"The current building regulatory environment cannot genuinely support innovation without a major rethink."

"Concerns about the complexity of the [building] regulatory framework and its impact on innovation have been raised by BRANZ* in recent submissions to both the Commerce Commission and to MBIE....
    "While the regulatory framework has been designed to allow flexibility to use new products [Ahem! - Ed], in practice, it has not been totally effective. We believe this is because the regulatory system is too complex and creates uncertainty around how to ensure a product will comply.
    "This uncertainty then incentivises designers, builders and building consent authorities to favour tried and tested building products to ensure lower personal and organisation risk. In short, the complexity of the regulatory environment is driving behaviours and decisions across the building system that are risk averse, conservative and not conducive to innovation.
    "[T]he current [building] regulatory environment cannot genuinely support innovation without a major rethink."

~ outgoing BRANZ* CEO Chelydra Percy, in an unusually frank assessment of the regulatory impediments to innovation in the building industry, 'Holding Up a Mirror to the Industry'

* BRANZ, i.e., the Building Research Association of NZ is the government research body overseeing and appraising building materials and systems, funded by a compulsory levy on all Building Consents.a

How does the Design Process work?

How do we get from an idea -- "we need a house that fits us like a glove" -- to moving into that house of your dreams. You want 

• more space
• better living
• a smooth project

And the smoothest projects, from concept to completion, will take several Workphases. They're all about getting the best result for you and your site ...

WORKPHASE: DESIGN CONSULTATION

Think of a design consultation as a house call: we visit your home (and/or you visit us), discuss and sketch possibilities, and answer basic questions about costs and construction alternatives. 

After the consultation, a report will document the results and conclusions of the Design Consultation, which forms the brief for the subsequent Project. [More here about this introduction to each other, and to your project]

WORKPHASE: PRE-DESIGN

The Project's first Workphase is generally producing the Concept.  Finding the idea that best integrates client, site, budget and architecture. This will first involve some Pre-Design -- the gathering of appropriate information about the site, for example, and/or preliminary studies or research to develop the detailed brief for the Project. This may include searching Council files for existing drawings; checking measurements on site; examining costs of different concepts; and/or produce a basic level survey or measured drawing sufficient to allow Sketch Design. (Note that there are very few projects in which a detailed site survey performed by a Land Surveyor is not required, so it's best to get that underway as soon as possible.) 

Once Pre-Design is complete -- and only then -- is it possible begin work on the Concept, on the best integration of brief, budget, and site. We need to know all relevant factors first to begin. 

WORKPHASE: SKETCH DESIGN
Concept Design, or Sketch Design, generally involves sketching ideas to see what "fits," with both client and site. Early ideas are often produced to test their feasibility with both the site's potential or a particular approach you may like to pursue. 

We often say that that "we only get the real brief after the first Sketch Design. That's because the Concept Design Workphase may often involve the testing of different approaches/or options that may be used to test the Client, or to define or verify the Brief.  We will generally prepare up to two preliminary sketch proposals based on information supplied and the brief developed in our Design Consultation. At the completion of this Phase, a preliminary estimate only of costs will be made based on indicative square-metre costings.

Expected Output: At the end of this phase, between you and us we should have uncovered our preferred solution. We can then look at which Consultants might need to be attached, how much a rough square-metre Estimate of costs will reveal, what the prospects might be for regulatory approval, and we have a Design -- plan, sections, perspectives, perhaps a model -- which we can share with a third party for marketing or consultation purposes, and (most importantly) take to the next Workphase...

WORKPHASE: DEVELOPED DESIGN

If the Sketch Design is generally done with pencil, paper, and a drawing board, then it's at Developed Design that we really bring in the Computer. 

Having agreed on a basic concept, we test the ideas and refine details to shape the final design of the building, usually by transferring into the computer the preferred proposal produced in the Sketch Design phase. The 3D computer model produced allows the project to be seen in much more detail, and drawings from this model form the basis for the next Phase. 

 
Developed design is a key Workphase—at this point you need to communicate any further needs or requirements as it is the last opportunity to refine the overall nature of the design before project planning commences.

Expected Output: At the end of your Sketch Design Workphase, you will have had a sketch of your project. At the end of this Developed Design Workphase, we will be able to give you a full 3D walkthrough of your project! To see and clearly understand the aesthetics and functionality of the building, internal spaces and facilities.

