Collaborative Design and Build
is an award winning design practice empowering people in their built environment.
A Collaborative Way to Build
We collaborate with clients and end users, pairing their specialist and intuitive understanding with Co-DB’s creative and professional expertise. |
Agency in your Environment
We empower clients and end users with the knowledge of how the physical world is put together and how they can adapt it to fulfil their needs. |
Design & Build Together
Joined-up design & build offers efficiencies to our clients. We design with a clear understanding of construction constraints. We build with full awareness of the design intent. |
Material Delight
Informed by materials, tools and processes, our projects are abundant with texture and material delight. Maximum impact with minimal materials is what we do. |
Flexible, Agile Architecture
Mobile, reconfigurable furniture at various scales create an interactive and accessible architecture that lives on over time. |
Sustainable Business
Co-DB matches ethical materials with a sustainable business model. We do not support exploitation. Good practice leads to great results for our clients. |
What is Co-Design & Build?
Co-design is a process through which designers engage and empower clients and end-users. It’s about pairing the clients’ latent knowledge of a situation with the professional expertise of the designer. This pairing means that projects can be highly innovative and creative but at the same time the reality of the problem at hand stays in focus. As a design process it goes against the traditional grain, where an architect or designer is considered the one true visionary expert and simply tells the client what they need. Rather, the co-designer is practiced in more transferable skills; those of guiding stakeholders through what can be challenging technical process, and helping to unlock their great ideas.
At Co-DB we take co-design to the next level and incorporate it into the construction of a project itself. Sometimes this means that a stakeholder group gets stuck-in and joins us on the build, and it often entails bringing some of the making stages of a project forward. We embed them into the design process so that everyone begins to make informed decisions early on, guided by a shared understanding of materials and building processes. We run workshops where we make prototypes and models, we explore samples together and visit fantastic precedents and we offer the option to phase projects so that design and construction can happen incrementally. By doing these things we help our clients develop a real understanding about their built environment. We have found that this results in a deeply felt buy-in amongst stakeholders and ultimately spaces that work better for everyone.
At Co-DB we take co-design to the next level and incorporate it into the construction of a project itself. Sometimes this means that a stakeholder group gets stuck-in and joins us on the build, and it often entails bringing some of the making stages of a project forward. We embed them into the design process so that everyone begins to make informed decisions early on, guided by a shared understanding of materials and building processes. We run workshops where we make prototypes and models, we explore samples together and visit fantastic precedents and we offer the option to phase projects so that design and construction can happen incrementally. By doing these things we help our clients develop a real understanding about their built environment. We have found that this results in a deeply felt buy-in amongst stakeholders and ultimately spaces that work better for everyone.
Our team of designers, makers and doers offer a rich creative resource for tackling problems and seizing opportunities wherever they may arise.
Our team is led by company director and built environment designer James Sale. James has worked in joinery and furniture design as well as co-design, engagement and learning thought his career. He has worked in architectural practice and academia and has turned his creative energy and organisational flair into a successful design business delivering imaginative projects to a variety of clients. He has traveled extensively investigating the role of the built environment in learning around the world and has developed an ever growing expertise in opening up design to under-represented groups in our communities.