighbours through a microgrid that kept the community powered during 2021 storms that left surrounding areas dark for days. Water targets might include complete self-sufficiency through rainwater harvesting and greywater treatment. But go further, can your site improve local water quality through bioswales treating street runoff? Could you recharge groundwater depleted by decades of urban extraction? A Warrnambool project harvests 15 times their needs, with excess supporting community gardens and local creek rehabilitation. Carbon goals extend beyond operational emissions to embodied carbon. Specify whether you want carbon neutrality or carbon sequestration. Using hempcrete walls and mass timber structure, a Daylesford home sequesters 85 tonnes of CO₂, equivalent to taking 18 cars off roads permanently. Their brief specified "climate-positive" construction, driving material choices from foundation to finishes. Biodiversity targets transform gardens from ornamental to ecological. Rather than "native garden," specify measurable outcomes: support for five local bird species, habitat for three reptile species, year-round flowering for pollinators. A Warrandyte brief required supporting endemic orchid species, leading to specialised soil management and canopy cover that recreated pre-development conditions. Social impact goals matter equally. Specify how your project will strengthen community: tool sharing, skill exchanges, food production, emergency refuge. A Bendigo project's brief required "demonstrable community benefit," resulting in a strawbale meeting room available free to local groups. Usage logs show 200+ community meetings annually, from permaculture workshops to refugee support groups. Health and wellbeing targets should be specific: maximum CO₂ levels of 800ppm, formaldehyde below 0.05ppm, electromagnetic fields under 2 milligauss. These aren't arbitrary numbers but thresholds below which health impacts are negligible. Include daylight factors (percentage of interior illumination from natural light) and views to nature from all regularly occupied spaces. ## **Finding Your Project's Deeper Purpose** Beyond functional needs and performance metrics lies a deeper question: Why does this building need to exist? What purpose will it serve beyond sheltering its occupants? This existential interrogation might seem excessive for a suburban renovation, but it's precisely this deeper purpose that distinguishes regenerative from conventional projects. A Thornbury family building a secondary dwelling for aging parents initially focused on accessibility and proximity. But deeper exploration revealed additional purpose: creating a model for suburban densification that maintains garden space and neighbourhood character. This expanded purpose influenced everything from construction methods (prefabricated to minimise disruption) to documentation (open-source plans shared with council and community). Sometimes purpose emerges from loss or crisis. After the 2009 Black Saturday fires, many rebuilding families discovered their homes' purpose extended beyond personal shelter to community healing. Their briefs evolved to include gathering spaces for trauma support, demonstration of bushfire-resistant design, and symbols of resilience. These homes became pilgrimage sites for others considering rebuilding, their purpose transcending private function. Your building's purpose might be educational. A Kyneton strawbale home hosts monthly open days, teaching natural building techniques to 500+ visitors annually. Their brief specified "education capability," influencing decisions from wall sections left exposed to show construction techniques to interpretive signage explaining system functions. Purpose might be restorative. On degraded farmland outside Ballarat, owners developed a brief focused on ecological restoration. Their building became minimal, a small pavilion, with resources redirected to revegetation, wetland construction, and soil rehabilitation. Ten years later, their 40-hectare property supports 87 bird species versus 12 initially recorded. Cultural purpose deserves consideration. A Vietnamese-Australian family in Footscray developed a brief honouring intergenerational living patterns while adapting to Australian climate. Their design includes a traditional ancestor altar with specific orientation requirements, communal cooking spaces for Tết preparations, and flexible spaces accommodating 50+ people for celebrations. Their purpose: demonstrating that cultural traditions can enhance rather than compromise regenerative design. ## **Values Clarification Exercises** Identifying genuine values versus assumed preferences requires structured exploration. These exercises, adapted from regenerative design practice, help uncover what truly matters for your project. The "Day in the Life" exercise involves writing detailed narratives of typical days in your completed building, but written from five years in the future. Include sensory details: morning light quality, breakfast sounds, afternoon breezes, evening gatherings. These narratives reveal priorities that lists never capture. One client discovered through this exercise that acoustic privacy mattered more than visual privacy, completely restructuring their spatial requirements. "Values voting" helps groups identify shared priorities. List 30-40 values on cards: Connection to Nature, Privacy, Community, Flexibility, Beauty, Efficiency, Tradition, Innovation, etc. Each stakeholder gets 10 votes to distribute among values, with no more than 3 votes per value. The resulting pattern shows collective priorities and tensions requiring resolution. The "Wouldn't it be great if..." game generates possibilities beyond practical constraints. Complete the phrase repeatedly without censoring: "Wouldn't it be great if the house produced all our food," "...if neighbours borrowed tools without asking," "...if we could see stars from bed," "...if rainfall sounded like music." These aspirations, however impractical, reveal desires that creative design might actually achieve. "Precedent analysis" involves collecting images of spaces that resonate, not just architecture but any environments that feel right. Analyse why these spaces appeal. Is it the materials, proportions, light quality, or emotional atmosphere? A Northcote client discovered their precedent images all featured threshold spaces, verandahs, courtyards, pergolas, revealing their desire for graduated transitions between inside and outside rather than sharp boundaries.  ## **Balancing Individual and Collective Needs** Regenerative briefs must balance personal requirements with community and ecological needs. This isn't about sacrificing individual comfort for collective good but finding synergies where individual and collective benefits align. Privacy versus community connection represents a common tension. You want neighbourhood engagement but also personal retreat. Rather than compromise, moderate privacy and moderate connection, seek designs enabling both. A Carnegie project achieves this through gradient design: public productive garden at street, semi-public courtyard behind low fence, private family garden behind house, and intimate retreat spaces within. Each zone provides different privacy levels, allowing residents to choose engagement levels moment by moment. Individual versus household needs create internal tensions. One person's workshop is another's noise source. Someone's meditation space conflicts with children's play areas. Map these conflicts spatially and temporally. Often, time-sharing resolves spatial conflicts better than compromise spaces that satisfy no one. A Clifton Hill family schedules "quiet mornings" and "active afternoons," with spaces designed to support both modes rather than perpetual medium noise. Present versus future needs challenge long-term thinking. Your toddlers will become teenagers. Your mobility will change. Your work patterns might shift. Rather than designing for every possibility, create adaptive capacity. A Mornington Peninsula home uses a modular structure allowing spaces to subdivide or combine as needs change. Their brief specified "50-year adaptability," driving decisions from structural grids to service routing. Economic versus ecological priorities seem oppositional but often align with proper analysis. That expensive rainwater system pays back through avoided infrastructure charges and water bills. Premium insulation reduces heating/cooling costs while improving comfort. A Trentham project's brief prioritised ecological outcomes, yet their completed home cost 15% less than conventional alternatives through design efficiency and owner involvement. Human versus non-human needs require creative integration. You need shelter; wildlife needs habitat. You want views; birds need privacy. A Warrandyte project resolved this through vertical zoning: ground level for wildlife with dense native plantings, middle level for humans with cleared zones around buildings, and upper level (roof and tall trees) shared space with habitat boxes and productive gardens. ## **From Brief to Living Document**  _Creating a brief that evolves while maintaining core purpose_ Your brief shouldn't be a static document filed after initial meetings but a living reference throughout design and construction. The most successful regenerative projects treat briefs as evolutionary documents that deepen rather than drift from original intentions. Structure your brief in layers. Core values and purposes rarely change, these form your brief's foundation. Performance goals might adjust based on site constraints or budget realities, but targets remain. Functional requirements often evolve most as design reveals possibilities you hadn't imagined. This hierarchical structure helps navigate changes without losing direction. Include imagery alongside text. Words struggle to convey spatial qualities, material textures, or emotional atmospheres. Create mood boards for different aspects: materials palette, spatial qualities, landscape character, community interactions. These visual references communicate subtleties that language misses while preventing misinterpretation of written descriptions. Document what you don't want as clearly as what you do. "No chemical odours" proves as important as "natural materials." "Not visible from street" guides siting as much as "northern orientation." These negative criteria prevent assumption gaps where architects might fill blanks with conventional solutions. Share your brief with all consultants, not just your architect. Engineers, landscape designers, and builders all benefit from understanding project values and purposes. A Geelong project provided their brief to their builder, who suggested construction approaches that better supported their community engagement goals, including scheduled site tours and training opportunities for local apprentices. Update your brief as insights emerge. Site analysis might reveal opportunities not initially imagined. Stakeholder engagement could identify community needs worth addressing. Precedent research might expand your sense of possibility. These discoveries don't invalidate your original brief but enrich it. Date revisions and note what prompted changes, creating a learning record valuable beyond your individual project. ## **The Brief as Covenant** Your brief ultimately serves as a covenant, a sacred agreement between you, your site, and your community about what this building will become and how it will behave. This might sound grandiose for a suburban extension, but understanding your brief as covenant rather than wishlist fundamentally changes its power. Covenants imply reciprocal obligations. Your building receives sunlight, rainfall, and soil stability from its site. In return, what does it give back? Your project benefits from community infrastructure, social networks, and cultural context. How does it contribute to these commons? Framing your brief as covenant makes these reciprocities explicit. A Maldon project developed their brief through community consultation, ultimately writing it as a public covenant. They committed to water neutrality, energy sharing, habitat provision, and community access. This covenant, registered with their title, ensures these commitments persist beyond current ownership. Their brief became not just design instruction but legal obligation and moral commitment. Indigenous concepts of reciprocity with Country offer frameworks for covenant thinking. Rather than owning land, Traditional Owners understand themselves as belonging to Country, with obligations for care and management. Your brief might explore what obligations come with your site. What does the remnant Manna Gum in your yard need from your building? What do the seasonal creek's floods require from your response? Covenants also bind you to yourself, to your values and aspirations articulated during calm reflection rather than reactive moments. When construction costs escalate and compromises tempt, your brief-as-covenant reminds you why certain elements matter. That expensive greywater system isn't just plumbing but commitment to watershed healing. Those labour-intensive mud bricks aren't just walls but participation in building tradition.  ## **Moving Forward with Clarity** Developing a regenerative brief requires more time and thought than conventional room lists, but this investment returns exponentially throughout your project. A clear, values-based brief helps your architect design with confidence, enables consultants to contribute meaningfully, guides decisions when options multiply, and maintains focus when pressures mount. Your brief should capture life patterns that standardised housing never anticipates, site relationships that conventional development ignores, stakeholder needs that private building rarely considers, and performance goals that push beyond compliance toward regeneration. It should articulate not just what you're building but why, the deeper purpose that justifies resources consumed and impacts created. Most importantly, your brief should inspire. Not through vague aspirations but through specific visions of the life it enables, the community it strengthens, and the ecology it supports. When developed thoughtfully, your brief becomes more than project instruction, it becomes a manifesto for different ways of dwelling, a covenant with place and people, and a gift to future inhabitants who'll wonder why anyone ever built any other way. Take time developing your brief. Observe your patterns across seasons. Walk your site in different weather. Engage stakeholders you hadn't considered. Clarify values through structured exercises. Set performance goals that push beyond compliance. Explore your project's deeper purpose beyond personal shelter. This investment in brief development might delay your project's start by months, but it will save years of living with spaces that don't quite work, systems that don't perform, and buildings that take more than they give. Your regenerative brief becomes the DNA from which your building grows, better to get the genetic code right than try to evolve retroactively. The brief you develop now will guide decisions for years and influence outcomes for decades. Make it worthy of the regenerative building you're creating, the site you're stewarding, and the community you're strengthening. Make it clear enough to direct, flexible enough to evolve, and inspiring enough to sustain you through the challenges ahead.  ## **Beyond Rooms and Requirements** Your architectural brief started as a list: three bedrooms, two bathrooms, double garage. It felt empty because it was. You were describing a house, not a life. Regenerative briefs capture patterns, purposes, and promises that generic room lists never could. The shift begins with honest observation. Not aspirational lifestyle magazine observation, but truth about how you actually live. That formal dining room you never use. The bathroom traffic jam every morning at 7:15. The corner where everyone naturally gathers versus the "living room" that stays empty. Document these patterns across days, weeks, seasons. A Northcote family discovered they ate outside eight months annually, their covered outdoor kitchen became the project's heart, not an afterthought. Your site has its own brief that most projects ignore. Water wants to flow certain directions. Wind follows predictable patterns. That struggling vegetation tells you about soil conditions. The thriving plants reveal natural tendencies. A Castlemaine couple discovered their site's subtle ridge created two water catchments, working with this pattern increased rainwater harvest by 40% without earthworks. Your site isn't blank canvas but active participant with 4.5 billion years of development experience. Performance targets need numbers, not adjectives. "Energy positive" means nothing. "105% energy self-sufficiency minimum with 4.2kW annual surplus" drives design. Set targets that scare you slightly: complete water independence, carbon sequestration not just neutrality, supporting five local bird species. A Daylesford home targeting "climate positive" sequestered 85 tonnes of CO₂ through material choices alone, equivalent to removing 18 cars from roads permanently. The deeper question, why does this building need to exist?, sounds pretentious but proves practical. A Thornbury granny flat's purpose evolved from "housing aging parents" to "demonstrating suburban densification without losing gardens." This expanded purpose influenced everything from prefabricated construction (minimising neighbour disruption) to open-source documentation (helping others replicate the model). Values clarification can't be rushed. The "Day in the Life" exercise, writing detailed narratives from five years in your future building, reveals priorities lists never capture. When every family member's narrative includes threshold spaces (verandahs, courtyards, pergolas), you know these matter more than room sizes. The "Wouldn't it be great if..." game generates possibilities beyond practical constraints. "Wouldn't it be great if rain sounded like music" led one project to specifically designed gutters that create water percussion. Your brief becomes covenant, sacred agreement between you, your site, and your community about what this building will give back. A Maldon project registered their brief with their title, legally binding future owners to water neutrality and energy sharing. This might seem extreme, but understanding your brief as covenant rather than wishlist maintains focus when construction pressures mount. Don't file your brief after initial meetings. Keep it alive throughout design and construction. Update it as insights emerge. Share it with all consultants, not just your architect. Date revisions and note what prompted changes. This living document becomes project DNA, ensuring your building emerges from deep purpose rather than accumulated compromise. ## Chapter Summary A comprehensive brief is the foundation of a successful project. Take time to explore not just your practical needs but your deeper aspirations for how you want to live. This investment in clarity will guide every subsequent decision. ## Chapter Resources [**Acumen Practice Notes - Client Information Notes →**](https://acumen.architecture.com.au/resources/client-information-notes/) _Essential guidance from the Australian Institute of Architects designed specifically for clients. Includes comprehensive resources on developing project briefs, understanding the design process, and working effectively with your architect throughout your project._