Design Systems, Part 2

Summary: Are architects too expensive? We suggest the answer is 'no - merely inefficient'. We look at the alternative - design systems.

Top Gun

How many people here have seen the early Tom Cruise movie "Top Gun"? Can you remember the classic line out of that movie? I remember when I was studying in the US, a friend of mine from Sweden used to walk around saying,: "I feel the need, the need for…"

"…speed."

Are Architects Too Expensive?

At present Architects design around 5% of all houses. Most people don't use an Architect to design their homes because they consider them to be too expensive. I would suggest that Architects charge a reasonable fee relative to their level of expertise and the time it takes to complete their work. However, I would also suggest architects are too slow. If Architects were able to double their productivity and halve their fees, more clients in the housing market would be easily found.

Client Deadlines

In the car industry, the time frame from bringing a new model onto the market has dropped from 5 years a decade ago to around 12 months. Most of the credit in this shift is to do with the use of computer technology. This change completely shifts the way cars are designed, produced and marketed. I am sure that you are all familiar with the increased demand from your own clients to have your designs produced within shorter and shorter deadlines. As we have discussed computer modelling steers the design focus towards environmental modelling and performance. The need for Architects to produce their designs in shorter time frames steers the design focus toward design systems.

A Home Office You Love

One design system that I've created is one of my other books. It's called, "A Home-Office You Love". By giving one of these books to your clients, they can write their own design brief saving themselves money and saving the architect time. (We'll be adding a download of this book to this site shortly).

Current Software

Current Computer Aided Drawing software merely automates the drawing process of the drawing board. Generally speaking, the estimates that I have heard is that this gives a productivity increase of between 5-20% depending upon the activity and depending on whether you include computer breakdowns, staff trainings, etc. as part of the process. If you are looking to increase your productivity by 10-20% you can accomplish this by being more effective in what you already do. Obvious starting points are to assemble libraries of components that most CAD programs enable you to generate. Then, rather than redraw all the items from scratch, they are simply downloaded and pasted into your document.

Doubling Productivity

This saves some time, but a more powerful question for you is, "How can we double our productivity?" Any answer to this question will revolve around creating systems for design and it will require re-inventing the design process. My guess is that within ten years, the design process of the architect will be very different from what it is today.


Back to" Design Systems, Part 1
Related Articles: Proportional Design Systems: In contrast to 'linear design systems', 'proportional design systems' may provide an alternative approach for computer generated architectural design.

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