It's tough enough out there dealing with the fact that appraisals penalize success and reward weakness, Federal and State Laws do little to encourage the use of Architects, and of course the upside down property values all make it next to impossible to do a good job when it comes to residential design. After the housing bust, my local jurisdiction, The City of Decatur (GA), faced a similar problem that many other jurisdictions faced. A lack of permit fees plus gov budget cuts equals layoffs and in some cases, outsourcing. Decatur farmed out it's plan review and inspections to a corporation called Safe Built, Inc. Last year Safe Built, Inc. began requiring Structural Engineer stamps on ALL framing plans. One day a 3rd grader could submit house plans and the very next day the Architect gets leap frogged and now only a Structural Engineer is required. Anyone can still design the house and submit the rest of the drawings, it's just the structural component that has a required stamp. When my clients hear that my framing plans are only drawn so that the lumberyard engineer can copy them for an extra fee, it makes them wonder why Architects are important if anyone can do our job and we can't do some of their's? Of course we're sort of required for commercial, but in many cases an Engineer can still stamp plans without us.
Even Interior Designers do the ADA stuff. In the end an educated person may find that we compute occupants, design skin, and locate exits. Other than life safety and weather proofing, it seems to the lay person that what we're required for doesn't seem like much considering how much of what we do isn't required for anything. Design is just for fun and in the case of appraisals, it's a penalty. When it comes to housing, what are we really doing that some other professional or amateur can't do instead? NY State at least gives the Architects a chance, by allowing Structural or Architectural stamps. Other than the all so subjective design argument, my main advantage over residential designers was the fact that I can draw framing plans and understand structure. I can come up with more creative solutions due to my knowledge of structure over the designer's. This is part of what the builders came to me for. Now my main advantage has become my disadvantage and our profession as a whole has been degraded in the eyes of the public that seems confused that a licensed Architect is no longer good enough to design a house, yet we weren't required before. It looks like we were always just an overpriced artist. Safe Built, Inc. enforces these policies in more places than just Decatur. They are running design review in many jurisdictions and I was told they enforced this rule on us because it's their standard policy.
We hear a lot of moaning and groaning about what the AIA is good for, but this type of Anti-Architect policy making should be the one thing they should be aggressively correcting. Many of the Residential Architects feel that the profession as a whole has little urgency to act on Residential issues. Housing is where all the money is and has by far the most numbers of individual projects. Our abandonment of this sector has marginalized us and created our position of weakness in the Building Industry. Jurisdictions should encourage our use, yet in GA anyone can build a simple, small retail building in many places with no professional license and Interior Designers can do office use projects without us too. The Architects of GA aren't feeling so loved. We keep getting marginalized and kicked around. As it stands, this policy of Safe Built's and Decatur will only encourage cookie cutter plan book construction and a further disdain for design in the eyes of the home builders. Builders selling spec houses deliver over 80% of all new houses to the public. We need to encourage Jurisdictions to create policies rewarding the builders for using us, not penalizing them with double design fees.
This is not a rant about requiring our stamps on residential drawings, because that move requires a few more steps first. We need to procreate and send many new Architects out into the Residential Sector and start making Design make a difference before we can insist on being required. We need to learn how to design for middle class clients and still get paid what we're worth. Large urban jurisdictions will have to act first or entire states like NY. There simply are not enough of us to handle the current work load, so it's an unrealistic impossibility right now. We need to start planting the seeds and working toward a goal of taking over the Housing Industry, which will require Appraisal Reform and Architect friendly policy making at the local level. We must not let the Builder and Engineer edge us out of the Sustainability game. We must keep LEEDing the Industry and be careful of creating yet another specialist to take work from us.
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Eric Rawlings AIA
Owner
Rawlings Design, Inc.
Decatur GA
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