Over the past month I have been in a number of seminars and the one thing missing were the architects. The theme presented to the contractors and the building owners that W/ prescriptive codes many of the new projects will not need an architect. I was further concerned when I was shown that Wisconsin does not require an architect until the project is over 50,000 sqft.
I have become down right scared when a colleague laid out a case for the large construction firms to absorb the architects into their fold.
The case made is that many of the contractors are developing BIM studies from the bid set and producing multimedia presentations that illustrate the sequencing of the project as well as suggest "improvements" to the design.
This coupled w/ their profit being larger than the AEC fee, it is in their best interest to compete for the entire enchilada.
something similar happened in Texas a couple years back when engineers tried to stake architecture as a subset of engineering. i almost threw up when i read it.
dsc, if you are in california, there is the architects practice act. i don't know why i'd never heard of this.
Lots and lots of architects like to spend their time thinking "art" and talking "theory". Contractors and engineers mostly think "practical" and talk about "budgets and schedules".
More and more owners are finding more resonance with the contractors and the engineers than with us. IMO, this is a very big problem for our profession.
Until the architect can answer the question, "How much will this cost"? It will be a struggle. Architects who specialize often can and often are highly successful.
An architects e & o is roughly 3 percent of fees for projects actually built.
Where the g/l is roughly 1 percent of work constructed. Based on 10 percent fees a 1,000,000 project nets a 100,000 ae fee of which 3,000 goes to e & o. The g/l for the contractor is a mere 10,000.
Therefore if I were a contractor and now had the opportunity to make 250,000 (100,000 for AE and 150,000 o.h. and profit)
with only marginally increasing my insrance costs by 3,000, with the kicker of securing the work early, of course I'd do it.
Highly regulated urban environments will always require an architect - one of the few things that we are uniquely trained to do is balancing planning, aesthetic, life safety and programmatic requirements.
This is the end
Architure friend
This is the end
My registered friend, the end
Of your creative plans, the end
Those pretty drawings that will never stand, the end
No health, welfare or safety, the end
Your Clients will never look you in your eyes...again
You'd picture what will be
As an undergrad back in 93
A world desperately in need...of some...visionaries hand
In a...stripmall disney land
Lost in a roman scene sketching in vain
you thought all the postmodernists were insane
All the profession is insane
as you consult the codebook once again, yeah
Theres a new development out on the edge of town
Take the King's highway to the developers office, baby
Weird scenes inside the corporate headquarters.
Ride the highway west over to Starbucks, baby
Ride the white chocolate latte, ride the white chocolate latte
as you calculate the required detention pond, and make it look like the ancient lake, baby
The detention pond is long, seven miles
Ride the white chocolate latte...
The sprawl is a ball
The sprawl is a ball
Get here, and we'll do it all
The crosstown bus is callin us
The crosstown bus is callin us
Driver, where you taken us
The developer awoke before dawn, he put his tassled loafers on
He took a face from a cosmetic doc
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where the politician lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to architect, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
and he said Architect "I want to hire you"
and he said "Lifestyle Center" and the Architect said...i want to...get into bed with you
Cmon baby, take a chance with us
Cmon baby, take a chance with us
Cmon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the crosstown bus
Doin a blackberry
On a blue bus
Doin a blackberry
Cmon, yeah
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill
This is the end
Architect friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
It hurts to set you loosse
so make that a double grey goose
The end of passion and round glasses
The end of black turtlenecks time for golf classes...
DSC - it is 50,000 c.f in wi not s.f. plus I believe you don't need an architect to stamp the drawings already. I believe an engineer can stamp the drawings.
At an extreme the way integrated projects are heading I would guess that the "architect' is going to become a schematic designer and a code specialist.
At the heart of this is the idea of "lean" construction 30 years or so after Toyota introduced it to the world. It is highly governed by BIM and its promises and currently, limitations.
Many architects i've talked too believe BIM = Revit. Which is not the case. In construction I work with up to 10 different software programs that must communicate with each other inorder to produce efficiencies. Revit is an awesome tool, even just using it for production drawings, but in order for architects to play a bigger role in the process they will have to go outside their typical boundaries to provide services that add value to the client. Any architecture firm that is not using Revit or Bentley or some other bim tool is losing money by the minute and falling being their colleagues that are embracing it. As the need for CD's dwindles the architect will have to replace that service with something else.
Being an owner's rep is a good idea, but again a construction company has an advantage as they know how much and how long. If you are only adding fat to the project and not value you will not be in business long.
Sorry rambling a bit. I'll revisit if there are any comments.
Could an architect swallow his pride to the point where he no longer called himself an architect, but instead provided a set of services that included architecture?
There are a few GC firms here that now have in house architects.