    At the conclusion of this Phase, we will advise of any changes to the preliminary ‘square metre’ estimate of the Construction Cost. For large or complicated work, a Quantity Surveyor may be engaged at this Phase to offer a more refined preliminary estimate of costs. ...

WORKPHASE: PLANNING APPROVAL PHASE (if required)
Resource Consents are not necessary for every project, but we will play a role in securing any Consents should they be necessary. If required, we may engage specialists or consultants to help secure the required consents for you.

WORKPHASE: DETAILED DESIGN

Once your preferred design is finalised, your design can then progress to a level sufficient for preliminary assessment by contractors, and for work with consultants to begin the preparation of Working Drawings.

Detailed Design generally provides a level of documentation that clearly defines the design, specification and extent of all building elements. Your design will be comprehensively co-ordinated with other consultants, which may include detailed design by ourselves or others on structures, interiors, kitchens, landscape, HVAC, lighting, solar etc. 

The documents produced in this phase are now used to produce detailed Working Drawings. Changes to anything but detail at this stage are very disruptive, expensive and often result in further problems as by now the project has become very complex and it is hard to identify all the ramifications of changes. Detailed Design is the phase most commonly used to obtain a Tender for the construction of the works.

WORKPHASE: WORKING DRAWINGS

Construction Design is where the requirements defined in Detailed Design documents are integrated with construction requirements such as site conditions, proprietary and performance design elements, erection requirements and fabricated shop drawings to create drawings that can be directly ‘built’ from.

Working from the drawings produced above, we will produce a full set of drawings and specifications to be submitted for Building Consent. In addition to the Consent Set(s), a final Construction Set of drawings and Specifications may be required that allows a contractor to assess the full scope of the project prior to tender.

WORKPHASE: PROCUREMENT

Following Council approval of the Construction Documents and your approval of the latest preliminary estimate of Construction Cost, we can assist you in obtaining bids or negotiated proposals, and in awarding and preparing contracts for construction.

WORKPHASE: CONTRACT ADMINISTRATION
Having lived with your project, we are now ideally placed to ensure it is built as we both have planned for. We will visiting your site at intervals appropriate to the stage of construction or as otherwise agreed by ourselves in order to become generally familiar with the progress and quality of the Work, to determine in general if the Work is being performed in a manner indicating that the Work when completed will be in accordance with the Contract Documents, and to help prepare final As-Built Documents which are needed for your Code Compliance Certificate.
    On the basis of these on-site observations, we will keep you informed of the progress and quality of the Work, answers questions raised by your builder, and guard you against defects and deficiencies in the Work. (More here about working together on this important part of your project.)

Q: Why employ your architect for construction support during construction of your home?

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Today I want to tackle one of those questions that every client asks as a project moves toward construction ...

Q: Why employ an architect for construction support during construction of our home?

It's a question I’m often asked, and it’s one that every home owner should be asking the designer of their new home: why the hell should we be paying you to visit our new place during construction?

A very fair question. Let’s see if I can answer it.

1. Because every new home has many enemies

There are several levels of construction support, and man things it might be called, but the first and very simple reason to employ your designer to make regular site visits this: to make sure that your new home is built as you’ve had it designed. You (the owners) and your designer have spent many hours getting everything about your new place just right – getting each and every detail just the way you want it, to make it just the house that you want. And it’s very easy (frighteningly easy) to muck up many of those things during construction – for you or your builder to do “small” things onsite that may have big implications for all those big things you really want; or for you or your builder to be persuaded by a building inspector or an engineer that things will have to be changed.

And every change may have an unexpected impact. Change a door swing and a whole room may become a place nobody wants to be. Remove too much wall in a renovation (or too little) and you end up with spaces not flowing (or embracing you) the way they really should. Alter a window and a space may not get the sun that makes it work. Add a thicker layer of tiles and you suddenly discover your new stair no longer works. Change a flashing material at an upper level and you may affect the corrosion profile of all materials below it. Install a different lighting system and you may end up repelling guests rather than welcoming them in. Even removing a tree that your designer has relied on can end up in bringing in more sun than you want – or end up in you and your neighbour seeing far more of each other than you’d ever really intended!

