Design that builds industry skill and capacity

This paper explores the potential for innovative architectural design to build industry skill and capacity, and support resilient regional economies. It is a result from a final‐year student Advanced Design Research (ADR) project at the University of Tasmania’s (UTas) School of Architecture and Design that focussed on the University’s $300m Northern Transformation program (NTP). The students followed a mixed methods approach to seek to understand the potential for collaborative building design processes to develop Tasmanian industry, and through their findings, support those active in overseeing the building program maintain the conditions for this to occur. By the process’s end, the team was able to generate and present a cohesive document, outlining aspects of innovation and capacity building through design as well as providing 15 guidelines for the potential implementation of innovation. This paper sets out the team’s methodology and the five major themes and fifteen guidelines for improving the likelihood of successful design and construction innovation are presented and discussed.