For large projects I can see the all in one contractor approach trumping the design bid build process in the years to come. The architecture firm, as we currently know it, may go the way of the buggy whip.
wurdan,
I would like you to elaborate on the reduction of the needs for CDs.
set a contractor in a room with a university physics department planning to build some new research laboratory spaces... that will definitively prove why architects are necessary...
i find that the contractors often have a good relationship with the facilities level folks because they tend to have similar concerns and suspicions of architects...and that is one part of the 'client' while the other part is the 'users'... who in some cases are merely employees while in others they are the people who bring in the big bucks like researchers...
some 'clients' get along with contractors well but i have found very few contractors who can deal with 'users' very well... the design/build process has shown this nicely in some cases when you actually get to witness the reaction of a contractor getting grilled by a million dollar researcher over finishes in his labs and offices...
as misguided as some of the concerns of the researcher could be... he's still the money man so he's allowed to be misguided sometimes and there is nothing the contractor and 'client' can do about it in most cases...
i think thats true... but if a client is hiring a highly qualified and specialized contractor for a lab project they had better have hired a lab planner specialist or a architect with some serious lab experience...
the problem is that the contractors often 'take up the slack' without the overall project view that the architect has... especially with highly program driven spaces- such as labs- the contractor never necessarily has any idea what or how things are going to be done in a space since they show up after all of those items should have been worked out in the design...
yes they may know how to best construct this building system or that...but they tend to not have the project specific program information as to why as system was designed the way it is in the current 'design-bid-build' model...
also i think you are going to find far more well qualified architects doing design for projects with technically robust programs than you are contractors...
the project i'm currently on has a CM at risk who has a pretty deep portfolio of academic lab projects but they struggle with the basic program demands of the space... its an extremely vibration sensitive research environment and they continually suggest switching from a concrete structure to steel or reducing the size of concrete members or slab thicknesses as means to save cost...they fundamentally misunderstand the program in this way...
they are so myopic about their GMP they overlook fundamental program requirements...
that can be true OF. I have seen a bit of both types of contractor working on very large hospitals here in Japan. Hospitals are private here, more often than not (though insurance is covered by govt) so the client mostly arranges the place like a very technically oriented hotel. That means the planning is complex, and the technical bits are fantastically complex. In the office i was working for we had an architect who had a masters degree in hospital design (yes you can do that here) so we were very technically proficient. I have not yet met an architect doing hospitals who was not as competent or did not hire someone as competent. That would just be stupid...
so i don't buy that we are training ourselves out of business. not by a long shot. and anyway after you do one hospital you will have the knowledge you need to talk to any contractor. 3 to 5 years of living on a construction site will do that for you. maybe it is different in USA?
i've mentioned before that contractors in japan take an exam that is as difficult as the architects licence, and that entitles them to do pretty much the same work. so we compete directly. they tend not to win, because actually most clients are not about the bottom line, even those who run big projects. planning experience is not something you get running a construction project...so architects tend to win the contracts. at least that is the pattern so far.
on other hand now there is a tendency to do privately financed buildings for the govt and the only way my old office is able to participate is to team up with large construction companies. i don't know if the contractors are paying attention to the plans or not, but if they are i expect in a few years they will have enough experience to drop the architects altogether...which could be a problem.
somehow i think that won't happen though, cuz the contractors really are not interested by disposition in making good plans. and most clients are able to tell the difference, believe it or not. if contractors ever do become good enough that you can't tell the difference then they will have become architects in all but name...and that does not bother me at all. it just means we have to be better. capitalist that i am, that sounds just fine to me.
contractors take liability for the things they build in japan too. fine with me.
Finally !!
I am one of those "architect" absorbed into the fold, and I swear this has been far more interesting than challenging than working for traditional architect's office. Many small architecture offices in new york already have alliances with developers and contractors, not just those with BIM. When I have to work with outside boutique architect ( simply because we needed their name in the brand ) i have found these people who simply reuse their drawings from the 80's completely inane, and we just interprete and do what we want and use their stamp !
we've been developing a construction administration/management wing in our office that is starting to offer CM services to clients... it really rubs the local contractors the wrong way
I've worked directly with contractors on small to medium sized building. When a design problem comes up during construction, invariably their answer is the cheapest/easiest-to-build solution. It's often the solution that will look and feel the worst.
Luckily, I've had clients who can recognize quality. They often call the contractor's bullshit and demand quality, over the contractor's need to "git er done."
If we want a nation of even cheaper and more badly built buildings than we already have, we'd cede the domain of building entirely to contractors/developers. They would love love love to have architects out of the picture—we're a nuisance to them. And it's not (as many here have implied) that we talk theory. It's that we think in terms of quality of space, of materials. We think beyond the bottom line.
As Steven said, however, as long as there are clients for whom "cheaper" and "easier to build" aren't satisfying, architects will be in business.
OF said: "Set a highly experienced technically oriented contractor with university laboratory experience in a room with any architect other than one similarly qualified....and you'll see why architects are seen as unnecessary and anachronistic"
In this case you might get a building whose systems work, that doesn't leak, and is on time. BUT....I've wager that you wouldn't get a building that's laid out well, whose spaces are inspiring or humanizing, and whose details hold together as a whole.
