We’re often asked: how does this collaboration work in practice? A helpful distinction come from understanding ‘place hardware’ and ‘place software’. Whereas architects and masterplanners deal in the “hardware” side of buildings, streets and infrastructure, MurrayTwohig focuses on the “software” side of vision, culture, content, and customer experience – helping to bring together the views of different team members and stakeholders, to more fully understand the client team’s motivations and ambitions, and to bring research and insight into the conversation.

Experience shows us that our meaningful collaboration with design teams, layering strategy with architecture, delivers solutions for clients that are more efficient, more compelling and – as important as ever – more valuable. This interrelationship should shape every stage of the development process, in several pragmatic ways that we have learned over years of experience:

Place-driven procurement
Prioritising place strategy at the outset of design development can begin even before an architect is appointed. Client teams who do internal work and consensus-building on project site objectives can use that filter in selecting well-aligned architects and consultants, and tailoring procurement materials to more closely reflect and prompt a project’s goals and purpose.

Sharper project briefs
Consultant teams are often handed vague or internally conflicted briefs. Place vision and strategy clarifies objectives from the outset, embedding development strategy early, so teams are designing toward a defined outcome, not just a form: reframing the brief from ‘do this’, to ‘help me achieve this’. Clarity at project outset means less guesswork, reduced redesign, and strengthened early concepts.

A credible “why”
Great architecture needs a narrative that resonates with investors, local authorities, and communities, that reaches beyond design principles into purpose. An established place vision clarifies the value proposition – why this mix, why this density, why this public realm – guiding design moves and ultimately helping development proposals be easier to champion and fund.

Achieving consensus
Complex real estate projects involve almost countless internal and external voices, from planners to leasing teams, operators to investors, construction managers to public stakeholders. MurrayTwohig’s collaboration-anchored process, with more than 80 workshop tools under our belt, is focused on driving alignment and establishing what a project is making, why, and for who – so that the client and design team moves in the same, shared direction with confidence.

Proposition exploration
A key moment for merging ‘place hardware’ with ‘place software’ comes from inhabiting emerging designs with content, to test scale and use. Common breakthroughs include realisations about the quantum of a specific use class like retail, reinforcing the importance of ground floor curation; the possibilities and constraints of proposed public spaces to deliver envisioned outdoor experiences; and emerging consensus around character areas that understands development as a series of human-scale places.

Centring programming
Public space activation is one of the most powerful tools for community building and destination development. Our team are experts in programming strategy, including understanding the activation-readiness of indoor and outdoor platforms, and how programming calendars are built to support both footfall and financial needs. Landscape design can enable a world of activation opportunity – or constrain it – and so contemplating programming during design is crucial.

Benefit of development acumen
Too often, masterplans are pushed into late-stage compromises when financial, construction or sales realities emerge. By setting out a development-informed place strategy at the outset, architecture can be more strongly aligned with viability from the start – protecting design integrity and place experience, rather than eroding it. An embedded focus on deliverability can shape important decisions around development opportunities, use mix, anchor assets and future flexibility.

The staged placemaking POV
Phasing is often the domain of construction and financial teams, driven by constraints and framed in infrastructure and unit counts. The more valuable conversation to have around time is ‘staged placemaking’: the creation of a series of places that build value at every phase. Development strategy should work hand-in-hand with design to set out phasing and prioritisation strategies that combine spatial, market and experiential logic.

Experience audits
Sometimes, things get complicated in the middle of design development: planning challenges appear, financial constraints enter the chat, or decision-making through iteration becomes tiresome. While place vision and strategy is often foundational to masterplanning, it can also serve as a catalyst – coming in at a midpoint, collaboratively mediating between teams and clients, to re-energise the process and evolve emerging designs with placemaking and development strategy in mind.