Your builder won’t necessarily see these things – nor will he necessarily identify, say, the foundation or locational problems that might emerge from a slight change in, say, the position of a post – and your engineer or building inspector will not even be interested – but there is nobody better placed than the designer to do it, and he can only do it properly if he’s on site to sniff them out.

2. Because every change has unexpected implications

You see, it’s your designer’s job to be your eyes and ears on site, to sniff out all the implications of any changes you or your builder may suggest, or may inadvertently make.

Your designer will not be opposed to making changes – once a building project is under way, it’s then that many improvements can be very easily seen, and made – but it is his job to ensure that changes made are necessary changes (how many clients have been gulled by builders/engineers/inspectors or just folk they meet at dinner parties to do things that are utterly unnecessary and often very pricy). And also that you do understand the full implications of any changes you do propose (implications on both your wallet and on the way the house will work for you) before you authorise the go-ahead. Not to be negative about any changes proposed, but to let you decide what is more important to you – the thing proposed, or the thing that change may rule out.

3. Because your builder will have many questions

At the very beginning of a building project, and at the beginning of every stage thereafter, the person who has most thought it through and will understand it is the person who has drawn it up in the first place. So even if neither you nor your builder nor anyone of the grey ones has proposed any changes, your builder will undoubtedly have many questions that, in being answered, can save him an awful lot of time (and you an awful lot of money).

And there is no better person to answer those questions, or make time- or labour-saving suggestions, than the building’s designer who has thought through the whole process, and then watched the building being erected from the ground up.

Because it’s important to understand that every new-build is in essence a prototype – a one-off – and if it weren’t, then there would be few reasons to have engaged a designer in the first place! (And it’s an old saying that every builder likes building things that he’s already built before.)

So, being a one-off, that will mean the design will almost certainly contain things your builder will not have considered before, or considered doing that way before. And if he doesn’t ask those questions out loud, you can be sure he’ll be asking them in his head.

Much better if he has those questions answered before they appear in unexpected ways in his bill, or in your house!

4. Because every new-build is a prototype

The other very good reason to employ your designer on site during construction is because of this very reason: that every new piece of architecture is a prototype. It’s never existed before on this earth, and so, even if your builder has no immediate questions then, like every new thing as it’s brought into being, there will be unexpected things occurring from time to time.

This is the very reason that prototypes are made! To sniff out anything unexpected before you go into mass production.

Now, your new home is not going into mass production, but it is still very much a prototype in the sense that it’s a one-off that’s never been built before, and just as a prototype for mass production is built in order to discover anything unexpected about the product, we should (with every new-build) almost expect that unexpected things are going to occur.

It’s best when those unexpected things are called to everyone’s attention that the designer be there to help think through the best response. And he can do that best if he’s been there every step of the way first, so he thoroughly understands all that’s gone before, and all the cost implications of the decision(s).

Because one of the important implications of this is that if you do ring your designer when the unexpected occurs, then if he hasn’t been part of the process up to that stage then he will need time to try to come up to speed (because he won’t know all that’s happened before this, and he will no longer have been focussed on the project), and you will then generally have to pay him by the hour for any work he does at this stage rather than have it covered by your agreed weekly/monthly/fortnightly rate, which will often end up cheaper, and will almost certainly allow him a fuller grasp of the issue in question.

4. Because having your designer on site regularly affords him the fullest focus on your job

Ring your designer out of the blue when you’re halfway through your job, and he or she hasn't been involved onsite thus far, and they will have to take their head away from the projects on which they're presently focussed, and wonder where they've stored your plans. In other words, you won’t have their fullest focus, and they can't do their best work for you. And you won’t have that unless you've actually employed them to maintain that focus.  

5. Because having your designer regularly on site makes them part of the command structure

And another thing ... if your designer is not on site regularly and then you ask him to just show up out of the blue (which I guarantee will happen at least once on every project), what builder (or tradie, or QS, or site engineer) is likely to take them seriously? You've shown by not employing them yourself to provide regular construction support that you don't value that input, so why should they? And without that regular opportunity to be part of the command structure on site -- to share conversations about job progress and proposals; to vet quotes and payments; to run or attend regular site meetings; to issue variation orders when necessary -- there is no opportunity for your designer to gain that respect that can often, when the moment might arise, spread much-needed oil over unexpectedly troubling waters.