Contractors are in charge of building it. Of course they'll know more about how to put a building together than architects. But architects are in charge of the entire vision and how it will be used. Many contractors and owners' reps just don't understand that.
Please don't try to argue that architects are unnecessary. They're not—architects are essential to the making of good buildings. Many contractors and engineers are trying to kill us off because we check their work and make it better.
Im going to tell you the story of the demise of the builder. Long before the profesional architect showed up the builder was the go to guy, the architect essentially. They hired a designer in tandem with their client. Sometime during the early 20th century the architect profesion started to organise like a business consultant - know doubt following the lead of accountants and lawyers. The idea was the building could be built by anyone and the architect must control the design and budget by controling the contractor. This lasted the better part of 75 years. It went hand in hand with the rise of modernism and the socialist tendencies of the intelectual and the worker over the capitalist as value to society. Thus the architect became more and more authoritarian and sadly more and more theoretical and aloof. At a point in the 70's the GC comunity had been essentially relegated to the lowest common denominator of people - the low bidder. How dare they celebrate their craft and make money? What benefit is that to the greater good the architect said. The era saw unprecedented construction collapses and failures. The era also shed light on bad design. In short modernism had turned into poorly built buildings often witthout basic structural conciderations, people conciderations and thermal/ moisture conciderations. Design Build GC's, often the very biggest and best of the comunity stepped in and created a divide by soliciting the owner directly and putting the architect under their control. This didnt happen because architects were designing too exspensive and beautiful structures - it happened because the architects lost their way. They could no longer logicaly and rationaly create buildings and in the process almost destroyed the construction industry by turning it from trades into assemblers of kits of parts - a socialist dream of cheap manufacturing visionary european architects have been exporting since Frankl and Corb. The over arching hand of the genius intelectual directing the workers in an industrial ballet of equality. Unfortunately their limited vision didnt concider deindustrialisation and the subsequent rise in production costs for basic steel shapes and lighter and weaker alloys being used. The impact on the construction industry was lower and lower real wages until buildings were being built by people with know spirit to build - in Chicago for example its still a good business to x-ray concrete beams from the 70's when rebar was often thrown into bottoms of forms and filled with concrete - essntially a worthless beam. They are everywhere. In England a public housing building collapsed because workers actualy used garbage to shim shear panels in a concrete frame buildings. This was the result of the guiding hand of the genius acting on behalf of the clients best intrests ( or was it their design intrests?) Contractor lead design build is the best most lucraticve route for architects because it offers more design time - more of the commission is spent on design in proportion to the CA and documents. Imagine if all the doors and windows and products were checked by a profesional builder with years of experiance and also ordered by them - not some 2nd year intern who still doesnt know what a jamb or header is? The architect is still the the design voice of the team - just they have to also listen as well. Honesty in structure is what architecture is supposed to be about - I dont see how being involved with people building it to the most reasonable method is a bad thing. And any architect who defaults too the position that their client is just cheap or has no taste is either bad at accepting commissions or cant execute good design within a budget. Its always amazing when I go out with architects how cheap they are - they dont like paying for anything. But they want their clients to bleed penut butter for them.
I suppose this all depends on what kind of projects we're used to working on. Laboratories are notoriously systems-intensive buildings—no architect who hasn't done a bunch of lab buildings will be able to design one well. Likewise, no contractor who hasn't done lab buildings will build one well. This seems obvious.
What often happens in architecture, however, is that a firm that's admired for, say, the detailing and space in their museums is hired to do a lab building. They recruit a squadron of consultants to help them with the difficult mechanics. But then, in the first meeting where the project architect doesn't know which way some exhaust vent is supposed to face, the contractors snigger and mock.
Yet the architect WAS NOT hired to know which way the exhaust vents (or whatever) are supposed to face. They were hired as a generalist, to design and lay out a functioning building, and oversee the work of consultants. Architects are generalists, and they recruit specialists to help solve very detailed problems—problems that no one person or profession could ever solve alone.
In many cases, MEP, structural, acoustical engineers, as well as kitchen, interiors, auditorium and retail consultants, would never be hired if it weren't for the architect. I've hired and managed all of those consultants, and enjoyed working with them. But we need them, just like contractors need us. Let's not undermine our own profession by saying otherwise.
This is the problem with your consensus, OF. If everyone's trying to prove how little everyone else knows—or how little the architect knows—then the consensus falls apart.
I think they sniker and snear at the architects because they think back to all the the times the architect left town for the weekend without submitting their request for payment - or left it in a drawer because they were busy critiquing some undergrads at the local jr. college
There is a question here of specialisation. Not all architects are equal, nor are contractors. My ethos is to hire people specific to the task. The worst mistake one can make is to presume that an architect or contractor or whoever can design and document equally well, or a contractor can organise subconsultants and pour a perfect concrete floor. This is just ignorance or hoping for the best.
