Design for Communities not Competitions
Architects are always looking for ways to be challenged, to engage in design and get their work seen, aiming at attracting new clients. Traditionally, open design competitions have lured in thousands of firms to submit designs for proposed projects. Thousands may enter; a few will be finalists; yet only one team wins. Even then, there is no guarantee the building will actually be built nor that the architects who designed the winning proposal will be those chosen for the project. What it boils down to is a waste of thousands of man hours once you add up all the resources each participating firm had dedicated to the endeavor.
According to a recent TEDx talk by Daniel Dendra, founder of Open SimSim, only 2% of the buildings worldwide are planned by architects. A few years ago, 1,557 offices participated in the competition for the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Assuming at least 3 architects per team and at least one month of work, that equals 4671 man months – or approximately 10 architect’s full careers. That is a tremendous amount of wasted time and resources – and it also represents 1,556 buildings that were designed but will never be built. Imagine if all that effort went to people who were desperate for a new home, a community in need of a new school, a country that is rebuilding after a natural disaster.
Sustainability is all about living within a system that doesn’t consume more than is produced, where waste is obsolete and rather becomes a new resource. A system where all efficiencies are maximized. The antiquated architectural system described above is incredibly inefficient as thus unsustainable.
Full feature in Issue 23 (Summer 2011) – click here to view.