6. Because regular payments are generally more affordable for you, in the long run, than most of the alternatives

Because the thing is, there are many reasons why you should and will need to employ your designer during the construction stage – even if it’s just to draw up the now mandatory “as-built” drawings that council demand at the end of every job (something easy to do with regular site visits, but frustratingly hard without) – so in many ways the decision is really this:

will we be paying our designer an hourly rate every time we call him (which may discourage you making that important call? 

Or: 

should we pay him a regular weekly/fortnightly/monthly rate for him to keep our interests uppermost?

For my own part, as a one- or two-person office, I much prefer having that regular engagement on site that keeps me personally involved with the project, and being there regularly to support the builder and owner. (And it’s much less stressful for everyone involved when I’m suddenly involved in a project about which I’m by then somewhat unfamiliar, and with tradesmen who I’ve never met.) For most medium-sized projects, unless there is something particularly challenging, then one or two hours a week, or a fortnight, seems to work well for both me and my clients, and for their builders. Some weeks there will be more, and some less, but it generally evens out and (a little like how insurance can cover the unexpected) when or if there is much more work to be done, then those regular payments will generally absorb the work required.

Conclusion

So why should you employ your designer during your building project? Here's the short summary:

·      Because even if you know how to build, no-one will know your new building better than your designer

·      Because you will want to build the place you’ve had designed, not inadvertently build something different

·      Because even if you do decide to build it differently, you will want to know that you are aware of the fullest implications of that difference

·      Because when you build something that’s never been built before (or built in this way before) then the builder is going to have questions

·      Because when you build something that’s never been built before (or built in this way before) you need to expect the unexpected

·      Because when you build something that’s never been built before (or built in this way before) then you will want your designer’s fullest focus when you or your builder do call with questions.
B   Because making your designer part of the command structure affords them the respect they deserve.

·      Because it’s easier for everyone to have an expected regular outgoing than an unexpected and reluctantly-paid hourly rate.

I hope that's helped to answer the question for you. 

Leave questions in the comments if you have more.

What is the ideal relationship of architect to client?

Floor Plan, Malcolm Willey house, 1933, by Frank Lloyd Wright (with then-radical integration of kitchen and living spaces highlighted)

What is the ideal relationship of architect to client?

I like to quote architect Bruce Goff, who said he "liked to do what they [his clients] would do if they were a good architect." Each client being as unique as every individual, Goff would devise a unique house for every client, spending as much time discovering who they really were, in order to discover how best to make their home best fit them -- as if they had been able to produce it out of themselves.

Architects Charles & Ray Eames had a somewhat similar approach, based upon a conversation with Eero Saarinen on the subject of the Guest/Host Relationship, saying:

One of the things we hit upon was the quality of a host. That is, the role of the architect, or the designer, is that of a very good, thoughtful host, all of whose energy goes into trying to anticipate the needs of his guests—those who enter the building and use the objects in it. We decided that this was an essential ingredient in the design of a building or a useful object.

I think that's a great way to think about it. 

Building upon that idea, designer Steve Sikora sees designer and client as "dancers in a complicated tango of wills"--the better clients helping produce a greater architectural response.

My partner, Lynette and I shared the mixed blessing of leading a design and branding firm for over 30 years. One of the lessons you take from that, is the understanding that the quality of your work is significantly determined by the quality of the clients you work with. Notice, I said work with, rather than work for. When a designer is able to ally as equal partner with a client of vision and courage, it creates fertile ground for optimal results in every endeavour. Doubtless, in our practice, our greatest achievements would not have been, were it not for the engagement, faith and occasional challenges presented by our clients.

Applying this to Frank Lloyd Wright's highly innovative 1933 Willey House (plan, above), about which Sikora (as owner) writes frequently, not least about its dramatic impact on modern domestic design:

In the case of the Willey House, Nancy presented Wright with enough constructive resistance to lift her dance partner above the prevailing paradigms of domestic architecture.

Wright's approach demands a demanding but open client.

As John Sergeant observed, “The relationship between client and architect was for Wright a thing of joint intent.” To achieve clear focus and gain permission, even “In large projects he always sought out one person and never a committee, to represent the client.” That, as they say, is easier said than done, but it was a prerequisite that governed his creative and persuasive processes...