There is a spectrum of work that goes from general [space planning, concepting] to specific [intergration of services ducts and celing plans] and the client has to recognise that. If they dont, it is to their folly.
The call for the return of the architect as master builder is a waste of time. It is based on nostalgia where architects did generally start out as craftsmen and turned into master craftsmen ans supervisors. Most architects these days have completely different training and knowledge.
I have no doubt that left to their own devices, contractor and engineer only buildings would be for the most part create cheap and effective buildings. And while everybody focuses on cost rather than value, we are all screwed.
Not a compromise of design integrity per se, but an integration toward a more holistic definition of what good design really is...(this can and should encompass a cost component)
i agree with much of what farwest said in the first post...especially the item on vision which i was alluding to as well... program driven buildings absolutely require this vision...and i don't think its fair to assume the architects only role in this is herding the varied disciplines...
i'm speaking from experience in healthcare research and academic lab buildings... we have lead on jobs, we have consulted on jobs, we have had lab planners....the entire spectrum...and in all cases we have attempted to be the main proponent of the program...often times when everyone else gets to a point where they have either forgotten the original goals or think that other project factors such as cost or schedule should supersede program requirements...
someone needs to be there who can make the connection from the beginning of the project through design onto construction and possibly even onto facilities management...
I agree with you. As an architect working for a developer, it has been enlightening. Particularly because I have worked for 'bad' developers and now work for a phenomenal developer so I have seen both sides.
My POV is that you can learn from bad developers, but usually you learn what not to do. You might learn some financing and contracting knowledge, but what is important is the base you operate from and the people you work with [and for]. At the end of the day, all you have is your reputation [which goes back to your strengths and weaknesses].
My key aim is to work on briefing, scoping and managing our consultants. The biggest risks in development aside from sales and financing costs, are civil costs and consultant variations stemming from either not fully investigating the site and its implications, or from the client not having a very clear idea of what they want. Either can be disastrous to a project.
My advice to architects? Ask your client for a tight brief, including timing, scope, cost to build, what they want you to do above or beyond the normal scope. Then tell them what you can do and cant do. Include disbursements within your fee [not as an extra] then do a good job.
many of the older architects may disagree...
architects must embrace a shifting role, forget ever trying to be the master builder again....
we must be the educators of a larger populus as to the role and influence good design must play in a better functioning society. we must think of our profession as no longer exclusively building (the physical structure, not the trade) centric.
we are the designers, they have a kit of parts. architects that design with a kit of parts are doomed to the fate of being absorbed into construction companies or developers...
the ability to evolve and to convince the people that evolution of architecture is necessary and good is what will keep our profession ahead of the building trades, and is what will keep owners interested in us.
(see 2008 venice biennale, directed by aaron betsky)
thas aright diabase. specialisation is impt, as is qulaity of contractor. we have a list of contractors we go to for different jobs. we know the ones that need hand holding and the ones who are on the ball from dot but cost 4 times more. we also know where to go to do a hospital. or whatever. personally i am pretty good at schools. i hated hospitals. wouldn't do one again unless the client had a pretty special mandate...
i don't mind being ignorant as long as i know where to go to to fix that. it doesn't embarass me at all. if GC wants to snigger well that's his call...
A consortium of 22 industry groups developing a set of best-practice contracts for construction has published a stand-alone building-information-modeling addendum that it says can be attached to any governing contract to help structure collaborative BIM projects.
The ConsensusDOCS 301 BIM Addendum was published on June 30 and announced at an Associated General Contractors’ workshop in Lake Tahoe, Calif., a few days before. It is intended for use as an addendum to contracts between all parties in a collaborative project. Its purpose is to gather and record agreement on the assignment of responsibility and rights with respect to a range of legal issues that may arise in BIM-based projects. The document is the product of a year-long effort by a legal subcommittee of AGCs’ BIM Forum and a ConsensusDOCS task force.
Jul 15, 08 12:08 pm ·
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The death of the architect...
The death of the architect.
Over the past month I have been in a number of seminars and the one thing missing were the architects. The theme presented to the contractors and the building owners that W/ prescriptive codes many of the new projects will not need an architect. I was further concerned when I was shown that Wisconsin does not require an architect until the project is over 50,000 sqft.
I have become down right scared when a colleague laid out a case for the large construction firms to absorb the architects into their fold.
The case made is that many of the contractors are developing BIM studies from the bid set and producing multimedia presentations that illustrate the sequencing of the project as well as suggest "improvements" to the design.
This coupled w/ their profit being larger than the AEC fee, it is in their best interest to compete for the entire enchilada.
