Design-Build Gone South

“…just talked to my attorney, we need to get this resolved. If I don’t hear from you I will file suit.”- excerpt from voicemail from a neighbor of design build project 04/11/14“…been getting calls from Charlie and his family. He says the afternoon sun is reflecting off the shelter and turning his kitchen yellow, a color he doesn’t like.”- excerpt from conversation with Project Manager from Transportation Department, May 2011Educational design/build has a broad spectrum and takes many diverse forms including the studio-based professional practice model, elective-based experimental installations and building technology pedagogies. Common to all these interpretations is the dimension of reality, arguably its most unique and valuable contribution to the academy. Reality introduces conditions, constraints and opportunities comprised of people, materials, fabrication processes, environmental conditions, building codes, gravity and use. Many interpretations of educational design build are demanding endeavors with challenges and values closely associated with professional practice. These include project planning, funding acquisition, legal authority, contracts, clients, liability, and the physical realization of actual architectural products for use by actual users; done for the purposes of education, service and research. These projects are typically student driven; the principle pedagogical objective and benefit, but also a condition that introduces inefficiencies that make their undertaking more challenging than if they were delivered exclusively by a team of professional architects and contractors. Upon completion, educational design/build projects are typically published and promoted with cover shots of finished projects in the best lighting, featuring the most innovative and finely crafted details. Students are shown swinging hammers and gathered before projects illustrating their camaraderie as they beam with a sense of accomplishment. Use and value is often captured with imagery of celebratory events filled with community members. These projections are truths and effectively illustrate the positive dimensions of educational design build. But these truths are typically incomplete. The underbelly of educational design build is the other realm of truths, one that is equally if not more positive and most certainly more negative. This realm is often suppressed due to the controversial efficacy of educational design/build and the tenure and promotion pressures imposed on participating faculty. This paper presents the rarely disclosed ways educational design/build projects go south. Over a ten-year history, through more than a dozen design/build projects, the authors from two different universities have witnessed and been party to a wide diversity of calamities. Although they have not had life-threatening injuries, they have had threats of lawsuits, shouting matches with attorneys and administrators, resentful students and clients, structural failures and project overruns. Through the examination of their failures they aspire to ultimately improve the pedagogies and processes of educational design/build. Design/build endeavors are an ever-growing facet of architectural education. New faculty practitioners of design/build deserve an open, honest and direct disclosure of the causes and effects of both common and unique dilemmas and catastrophes. These span from anticipated and controlled teaching moments, to unforeseen conditions understood through hindsight, to absurd outcomes that could never have been anticipated.

Volume Editors
Sergio Palleroni, Ted Cavanagh & Ursula Hartig

ISBN
978-0-935502-94-7