When [his son] John Lloyd Wright considered a career in architecture, his father gave him this advice, “You’ve got to have guts to be an architect! People will come to you and tell you what they want, and you will have to give them what they need.” “Don’t you take the wants of the client into consideration?” John asked. “If you consider the house first, you will supply the needs of the client. The wants change from day to day, but a house must embody the needs of those who live in it. The architect must be aware of those needs, the client seldom is. An architect must have the courage to turn away a commission even if he is hungry if his work will not represent the highest ideals….Think it over, John: to be an architect is no light matter.”

The Willey House was a small masterpiece that helped re-set Wright's residential thinking for the rest his career; a new form that flourished in the creative tension between a responsive architectural genius and a demanding yet sympathetic client.

Consider this, a client will typically select an architect based upon their past artistic expressions. Nancy Willey was certainly a case in point. Yet the same client will judge their architect by how well their needs are met, once the design is implemented. This too, is evident in the correspondence between Nancy Willey and Frank Lloyd Wright. In her initial letter she asked “What do you think are the chances of my being able to have a – creation of art?” She repeatedly expressed wanting to follow his instructions to the letter. But when pressed into a corner, having to decide between high art and pragmatism, she was willing to fight for what she knew she needed and could afford. On November 17, 1933 frustrated with construction bids coming in at two times over budget on scheme 1, she penned a terse letter to Wright. In it she wrote, “I do not want a seventeen thousand dollar house even at twelve or ten thousand dollars. I want an eight to ten thousand dollar house at eight to ten thousand dollars. Can I have it?” We have Nancy’s red line and assertive pushback to thank, for what inspired Wright to cast aside his initial ideas and ultimately seek a more appropriate solution. Once the water broke, something new and wonderful was born, relieving the tension between clients and architect. From that point forward, in full alignment, both parties strove to advance the project with renewed enthusiasm. In Nancy’s own words from her Oral History interview with Indira Berndtson “…and how he responded, once he accepted it!!

Dance partners -- host and guest -- interpreter of true needs -- discover of a client's inner person. The good architect is all of these in one. And the ideal client is the ideal reciprocal to all these. But as Steve Sikora summarises, there is one quality above all that is required of a good client:

I had the chance to meet a life-long graphic design hero of mine, Milton Glaser. It was at a conference in New Orleans, where we both presented. An idea from his presentation became indelibly inscribed into my memory. While discussing his long career, Milton spoke about clients. He said, “I could never work for anyone who I did not have a genuine affection for.” His words were profound, because they implied two things; he could only do his best work for people he liked, but also, in a professional context, he gave permission for designers to understand, appreciate and embrace clients as fellow humans, even potential friends. He believed in collapsing formal, professional barriers. I instantly related his sentiment to my own client relationships.

And I, I hope, to mine.

REF:
Quotes from:

• Willey House Stories Part 5 – The Best of Clients, by Steve Sikora - at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation website
• The Guest/Host Relationship - at the Eames Office official site

Getting a flower out of the system instead of a weed

"There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's where the light gets in."
~ Leonard Cohen

Weeds abound. Weeds can be found in every suburb, and every magazine. Weeds are what we get out of the system when we all try least hardest. But why live in a weed for twenty years or more just because the system makes building and buying weeds easier than it is to produce a flower? And why go to the effort of building yourself if the final result of all that angst and energy is just another weed.

We use this frequently as a slogan -- getting a flower out of the system instead of a weed -- but it's a slogan that we really mean. The weeds the system throws up don't interest us. The flowers we can grow out of it do. Immensely.

This is what we do every day here at Organon Architecture: work to get a flower out of the system instead of a weed. With the system now more grotesque now than it's ever been, it's never been more important.

It means we place as much emphasis in designing your home on the process of design and discovery as we do in the final product -- much of the design process involving finding out who you are and your ideal place in which to live.

It means we're designing your special place, not just something that suits every passer-by -- we do what you might do if you were a good architect.

That means that we don't know when we start where, and how, the process will end up -- it's always an open exploration, with the discovery and construction of your dream the final goal!