Any thoughts?
sounds cool...you should go for it
get that builders license
took me 35minutes to pass/take mine
mdler is going into construction / development
the contractors and developers still wont be able to bullshit about the theoretical implications of thier buildings over $200 steak dinners
This Architect died seven years ago.
something similar happened in Texas a couple years back when engineers tried to stake architecture as a subset of engineering. i almost threw up when i read it.
dsc, if you are in california, there is the architects practice act. i don't know why i'd never heard of this.
a. aren't all building codes prescriptive?
do you mean performance based codes?
b. isn't the dutch building code extremely prescriptive ? doesn't seem to hurt architects there.
I bet architect may shift to virtual world in the future.
check here ( RE1001.COM ), many virtual buildings...
Lots and lots of architects like to spend their time thinking "art" and talking "theory". Contractors and engineers mostly think "practical" and talk about "budgets and schedules".
More and more owners are finding more resonance with the contractors and the engineers than with us. IMO, this is a very big problem for our profession.
We must stop being dilettantes.
Until the architect can answer the question, "How much will this cost"? It will be a struggle. Architects who specialize often can and often are highly successful.
Good some one else to take the blame rather than the architect. they can pay my liability insurance too.
q: why did you do this
a: because it was cheaper
^^ as long as ALL clients aren't satisfied with this answer, there will still be hope for architects.
Regarding insurance. This plays into my thesis...
An architects e & o is roughly 3 percent of fees for projects actually built.
Where the g/l is roughly 1 percent of work constructed. Based on 10 percent fees a 1,000,000 project nets a 100,000 ae fee of which 3,000 goes to e & o. The g/l for the contractor is a mere 10,000.
Therefore if I were a contractor and now had the opportunity to make 250,000 (100,000 for AE and 150,000 o.h. and profit)
with only marginally increasing my insrance costs by 3,000, with the kicker of securing the work early, of course I'd do it.
Highly regulated urban environments will always require an architect - one of the few things that we are uniquely trained to do is balancing planning, aesthetic, life safety and programmatic requirements.
The End (sung to The Doors "The End"
This is the end
Architure friend
This is the end
My registered friend, the end
Of your creative plans, the end
Those pretty drawings that will never stand, the end
No health, welfare or safety, the end
Your Clients will never look you in your eyes...again
You'd picture what will be
As an undergrad back in 93
A world desperately in need...of some...visionaries hand
In a...stripmall disney land
Lost in a roman scene sketching in vain
you thought all the postmodernists were insane
All the profession is insane
as you consult the codebook once again, yeah
Theres a new development out on the edge of town
Take the King's highway to the developers office, baby
Weird scenes inside the corporate headquarters.
Ride the highway west over to Starbucks, baby
Ride the white chocolate latte, ride the white chocolate latte
as you calculate the required detention pond, and make it look like the ancient lake, baby
The detention pond is long, seven miles
Ride the white chocolate latte...
The sprawl is a ball
The sprawl is a ball
Get here, and we'll do it all
The crosstown bus is callin us
The crosstown bus is callin us
Driver, where you taken us
The developer awoke before dawn, he put his tassled loafers on
He took a face from a cosmetic doc
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where the politician lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to architect, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
and he said Architect "I want to hire you"
and he said "Lifestyle Center" and the Architect said...i want to...get into bed with you
Cmon baby, take a chance with us
Cmon baby, take a chance with us
Cmon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the crosstown bus
Doin a blackberry
On a blue bus
Doin a blackberry
Cmon, yeah
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill
This is the end
Architect friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
It hurts to set you loosse
so make that a double grey goose
The end of passion and round glasses
The end of black turtlenecks time for golf classes...
This is the end
great song!
DSC - it is 50,000 c.f in wi not s.f. plus I believe you don't need an architect to stamp the drawings already. I believe an engineer can stamp the drawings.
At an extreme the way integrated projects are heading I would guess that the "architect' is going to become a schematic designer and a code specialist.
At the heart of this is the idea of "lean" construction 30 years or so after Toyota introduced it to the world. It is highly governed by BIM and its promises and currently, limitations.
Many architects i've talked too believe BIM = Revit. Which is not the case. In construction I work with up to 10 different software programs that must communicate with each other inorder to produce efficiencies. Revit is an awesome tool, even just using it for production drawings, but in order for architects to play a bigger role in the process they will have to go outside their typical boundaries to provide services that add value to the client. Any architecture firm that is not using Revit or Bentley or some other bim tool is losing money by the minute and falling being their colleagues that are embracing it. As the need for CD's dwindles the architect will have to replace that service with something else.
Being an owner's rep is a good idea, but again a construction company has an advantage as they know how much and how long. If you are only adding fat to the project and not value you will not be in business long.
Sorry rambling a bit. I'll revisit if there are any comments.
Could an architect swallow his pride to the point where he no longer called himself an architect, but instead provided a set of services that included architecture?
There are a few GC firms here that now have in house architects.
