How Much Should Design Cost?

From my perspective as a green contractor,here in the mountains near Yosemite national park.Every building site is very unique,and to design and build a really awesome site specific home you must have the designer visit the site,perhaps several times,it is ok to get plans and ideas off the internet,but they almost always have to be modified to take advantage of customers needs and site conditions.We charge $3 a square foot to design and get the plans through the building department here,and getting the plans,energy calculations and engineering to pass is the hardest part,belive me we earn the money!

I am attempting to design my green retrirement home. I loved this article because it shows a different perspective architecture. I only wish there was a site where lay people like myself can pose architectural questions and get free to low cost advice on if my ideas are feasible and cost effective or not.

Yet, a well designed building lasts centuries.

I can't imagine myself seeing true masterpiece buildings disappearing never. Sometimes an architect hits the spot and does the best house for its placement. That's one of the things that make designing in architecture so beautiful.

I don't get it!

Let alone the fact that indeed each individual has and needs individual adaptations, the bigger question to me is, what about the contextual considerations, which are unique to each site, careful consideration of which are the basis of a building's ultimate performance.

Isn't the idea of ' green design' exactly the whole idea that it is unique and not a copy of someone else's design? Surely what is a ' green design ' on one site , would not apply to another site(orientation neighbouring structures, different climates etc, other material availability and local challenges differ from place to place and site to site). To me, this defeats the purpose of REAL green design, where one size hardly ever fits all: it HAS to be site specific and conceived with the specific context in mind - otherwise what's the point? Or will each plan come with instructions where it would be suitable to build? I don't think this is feasible. And then we end up with supposedly green houses when only the original plan ever was, not its later copies. And than I am not even getting started on the fact that I'd rather all of our streets wouldn't look the same either,....

I agree with the above comments that site specific design is crital to be get the best building for a particular site.
An issue that wasn’t addressed in the article is that of liability. When you pay an architect for plans you’re playing for his license as a professional, he is held personally responsible that the building will be safe and designed to meet, at the minimum, all building codes. Architects are required to hold lots of insurance in the event something they designed fails and there isn’t a statue of limitations, if something an architect designed fails 20 years later they are still held accountable. I’m sure this figures in to the cost of design as well, unfortunately people love to sue and that’s probably not going to change anytime soon. I don’t know who is taking the liability for the plans people steel out of a book but I wouldn’t want to be them.

I visited the site and it is not completely FREE. You are asked to give a donation and then you must pay $60. I know this isn't comparable to other sites but they aren't exactly what they say they are. If you are like me, you want to collect as much info about green design on a budget. I am a college student and just want some free information.

I don't know about this. It throws the market for good design out the window and makes it hard for competing quality designers to get paid. Also, with no fees for plans, who is paying for the engineering?

You get what you pay for.

Residential design in the United States is interesting in that liability is usually limited to the contractor or builder, that is, most municipalities do not require a registered architect or designer to have stamped, signed or sealed drawings for residences under 4 connected units. This poses the question, do you want a personalized, thoughtful and successful plan or do you want one designed for the lowest common denominator? There is a reason that people are trained in designing spaces for human habitation. If one is looking for the cheapest solution there are plenty of mass produced development housing currently on the market. Purchasing pre-drawn plans may create a library of ideas from which to draw inspiration, however it is the act of having a solution tailored to your personal situation/region/context that may result in not only having a house, but also a home.

Hello All,
My named is Dave Wax and I am the CEO of FreeGreen. I would like to address some of the comments above:

1) Our plans are FREE to download. In this download you get full construction documents, a energy report predicting the homes energy usage for your location, a LEED-H Checklist filled out where possible, and more. The $60 charge discussed above is if the user wants to order prints from us which is NOT required. You can easily download the plans and have them printed locally.

2) We do ask for donations (they are not mandatory) today because we are starting out. We have a very new business model and are giving away plans that would cost $1,000's of dollars on the open market (per the article). As we grow our different revenue streams we will remove this request.

3) On the site orientation issue we couldn't agree more. This is key to any "green" home. The reality is that to get this type of information you typically have to hire a custom architect (or a very educated\expensive builder). The average home in the US costs $250,000 to build and there is no room for a custom architect’s fee. House Plans have typically filled this void in the market. We are giving users the ability to take the first step towards having a "green" home for free. We also offer our customization services (for a fee) to help them make their home fit their lot. Bottom line for about $1,500 in total (including average customization fees) our users can get a great, energy efficient design which is customized for them and their site. We view this as a great way to push true “green” design into the mainstream.

3) On the idea that to get it exactly right you need an architect who will do a custom job and conduct many site visits, I could not agree more. I used to run a custom design firm (www.ZeroEnergy.com) and custom design is the best way to get an optimized home. Again the reality is that custom architecture only servers about 5% of the US residential market. We need to find ways to push good design into a $250,000 home. FreeGreen is one way of doing this, and we hope that we will spark much conversation like the comments above, and cause everyone to re-think home design. Our goal is to affect as many homes as possible, and with over 5,000 free House Plan downloads to date (in four months) we think we are doing a good job. As always let us know what you think.

Thanks,
Dave Wax

Hi, this is Greg La Vardera, the other interviewee from above. I understand the call for unique solutions from several people that have posted above. This is almost universally the outlook of architects, and it is in fact the way we are trained to think about it. However I have to point out the obvious - this mode of thinking has only succeeded in alienating architects from the housing industry and left it to the lowest common denominator and our dismal residential built environment. So clearly standing by as architects and pleading that the public and developers and everybody else who builds a house needs to come to us to make sure it is a unique design for an individual site is not happening, and has not happened and is not going to magically happen by wanting it to be so. We as architects clearly have to find other paths and business models by which to deliver good design to the market, if we ever hope to displace the lousy design work that is status quo. So to that end I can assure you that Free Green and my own venture do not undermine good designers, quite the contrary by making better design available on a wider basis it exposes more people to better design and ultimately creates more demand for better design. The bar is raised across the entire market. Stock designs are always modified to localize them - this is nothing new, and nothing unique to being green. The criteria you need to adjust the plans for may be different but the practice is common in house plans. Is it as perfect as a custom design for every site, No. But it fits the model of the existing marketplace where universal custom design does not. And hence its a better way to influence the market and raise the bar.

So any architects that are wringing their hands over the threat of free or cheap design, you should really be thinking about how you can can contribute to changing the market, and not the business you think you are going to loose. The person who wants free or cheap plans is not the person who will pay the fees for custom commissions.

"Free" designs, although nobel in principle, does little more than devalue design and those who strive to achieve more than the stock standard plans the housing industry is renowned for.
Designs can be affordable without undermining the knowledge and skills of the architecture industry, particularly as it's fairly common knowledge that people are more likely to respect an item if they actually invest in it from the outset.

"Some are filtering clients because they are tired of having there design changed. The concept here is that if you charge more then the client is less likely to alter and\or ruin your design."

This is why a lot of people think architects are arrogant.

Somehow many architects think they are artists, rather than a service provider. If a client changes the plan, it is because the original version did not suit his needs and obviously the architect has not done is job correctly.
Rather than filtering out critical clients, architects should make more effort in satisfying the customer.