It means we know the rules (and there are many of them!) not simply to blindly follow them, but in order to find and exploit the loopholes -- to let the light get in through those cracks; because in this system it's not the weeds that the grow up within the cracks and crannies (they're everywhere, and in industrial quantities) --  it's the flowers. And they need careful tending.

It does mean the whole process may take longer -- but flowers always do need more care and attention than a weed.

And a weed you can get anywhere, every day of the week.

Flowers are much harder to grow. But worth it.

"'Jumping through hoops' is pushing up building costs" [updated]

I was heartened this morning to hear Radio NZ report that "'jumping through hoops' is pushing up building costs" -- not about the hoops, and certainly not about the costs they're imposing, but because this is finally being reported as a headline item.

Fire engineers are accusing councils of making illegal demands on them that are inflating building costs by thousands of dollars... "I've become totally used to how bad it is, I'm sort of numb to it, it's just a bureaucratic nightmare right now," Wellington fire engineer Kenneth Crawford of Pacific Consultants said. "We've got so many demands coming from council ... it's pushed up costs, it's creating months and months of delays in obtaining a building consent, and none of this is actually really improving safety." A fire design on a small warehouse in 2013 that might have cost $1200 to $1500 was now costing at least $4000, and up to $20,000, he said.

Sadly, as anyone who's recently endured the consent process could tell you, it's not confined to fire engineers.

The Building Act requires council to process Building Consent applications within twenty working days of being lodged. Council have two dodges to get around this. The first is to set up a process to decide when the application has been successfully lodged. This can easily take two weeks, with no work at all done n processing. And the second -- based on he principle that "the clock stops" when questions about the project are asked -- is to ask as many silly questions as council processors can think of, all of them calculated to show down the processing and frustrate client, consultants and designers. [This 2013 table from Christchurch will give you some idea of the time 'saved' in this way.]

In recent months, for example, and like every regular applicant for building consents, I've spent many, many hours replying to council's Requests for Further Information (RFIs). These days it's often less about being a designer than it is about being a lawyer, explaining the building code clauses to the processor at the other end of an email.

The simplest RFI responses are to tell the questioner where precisely in the document set they can find the answer to their question, already addressed. But in recent months it's been getting worse. Among other things, in order to keep things moving I've been required to tell council the make and model of a shower and the finish of a bathroom cabinet; the colour of bedroom carpets (accompanied by a calculation to show they're bright enough); the normal process by which to pour a concrete footing in engineered soil, to abandon approved details because the territorial authority has decided they don't like them, and to replace them with those they've now decided they do; to discuss the acoustics of polystyrene sheets (that are not being used for acoustic purposes); to resupply calculations and statements that the processor has already received, but lost; to explain why handrails are not required on steps with fewer than two treads, and how an opening window into an open lightwell allows light and air into a room; to draw up a list of a project's "construction and demolition hazards"; to provide mechanical ventilation rates for areas we've shown will use natural ventilation; to draw up simple diagrams because processors are unable to read fairly standard plans; to confirm the use of smoke detectors (when they've already been clearly placed and labelled on drawings); and (in the absence of council finding anything else to ask about) to draw a detail of a bathroom splashback -- just some examples of recent Requests from processors, all of which have wasted my time and theirs, unnecessarily dragging out the consenting process, and all at the time and expense of clients who were once very eager to build.

I'm sure you can all add your own list of examples. (And please do!)

This process is often worse when councils sublet the processing to a consultant, whose motivation is then to spin out the questions in order to pad the bill. This can work out very nicely for the very average consultant, but very poorly for clients who have budgets and builders trying to programme in their work.

And all this of course is in addition to the truckload of documentation, in triplicate, that has to be supplied just to 'get in the door' to make that original application, the sheer volume of which in itself delays the processing and all but guarantees inconsistencies will appear in the document set. By way of illustration, I may be renovating a house built in the 1920s, of a style that is still very popular, the original drawings of which are on one A4 page with another smaller page containing what might be called the specification -- which might say little more than 'use nails.' And this 'document set' was probably drawn up by either the builder or owner. Yet to renovate that house now I will need documentation of around 24 A1 pages, and A4 specifications and accompanying documentation of around a thousand. And neither builder nor owner will be allowed to prepare those documents unless they have been previously Licensed by a government department to do so.