For large projects I can see the all in one contractor approach trumping the design bid build process in the years to come. The architecture firm, as we currently know it, may go the way of the buggy whip.
wurdan,
I would like you to elaborate on the reduction of the needs for CDs.
great song vado
how about architecture firms absorb the contractors? or form partnerships with contractors to create design builds?
is that a possibility?
set a contractor in a room with a university physics department planning to build some new research laboratory spaces... that will definitively prove why architects are necessary...
i find that the contractors often have a good relationship with the facilities level folks because they tend to have similar concerns and suspicions of architects...and that is one part of the 'client' while the other part is the 'users'... who in some cases are merely employees while in others they are the people who bring in the big bucks like researchers...
some 'clients' get along with contractors well but i have found very few contractors who can deal with 'users' very well... the design/build process has shown this nicely in some cases when you actually get to witness the reaction of a contractor getting grilled by a million dollar researcher over finishes in his labs and offices...
as misguided as some of the concerns of the researcher could be... he's still the money man so he's allowed to be misguided sometimes and there is nothing the contractor and 'client' can do about it in most cases...
yeah most important projects will still hire an architect, i think. it would be really ugly and have unfunctional space if it didn't.
i think thats true... but if a client is hiring a highly qualified and specialized contractor for a lab project they had better have hired a lab planner specialist or a architect with some serious lab experience...
the problem is that the contractors often 'take up the slack' without the overall project view that the architect has... especially with highly program driven spaces- such as labs- the contractor never necessarily has any idea what or how things are going to be done in a space since they show up after all of those items should have been worked out in the design...
yes they may know how to best construct this building system or that...but they tend to not have the project specific program information as to why as system was designed the way it is in the current 'design-bid-build' model...
also i think you are going to find far more well qualified architects doing design for projects with technically robust programs than you are contractors...
the project i'm currently on has a CM at risk who has a pretty deep portfolio of academic lab projects but they struggle with the basic program demands of the space... its an extremely vibration sensitive research environment and they continually suggest switching from a concrete structure to steel or reducing the size of concrete members or slab thicknesses as means to save cost...they fundamentally misunderstand the program in this way...
they are so myopic about their GMP they overlook fundamental program requirements...
that can be true OF. I have seen a bit of both types of contractor working on very large hospitals here in Japan. Hospitals are private here, more often than not (though insurance is covered by govt) so the client mostly arranges the place like a very technically oriented hotel. That means the planning is complex, and the technical bits are fantastically complex. In the office i was working for we had an architect who had a masters degree in hospital design (yes you can do that here) so we were very technically proficient. I have not yet met an architect doing hospitals who was not as competent or did not hire someone as competent. That would just be stupid...
so i don't buy that we are training ourselves out of business. not by a long shot. and anyway after you do one hospital you will have the knowledge you need to talk to any contractor. 3 to 5 years of living on a construction site will do that for you. maybe it is different in USA?
i've mentioned before that contractors in japan take an exam that is as difficult as the architects licence, and that entitles them to do pretty much the same work. so we compete directly. they tend not to win, because actually most clients are not about the bottom line, even those who run big projects. planning experience is not something you get running a construction project...so architects tend to win the contracts. at least that is the pattern so far.
on other hand now there is a tendency to do privately financed buildings for the govt and the only way my old office is able to participate is to team up with large construction companies. i don't know if the contractors are paying attention to the plans or not, but if they are i expect in a few years they will have enough experience to drop the architects altogether...which could be a problem.
somehow i think that won't happen though, cuz the contractors really are not interested by disposition in making good plans. and most clients are able to tell the difference, believe it or not. if contractors ever do become good enough that you can't tell the difference then they will have become architects in all but name...and that does not bother me at all. it just means we have to be better. capitalist that i am, that sounds just fine to me.
contractors take liability for the things they build in japan too. fine with me.
i think a return to a true 'master builder' kind of situation would be the best... not an us versus them...but just an 'us' building
i just don't think the economics are going to work out for that model though
My main point was the trend for contractors buying out the architect and having them reside in house.
I should have titled this the "Death of the Architecture Firm".
Very cool in Japan.
Finally !!
I am one of those "architect" absorbed into the fold, and I swear this has been far more interesting than challenging than working for traditional architect's office. Many small architecture offices in new york already have alliances with developers and contractors, not just those with BIM. When I have to work with outside boutique architect ( simply because we needed their name in the brand ) i have found these people who simply reuse their drawings from the 80's completely inane, and we just interprete and do what we want and use their stamp !
we've been developing a construction administration/management wing in our office that is starting to offer CM services to clients... it really rubs the local contractors the wrong way
we have just moved from CM to GC. i'll let you know how it goes.
I've worked directly with contractors on small to medium sized building. When a design problem comes up during construction, invariably their answer is the cheapest/easiest-to-build solution. It's often the solution that will look and feel the worst.
Luckily, I've had clients who can recognize quality. They often call the contractor's bullshit and demand quality, over the contractor's need to "git er done."
