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Architects design something like 5% of houses; it may be less. My
impression from blogs, magazines and awards is that architecture
that is considered good design has nothing to do with size (perhaps
with the exception of Dubai). The Australian Institute of
Architects has a handful of award categories, and one is Small
Architecture. The others are Residential, Public, Urban Design and
Sustainable Architecture, from memory. Most projects I remember from
university also had nothing to do with (large) size; one project I
remember was to design a single self-contained room. <br>
<br>
I don't think the education of architects is the major problem. The
education of clients is. The housing market is dominated by large
project home companies of various levels of so called prestige,
which is supported by mainstream press which is thinly veiled
marketing of Large and Excess. I have often had questions from
clients such as "we only need two bedrooms, but should we have four
for resale value?" or, "we would be happy with a carport but I
suppose we need a double garage for resale?". Typically these
people have no intention of selling. But, as a house is a huge cost
and a mortgage is a huge burden, they are scared and believe, or at
least question whether they should believe, what most newspapers,
magazines, TV lifestyle programs, and particularly real estate
agents tell them. Compounding this, of course, is the overarching
growth fetish and consumerism of capitalist society in general. <br>
<br>
I always try to design to a budget; almost every project is a
struggle to rein in the client to theirs. I like what Bob Borson
says on his blog - from a list of desirable client traits, <br>
"<strong>Understand their budget: </strong>this is not the same as
knowing your budget. It’s sort of a glass half empty versus glass
half full mentality – but with money. One has an empty “budget bag”
that they think they can put stuff in until it’s full; the other has
a bag with their budget in it and they take things out until the
budget is expended. It might seem like the same thing but it’s not.
The group putting stuff in the bag will continually try and jam more
stuff in, well beyond when the zipper will close (just sit on it and
then try…). The other, well, when you take the last thing out,
that’s it, there’s nothing left. Whenever we have clients that
stress quantity over quality, it’s a harbinger of things to come.
It’s not the clients job to know what things cost, but when they
keep increasing the square footage of the project, or continue to
add program requirements without ever thinking that these things
have costs associated with them, it’s shows that they
aren’t thinking about the very base fact that everything has a cost
associated with it."<br>
<br>
-Andrew<br>
<br>
<br>
On 12/05/2011 10:21 PM, Derek Roff wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:00BCEA96DDABAFDBF11B3B84@%5B192.168.0.70%5D"
type="cite"><br>
I have wondered about the education of architects, and perhaps
some of the architects on this list can comment. <br>
</blockquote>
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