All For One, and One For All
Making the Case for Integrated-design and -project Delivery
By Dave Hampton
To create truly sustainable buildings, an integrated approach to design and project delivery is required. This approach has eluded the design professions and construction industry for the better part of two centuries--the central reasons being the emphasis of education over training and the increasing move toward specialization in our society.
Divide and Conquer
For much of human history, the designer was the builder. One could argue things have been drifting ever since construction technology became increasingly more complex, requiring more than simply an architect (literally “master-builder”) sketching the shapes of arches and buttresses in the sand for stonemasons to follow in constructing the great cathedrals of Europe.
As the training of craftsmen moved away from the guild model--an apprentice studying under a master--and toward universities, the education of architects and artists became arguably more intellectualized and removed from the craft itself. Mid-17th-century France saw a system of education in the arts, which included architecture, codified in the École des Beaux-Arts. With the establishment of the École Polytechnique in 1794, the educational path architects and engineers traveled began to diverge, creating a widening rift between the two that still is tangible in schools of architecture and in practice today.
By no longer integrating those who designed and built buildings, it became more difficult for our buildings to evolve with us and serve our changing needs.
Further set adrift by the emphasis on engineering and construction advances during the Industrial Revolution and with the establishment of the design professions in the late 18th century, buildings have become conceived by an increasingly divided (set of) mind(s).
The folks who would draw the columns and porticoes, design the trusses to hold up the roof, show where the poop goes and the cool air comes in were beginning to be different people who sat in offices of their own. By no longer integrating those who designed and built buildings, it became more difficult for our buildings to evolve with us and serve our changing needs.
Design-Build: Good for Business and Buildings
Anyone who’s managed to keep a business afloat during the last few years knows the us-versus-them paradigm that pits architect against engineer against contractor is not good for business or good for creating buildings.
If concerns about liability and structuring of contracts can be satisfied, design-build approaches--whereby design professionals and contractors become team members often presenting one consolidated bid to a client--become a very attractive method of project delivery compared with traditional methods.
Variations of design-build can streamline the design and construction process, allow greater oversight and adherence to standards and aesthetic goals, have the potential for greater financial return and present an attractive vehicle for an integrated-design approach to project delivery.
Let me give a very small example of a project that allowed architect, engineer and builder to work together to make a nice little building.
A Small Garage Seeks to Heal a Rift
Chicago-based Hampton Avery Architects was approached by local client Annie Coleman of LivingRoom Realty to design a new two-car garage to replace an existing wood-framed garage. The firm saw the garage as an opportunity to create much-needed open space on a tight site with a rooftop garden and deck that would add a backyard that never existed. The garage also would be a showcase for reclaimed and repurposed materials while being a foray into design-build with general contractor Green Cross LLC, Chicago.
The garage is not a highly complex building in terms of advanced systems and components and thermal envelope, but it is highly integrated in its response to the constraints of the site, desires of the client, design, selection of materials, construction, and coordination between the client and design and construction team.
You can read about the project, including how crushed concrete was used for other projects, repurposed wood floors became rainscreen cladding (see Image 1), etc. However, I want to highlight one element that illustrates the integrated-design and project delivery approach: the framing.
I Been Framed!
All framing members were repurposed from a previously deconstructed Chicago warehouse building. Rather than have the structural engineer, Louis Shell Structures, LaGrange, Ill., give a boilerplate design for walls and a roof to support a rooftop garden, Hampton Avery Architects designed specifically around the warehouse materials, an approach somewhat unique and slightly more time-consuming.
It was determined the team actually could rip the old 2- by 10-inch (51- by 254-mm) joists in half to yield two 2- by 5-inch (51- by 127-mm) studs (actual dimensions were 2 by 4 7/8 inches [51 by 124 mm]). Using the framing elevations produced by the architect (see Image 2), the general contractor, marked individual pieces (see Image 3) to make the framer's job easier during cutting and then erecting the walls (see Image 4).
This took some time and effort to coordinate, but it’s an efficient use of materials, good practice for an integrated-design approach and a unique story.
Lessons Learned
During the Chicago garage project, the project team learned a number of things about the integrated-design process and working with reclaimed materials.
1. Better service, more work
Whether for an architecture or construction firm, design-build offers additional services to a client such as:
- Turn-key project delivery
- Often better pricing because of a contractor’s early interest in a job
- Better control over quality
- Better communication because of a shorter chain of command between design team and builder
- Fluidity in making modifications as work progresses
- Closer adherence to design goals
Design-build also pays dividends in terms of word-of-mouth referrals because of comfort level. A client tends to inherently trust a person who appears on the job site every day, gets dirt under his fingernails, does the work and resolves issues.
2. Time and compensation
Communicate to a client that the money saved by using reclaimed materials or components will be spent in the form of time to coordinate how to find them, specify them and ensure all parties know how to treat them properly.
3. Change is gonna come
Buildings are always changing. As an architect who sits behind a desk very often, the chance to be onsite and in front of the construction process brought me closer to the making of buildings and, I believe, helps me understand how to anticipate change in our next design and take opportunities I might have otherwise overlooked.
Dave Hampton is a principal of Hampton Avery Architects, a Chicago-based architecture and planning firm.
Image 1: The new garage, showing reclaimed rainscreen cladding.
Image 2: East framing elevation (for fabrication).
Image 3: The height of each stud has been marked by the contractor to correspond to the framing elevations, making the framer's job easier during cutting.
Image 4: Erecting the walls.
Image 5: Rainscreen cladding.
Image 6: Custom sliding door of reclaimed 2 by 4s and repurposed signage.