If we want a nation of even cheaper and more badly built buildings than we already have, we'd cede the domain of building entirely to contractors/developers. They would love love love to have architects out of the picture—we're a nuisance to them. And it's not (as many here have implied) that we talk theory. It's that we think in terms of quality of space, of materials. We think beyond the bottom line.
As Steven said, however, as long as there are clients for whom "cheaper" and "easier to build" aren't satisfying, architects will be in business.
OF said: "Set a highly experienced technically oriented contractor with university laboratory experience in a room with any architect other than one similarly qualified....and you'll see why architects are seen as unnecessary and anachronistic"
In this case you might get a building whose systems work, that doesn't leak, and is on time. BUT....I've wager that you wouldn't get a building that's laid out well, whose spaces are inspiring or humanizing, and whose details hold together as a whole.
Contractors are in charge of building it. Of course they'll know more about how to put a building together than architects. But architects are in charge of the entire vision and how it will be used. Many contractors and owners' reps just don't understand that.
Please don't try to argue that architects are unnecessary. They're not—architects are essential to the making of good buildings. Many contractors and engineers are trying to kill us off because we check their work and make it better.
I'd be a great client someday. I'll hire one of you guys, no compromise.
Im going to tell you the story of the demise of the builder. Long before the profesional architect showed up the builder was the go to guy, the architect essentially. They hired a designer in tandem with their client. Sometime during the early 20th century the architect profesion started to organise like a business consultant - know doubt following the lead of accountants and lawyers. The idea was the building could be built by anyone and the architect must control the design and budget by controling the contractor. This lasted the better part of 75 years. It went hand in hand with the rise of modernism and the socialist tendencies of the intelectual and the worker over the capitalist as value to society. Thus the architect became more and more authoritarian and sadly more and more theoretical and aloof. At a point in the 70's the GC comunity had been essentially relegated to the lowest common denominator of people - the low bidder. How dare they celebrate their craft and make money? What benefit is that to the greater good the architect said. The era saw unprecedented construction collapses and failures. The era also shed light on bad design. In short modernism had turned into poorly built buildings often witthout basic structural conciderations, people conciderations and thermal/ moisture conciderations. Design Build GC's, often the very biggest and best of the comunity stepped in and created a divide by soliciting the owner directly and putting the architect under their control. This didnt happen because architects were designing too exspensive and beautiful structures - it happened because the architects lost their way. They could no longer logicaly and rationaly create buildings and in the process almost destroyed the construction industry by turning it from trades into assemblers of kits of parts - a socialist dream of cheap manufacturing visionary european architects have been exporting since Frankl and Corb. The over arching hand of the genius intelectual directing the workers in an industrial ballet of equality. Unfortunately their limited vision didnt concider deindustrialisation and the subsequent rise in production costs for basic steel shapes and lighter and weaker alloys being used. The impact on the construction industry was lower and lower real wages until buildings were being built by people with know spirit to build - in Chicago for example its still a good business to x-ray concrete beams from the 70's when rebar was often thrown into bottoms of forms and filled with concrete - essntially a worthless beam. They are everywhere. In England a public housing building collapsed because workers actualy used garbage to shim shear panels in a concrete frame buildings. This was the result of the guiding hand of the genius acting on behalf of the clients best intrests ( or was it their design intrests?) Contractor lead design build is the best most lucraticve route for architects because it offers more design time - more of the commission is spent on design in proportion to the CA and documents. Imagine if all the doors and windows and products were checked by a profesional builder with years of experiance and also ordered by them - not some 2nd year intern who still doesnt know what a jamb or header is? The architect is still the the design voice of the team - just they have to also listen as well. Honesty in structure is what architecture is supposed to be about - I dont see how being involved with people building it to the most reasonable method is a bad thing. And any architect who defaults too the position that their client is just cheap or has no taste is either bad at accepting commissions or cant execute good design within a budget. Its always amazing when I go out with architects how cheap they are - they dont like paying for anything. But they want their clients to bleed penut butter for them.
I suppose this all depends on what kind of projects we're used to working on. Laboratories are notoriously systems-intensive buildings—no architect who hasn't done a bunch of lab buildings will be able to design one well. Likewise, no contractor who hasn't done lab buildings will build one well. This seems obvious.
What often happens in architecture, however, is that a firm that's admired for, say, the detailing and space in their museums is hired to do a lab building. They recruit a squadron of consultants to help them with the difficult mechanics. But then, in the first meeting where the project architect doesn't know which way some exhaust vent is supposed to face, the contractors snigger and mock.
Yet the architect WAS NOT hired to know which way the exhaust vents (or whatever) are supposed to face. They were hired as a generalist, to design and lay out a functioning building, and oversee the work of consultants. Architects are generalists, and they recruit specialists to help solve very detailed problems—problems that no one person or profession could ever solve alone.
In many cases, MEP, structural, acoustical engineers, as well as kitchen, interiors, auditorium and retail consultants, would never be hired if it weren't for the architect. I've hired and managed all of those consultants, and enjoyed working with them. But we need them, just like contractors need us. Let's not undermine our own profession by saying otherwise.
