No More "Damn Architects!" - The Case for Integrated Design

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Permalink Reply by Robert Riversong on September 4, 2012 at 8:03pm

The most efficient and effective way to create an "integrated" design team is for one qualified master designer/builder to be the "team".

It requires someone familiar with all phases of design and construction, including mechanicals, to do this, but there are instances in which one brain is better than three.

This is the way I design all my homes, and I often do most if not all of the construction, from foundation to finish, including all mechanicals. My projects are 100% integrated, avoid scheduling conflicts, miscommunication, and trade interference, and are less costly than any comparable homes.

Permalink Reply by Chris Laumer-Giddens on September 5, 2012 at 4:47am

Very good, Robert! Becoming my own buidler, too, is where I'm headed. I enjoy the execution so much because it gives me the control of the end result. Too often my designs are not followed through, and it's out of my hands. It's a shame, too. The homeowners are the ones that suffer. They made a serious investment and commitment, and if it's only going to be ignored, than it's all for naught.

Permalink Reply by Robert Riversong on September 5, 2012 at 7:58am

I teach at a school whose mission is Design/Build. It was started 30 years ago by architects who loved to build and thought that designers must know the construction process and vice versa. Unfortunately, since the school has always been dominated by architects, its focus is about 85% design and 15% build - but it was never intended to be a trade school.

I came from the other direction. I took a 3-week course at a similar school in Maine in 1982 that gave me a foundation in engineering, basic design, and state-of-the-art passive solar energy-efficient construction. Then I jumped right into the non-profit building sector, leading projects in the hollers of Tennessee and inner city Boston, and then a Mutual Self-Help building program in MA in which I supervised nine young first-time homeowners to build nine homes in one year.

I worked for ten years in construction, doing non-profit, working for other contractors, and contracting renovation projects before I began designing and building new super-insulated passive-solar homes. It took me another ten years to develop and perfect my building system and approach - a modified site-built truss wall, 12" thick filled with dense-pack cellulose, and often using rough-sawn, if not green, native lumber.

In the last ten years, I've been perfecting that system and modifying it to meet various code and trade requirements, and so that other builders can erect them elsewhere without going through my long learning curve.

I was also fortunate to have started in the non-profit world designing and installing residential electrical and plumbing systems in a jurisdiction which didn't require licensing in those trades, so that broadened my knowledge and experience base and helped me understand that a designer has to also consider where the mechanicals will go without undermining the integrity of the framing or the living space. 

So I wish you a good journey, but want to say that it takes time, patience, knowledge and experience to become a true master designer/builder - a species that is almost extinct in today's highly specialized world.

Some of my work and my building philosophy can be seen at my blog: http://riversonghousewright.wordpress.com/