The first idea for organizing a lecture arose in October 2002. The objective was to give Civil Engineering students more affinity with architecture by means of a lecture with a well-known architect. Frank O. Gehry was selected for this purpose. Because attracting Gehry seemed to have a good chance, the idea of extending the lecture with other famous architects and engineers, who could be drawn because of the presence of Gehry, arose. This idea was developed and resulted in a series of lectures in the congress centre of the TU Delft for 1200 participants (students, employees and others). The lectures would have to take place on February the 24th of the year 2003 under the title: “The Value Of Design: one afternoon with Frank Gehry a.o.” Besides Frank Gehry appearances of Rafael Viñoly, Ben van Berkel, John Zils and Philip Dilley where arranged.
          Unfortunately, a week before the 24th it appeared that Rafael Viñoly could not come since he had to give a presentation of his design for Ground-Zero. The lecture series could then still proceed. Up to Wednesday morning, when it was passed on that Gehry was sick and could not come. Immediately it was decided to postpone the event. In the following months the committee tried to organize the event in its original form (with Gehry). This turned out to be impossible and finally, 18 months after the original date, the lecture series where cancelled altogether.
When the committee started with the organisation, they did not foresee that this project would take almost four years to realize: the lecture series took place at April the 19th, 2005. In a student life, four years is extremely long, so it is no wonder that there have been several changes in the committee in this period of time. In total, twelve people where responsible for the first edition of The Value of Design.
          To be able to show ways of successful interaction between architects and engineers, one can simply look at iconic buildings, such as the destroyed Twin Towers in New York, the Millennium Dome (currently O2-dome) in London or the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam. Several architects and engineers that where responsible for these type of projects where asked to share their views, and the committee succeeded in convincing some of these to come to Delft. The line-up consisted of (in order of appearance) Leslie Robertson, Kevin Kennon, Phillip Dilley, Ben van Berkel, Ian Liddell and Rafael Viñoly.