What distinguishes Assaí's approach from that of the companies against which we compete is that our projects are what we call 'culture driven'.

This ties together our approach across the following diverse practices:

• Strategic workplaces

• Overseas development

• Community infrastructure

• Pacific regional architecture

Different forms of knowledge

Although a few firms offer a product based on the mysterious artistry of a heroic founder, most firms today attempt to base their design work in some form of knowledge. Commonly, firms sell design that is either market-driven, or expert-driven.

• Market-driven design is based on knowledge of what other people are doing; on knowing the latest developments and 'best-practice' solutions. An example of this approach might be Strategic FM.

• Expert-driven design is based on a firm-specific methodology, in which the firm has developed and markets its own internal theory. An example might be DEGW.

Although we acknowledge the importance of these forms of knowledge (market developments, best practices, and theories) our approach tends to be that the knowledge most important to the success of a design lies in the minds, hearts and hands of the users. We focus on not delivering our expertise, but on eliciting the knowledge within an organisation, workgroup, or community as the prime driver of design.

What is culture?

Knowledge can be either explicit or tacit.

Explicit knowledge is what people will tell you when you first ask them about their processes or place. Culture is tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is a deeper level of knowledge, which is more intimately tied to typical behaviour practices, attitudes, values and beliefs. Often, tacit knowledge is so part of the background of consciousness that people aren't even aware of it.

The key to Culture-Driven Design is making tacit knowledge explicit, feeding it back to the organisation, allowing them to reflect and refine it, and then using that as the basis upon which to drive the design.

Variants of CDP

This thesis takes different forms in the different practices:

• Strategic Workplaces uses analytic and workshopping techniques to extend to the domain of workspace design the following management approaches:
  - empowerment: the idea that workgroups should control their work, and therefore workspace
  - knowledge management: that idea a firm's unique internal knowledge needs to be made accessible and transferable
  - organisational culture: the firm's culture should be expressed and communicated through its environment
  - process improvement: that work processes should be explicitly mapped, analysed, and then continuously improved

• Overseas development is based on the presumption that sustainable development has to be based on people's own perceptions of what their problems are, what their resources are, and therefore what the solutions might be.

• Community infrastructure borrows from Pacific regional architecture and Overseas development, but has not yet found its own definitive form.

• Regional architecture is based on the presumption that much of the tacit knowledge is to be found in the building practices of the people themselves: in traditional architecture, and in informal settlements