This is the problem with your consensus, OF. If everyone's trying to prove how little everyone else knows—or how little the architect knows—then the consensus falls apart.
I think they sniker and snear at the architects because they think back to all the the times the architect left town for the weekend without submitting their request for payment - or left it in a drawer because they were busy critiquing some undergrads at the local jr. college
There is a question here of specialisation. Not all architects are equal, nor are contractors. My ethos is to hire people specific to the task. The worst mistake one can make is to presume that an architect or contractor or whoever can design and document equally well, or a contractor can organise subconsultants and pour a perfect concrete floor. This is just ignorance or hoping for the best.
There is a spectrum of work that goes from general [space planning, concepting] to specific [intergration of services ducts and celing plans] and the client has to recognise that. If they dont, it is to their folly.
The call for the return of the architect as master builder is a waste of time. It is based on nostalgia where architects did generally start out as craftsmen and turned into master craftsmen ans supervisors. Most architects these days have completely different training and knowledge.
I have no doubt that left to their own devices, contractor and engineer only buildings would be for the most part create cheap and effective buildings. And while everybody focuses on cost rather than value, we are all screwed.
"And while everybody focuses on cost rather than value, we are all screwed."
Herein lies the importance of understanding their approach.
Not a compromise of design integrity per se, but an integration toward a more holistic definition of what good design really is...(this can and should encompass a cost component)
i agree with much of what farwest said in the first post...especially the item on vision which i was alluding to as well... program driven buildings absolutely require this vision...and i don't think its fair to assume the architects only role in this is herding the varied disciplines...
i'm speaking from experience in healthcare research and academic lab buildings... we have lead on jobs, we have consulted on jobs, we have had lab planners....the entire spectrum...and in all cases we have attempted to be the main proponent of the program...often times when everyone else gets to a point where they have either forgotten the original goals or think that other project factors such as cost or schedule should supersede program requirements...
someone needs to be there who can make the connection from the beginning of the project through design onto construction and possibly even onto facilities management...
I agree with you. As an architect working for a developer, it has been enlightening. Particularly because I have worked for 'bad' developers and now work for a phenomenal developer so I have seen both sides.
My POV is that you can learn from bad developers, but usually you learn what not to do. You might learn some financing and contracting knowledge, but what is important is the base you operate from and the people you work with [and for]. At the end of the day, all you have is your reputation [which goes back to your strengths and weaknesses].
My key aim is to work on briefing, scoping and managing our consultants. The biggest risks in development aside from sales and financing costs, are civil costs and consultant variations stemming from either not fully investigating the site and its implications, or from the client not having a very clear idea of what they want. Either can be disastrous to a project.
My advice to architects? Ask your client for a tight brief, including timing, scope, cost to build, what they want you to do above or beyond the normal scope. Then tell them what you can do and cant do. Include disbursements within your fee [not as an extra] then do a good job.
many of the older architects may disagree...
architects must embrace a shifting role, forget ever trying to be the master builder again....
we must be the educators of a larger populus as to the role and influence good design must play in a better functioning society. we must think of our profession as no longer exclusively building (the physical structure, not the trade) centric.
we are the designers, they have a kit of parts. architects that design with a kit of parts are doomed to the fate of being absorbed into construction companies or developers...
the ability to evolve and to convince the people that evolution of architecture is necessary and good is what will keep our profession ahead of the building trades, and is what will keep owners interested in us.
(see 2008 venice biennale, directed by aaron betsky)
highly academic and really wishy washy i know... (intern tired of detailing hospitals)
thas aright diabase. specialisation is impt, as is qulaity of contractor. we have a list of contractors we go to for different jobs. we know the ones that need hand holding and the ones who are on the ball from dot but cost 4 times more. we also know where to go to do a hospital. or whatever. personally i am pretty good at schools. i hated hospitals. wouldn't do one again unless the client had a pretty special mandate...
i don't mind being ignorant as long as i know where to go to to fix that. it doesn't embarass me at all. if GC wants to snigger well that's his call...
Industry Is Setting the Stage For BIM Collaboration
http://enr.construction.com/news/finance/archives/080702d.asp
A consortium of 22 industry groups developing a set of best-practice contracts for construction has published a stand-alone building-information-modeling addendum that it says can be attached to any governing contract to help structure collaborative BIM projects.
The ConsensusDOCS 301 BIM Addendum was published on June 30 and announced at an Associated General Contractors’ workshop in Lake Tahoe, Calif., a few days before. It is intended for use as an addendum to contracts between all parties in a collaborative project. Its purpose is to gather and record agreement on the assignment of responsibility and rights with respect to a range of legal issues that may arise in BIM-based projects. The document is the product of a year-long effort by a legal subcommittee of AGCs’ BIM Forum and a ConsensusDOCS task force.
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