Design-Build as a Reversal of Professional Practice

This paper explores the question of whether University design/build courses and studios can become an effective vehicle for research and development in the construction sector and in the professional practice of architecture.Our project was structured as a graduate-level elective studio and seminar incorporated in a professional architecture degree program. It involved 22 students in the design, research, analysis and construction of a full-scale, pre-certified demonstration Passive House which was ultimately exhibited in a public forum attracting over 250,000 visitors over a 10-day period.In this paper, we discuss our project in terms of reciprocal relationships which exist between design/build, construction, and professional practice, and we ask whether industry could benefit from selective adaptation of tactics developed within design/build. We establish that Design/Build studio and professional practices create their identity in how they deal with common concerns such as limited time, budget and material resources, issues of liability, group design processes and dynamics, collaborative solution creation and the constructive inclusion of clients, consultants and contractors in the design process. Yet, the most significant distinguishing feature of the Design/Build scenario is a reversal of conditions in professional practice and construction. In professional practice, labor costs are at a premium. Typical construction processes are moving away from their traditional position as crafts and becoming instead processes of assembly of pre-made parts. In the Design/Build scenario the opposite is true. The typical design/build project in the context of a professional architectural curriculum incorporates several hundred person-hours from highly-skilled, craft-oriented, innovative individuals, most or all of whom are highly motivated to pursue a design process where analysis, creation, ideation, discussions and decisions occur through the making of at-scale and full-scale representational artifacts, followed by a construction process which is not only highly detail-oriented but is overseen and/or carried out by many of the same individuals involved in design.In short, design/build is not a small version of professional practice, but is in many respects is its reciprocal or counterpoint. In our paper, we question whether professional practice and construction could benefit from the adaptation of specific tactics such as direct involvement of designers in construction, role-trading to create targeted and close collaborations between craftspeople and designers, and full-scale prototyping in the design process.

Volume Editors
Sergio Palleroni, Ted Cavanagh & Ursula Hartig

ISBN
978-0-935502-94-7