Every year it's been getting worse, without making the houses any better. In 2007, for instance -- aware that things were becoming more complicated in this new age of Licensing, Producer Statements and Memoranda/Certificates of Design Work-- the Department of Building and Housing produced a Guide to Applying for a Building Consent. It was a 44 pages long. The second edition appeared just three years later. It was already 62 pages long. None has appeared since: perhaps because no-one would have the time to read a document as long as it would now need to be. Crikey, these days it takes well over a day just to complete the application forms and processes to apply for a consent, and more than a day for every response thereafter.  All of it time wasted.

Every consultant will tell you similar stories, and not just fire engineers.

Yes, 'jumping through hoops' is pushing up building costs, and has been for some time.

Until or unless the Building Act is amended to remove risk from council -- and their ratepayers -- the hoops (and costs) are going to get worse, not better.

UPDATE: Further comment this morning on the mis-apportioning of  risk (Friday 27):

From Radio NZ the morning after:

The impact of everyone trying to pass all the risk on, was it was getting harder to build anything at a time of housing shortages, the Property Council's chief executive Connal Townsend said.

"The overall public policy setting of how the heck we manage risk, is completely out of whack," he said.

"We've just got people passing the ticking timebomb from one hand to another and blaming each other. It's pointless.

"We have to tackle the way risk is allocated and the fact that councils are left carrying the liability is just hopeless, absolutely hopeless."

The previous government tried hard to fix the problem [cough, cough - Ed.] but couldn't, and it was urgent this government confront it, he said.

The risk issue was a perverse result of building laws being overhauled in 2004 to combat the leaky building crisis.

Lawyers, including the Law Commission in a 2014 report, have since then resisted changing the way liability is doled out.

"The net effect of our joint-and-several system is that councils are left carrying the can," Mr Townsend said.

"This story with the fire engineers, all they've done is blown the whistle on a ridiculous problem that has to be solved."

.

"Those are the ones that should really go to jail."

"Paul Newman will have some time in jail to read up about architecture. Maybe he can even study for his exam and, no doubt, pass it. He could even emerge as a good contributor to the discipline and the profession. But what worries me more than the presence of a few shady and crafty operators such as Newman is bad architects who, under the cloak of licensure (and without the [architects institute] or anybody else able to do anything about it), commit crimes against our landscapes and lives on a daily basis. Those are the ones that should really go to jail." 

~ Aaron Betsky, dean at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin and Taliesin West, on the jailing for seven years of a man for practising architecture without the state's license

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Restoring Wright Buildings with 3d printing

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Millard House or “La Miniatura”

While everyone has been talking about trying to 3d print houses, Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘textile block’ buildings are being restored for pennies in the pound with 3d printed textured blocks.

His Annie Pfeiffer Chapel at Florida Southern College—part of a composition of twelve buildings at the South Florida campus designed as a “harmonious whole expressing the spirit of the college free from grandomania:--has had a makeover with the help of 3d-printed textile blocks replacing weathered and aged blocks.

The cost to recast Wright’s blocks by hand proved prohibitively expensive in the past…until the arrival of the affordable 3D printer.
    Thanks to a $50,000 grant from the Florida Division of Historical Resources and the emergence of affordable 3D printing technology, the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel was recently restored in exacting architectural detail.
    Architect Jeff Baker of Mesick Cohen Wilson Baker Architects oversaw the 12-month grant project, turning to the aid of 3D printers to replicate and replace what was once a tedious manual process. 3D printing significantly reduced both cost and effort to complete the architectural restoration, allowing Baker’s team to integrate 2,000 distinctive coloured glass tiles into Wright’s original design textile blocks, recreating the jewelled box effect envisioned by the architect.
    “The success found on this project is a milestone not only in the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings on the FSC campus but also for similar textile block projects designed by Wright and other architects throughout the nation,” enthused Baker.

This opens up possibilities not just for restoration, but for new textile block buildings as well.

And not just new textile buildings – new and economical methods of applied ornament as well. Just imagine what Wright’s master Louis Sullivan could have done with a few industrial 3d printers!

Coping of Louis Sullivan’s Wainwright Building

 

[Pics from http://prairieschoolarchitecture.tumblr.com/, Florida Rambler, Design Milk, When the Sidewalk Ends and 3dprint]