Italian architecture establishment tries to snuff out crowdsourcing architectural design site, CoContest

2015-06-01T18:40:00-04:00

CoContest allows customers wanting to refurbish an existing space to put their project out to architects and designers, who in turn submit their design proposals [...] Nine lawmakers – eight of them architects – have issued a parliamentary proposal urging the Economic Development and Justice Ministries to crack down on the crowdsourcing website, which they said was carrying out an illegal intermediation activity and denigrating professional architects in its publicity

Any business that's praised for being "disruptive" is bound to cause controversy – or else that establishment probably wasn't worth disrupting. CoContest, an Italian startup that aims to connect homeowners to a competitively-priced international roster of architects and designers, has received praise for "its ability to disrupt the traditional workflow of architectural design services, transforming it from a local to an international service; from a time consuming activity to a fast and efficient process, and from an expensive service to an affordable one." Mountain View based incubator 500 Startups invited CoContest to join its ranks this year. But the atmosphere in Italy recently became far less encouraging.

Inspiration for CoContest came from a bloated population of Italian architects and interior designers – according to a 2014 infographic, Italy has an architect for every 414 people (the US has one for every 1,300). CoContest creators Filippo (an architect) and Federico Schiano...

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Italian architecture establishment tries to snuff out crowdsourcing architectural design site, CoContest