Ground before object
Most of what a building gives a city happens in its first three metres. A note on why the studio starts every project at the ground plane and works upward.
The silhouette of a building is consumed at a distance and briefly. The ground floor is used daily, at walking pace, by people who never look up. Any honest allocation of design effort would follow that ratio, and very few do.
Starting at the ground changes the questions asked. Where does water go. Where does a delivery stand. What happens here on a wet Tuesday in February. These are not servicing details to be resolved later; they determine the section.
When the ground plane is settled first, the massing above tends to resolve quickly, because it has fewer degrees of freedom left. The reverse order, silhouette first, almost always produces a ground floor made of leftovers.