What architects don't draw (and certainly don't design)

What architects don't draw (and certainly don't design)

I'm collecting photographs of things that don't seem right in buildings. Most are of pipes and cables just attached on the building, marring its appearance, creating places difficult to clean or maintain or even hazards. 

Others are of details clearly not designed, resulting into strange, dysfunctional, unreachable or uncleanable parts. 

 

My problem with such failures is how they happen and why. It appears that even with 3D software, integration and interoperability in BIM etc., there is a lot that we fail to see. Even worse is that we often don't care - and I'm referring to everybody here, from architects and engineers to clients and contractors. We're used to improvised solutions at the last moment, even on site - we are even proud of this capacity, as if any old solution just so as not to halt design or construction is to the benefit of the building. 

I believe that the answer to the problem is quite easy technically but currently impossible socially: there are not enough people interested in changing the production processes in the built environment. If these don't improve, no change in designing can be expected. So, I'll just keep collecting the photographs in the hope that the sheer volume of stupidity they present is enough evidence for some future generation.  

Trouble with BIM

Trouble with BIM

The optimist would say that support for BIM is consolidating; the pessimist that it's dwindling. There is still a substantial push for BIM but at the same time there are more critical voices - and they're not all Luddites. In my own view, there is a growing number of organizations that is increasingly reluctant to invest in BIM. If there's a hard core of organizations pushing BIM, there's also a periphery that if not turning against BIM, is certainly refusing to adopt and adapt to it. In between there are organizations that reluctantly follow and partially implement BIM.

Critics (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2017.1293940) stress that the problems are not only practical, such as the cost and complexity of the implementation, but also operational, due to the imposition of a design representation onto activities and processes. They are concerned with the possibility of a digital divide that may disenfranchise smaller firms and create a two-tier marker with benefits only for the most privileged and powerful, who can afford the luxury of being BIM compliant. This, they argue, may reduce the potential of change through BIM.
While I largely agree with the criticism, I fear it suffers from a couple of fallacies. Firstly, it expects technology to bring on change in society rather than technology to meet emerging or latent demand in society. BIM does not bring change; at best it enables change and helps channel it in specific ways. One shouldn't put the cart before the horse and expect the horse to understand how it should push.
Secondly, it equates the technology with its current implementation. The way BIM is deployed today is depressingly limited. The software is underwhelmingly powerful and laden with analogue remnants, while users tend to do as little as possible rather than focusing on returns from a serious investment. We even talk of levels in BIM deployment and maturity but some of these levels do not make sense because they go against the fundamental requirements of the technology (and methodology, I hasten to add to pacify the believers).
If we place this criticism on the above scheme, it becomes obvious that the periphery simply doesn't recognize the necessity of a change to which BIM could contribute, so they don't adopt it. They can also be critical of the way it is implemented and hence unwilling to join in. In any case, they don't care enough, in the same way that not everyone cares about social media and hence doesn't spend endless hours setting up multiple profiles and maintaining their status and history.
This suggests that BIM is being pushed in a direction that doesn't relate to the change required in AECO and the built environment. That such a change is urgently needed is unquestionable but one cannot talk of culture change for implementing BIM; it's the other way around: ongoing culture change should promote BIM.
As for the practical and operational side, if the change was evident and BIM fitted the bill, people would have invested heavily in it. Just compare to the huge investment we have made as societies, organizations and individuals in mobile information processing. What started as mobile telephony was soon recognized for what it could offer and adopted widely and fervently. The adaptation it brought on is simply spectacular. Look around you wherever you may happen to be: people grab every opportunity to do something with their smartphones. Would they do the same for BIM?

Nitrogen and building construction

Nitrogen and building construction 

As usually, the latest crisis in the Netherlands combines the environment and the economy. We're in trouble with nitrogen norms and we have to slow down - literally: maximum highway speeds have to go down to 100 km/h to save agricultural and building activities. Just search the Internet with query terms like "nitrogen, crisis, Netherlands" and you'll get the whole story.
My problem is that I want to be an informed citizen. I understand why agriculture produces nitrogen emissions but what about building construction? What is the relation? It must have to do with either the materials or the way we construct buildings, including transportation. And if some claim that halving the livestock in the country would resolve the nitrogen crisis, wouldn't similar measures solve the problem of building construction, too?
 A quick search returned an article that tries to provide an overview of the problem. It claims that the problem lies with the machinery used in building construction, which emit huge amounts of nitrogen. The article further states that there are no alternatives to these fossil fuel guzzling machines, so we have to live with it. Building construction has to go on because there is a housing shortage in the Netherlands but also because building construction is important for the economy in general.
Easy conclusions like that trouble me. Firstly, I remain uncertain about the causes and effects of the much-advertised housing shortage. There's admittedly demand and certainly widespread activity but where are we building houses and for whom? It seems that the demand is chiefly in the Randstad and the new supply is mostly for the higher end of the market. House prices are going up to worrying levels, so increase in supply doesn't seem to have an effect on that - quite the contrary, I'd argue. Interestingly, due to housing demand, the Randstad appears to be expanding, engulfing neighbouring areas step by step. It'll be ironic if we end up returning to those areas that are currently being abandoned in favour of the Randstad but with Randstad housing prices. Surely some policies could start this return earlier than that, creating opportunities in currently less popular areas in this small, well-connected country.
Let's forget that for the moment and go to the inevitability of current building construction wastefulness and pollution. One could argue that in the same way that car drivers are asked to drive at a higher speed, the building sector could be asked to prioritize projects that require fewer nitrogen-emitting machines. It's probable, for example, that low-rise construction is less demanding in this respect than the high-rise developments favoured in many places. One could also use materials less demanding of heavy machinery for their production, transport and assembly. There are probably many such "soft" managerial solutions if one wants to reduce the nitrogen impact of building construction.
Above all, however, I fail to see why the building sector shouldn't modernize its production processes. In many respects, we're building in an outdated way that consumes too much and doesn't deliver superior products. Any comparison between buildings constructed in the last 100 years can demonstrate this stagnation. It's puzzling why we aspire to buildings that are environmentally neutral in use (in terms of energy consumption, CO2 emissions etc.) but we don't do the same with building construction. There's something wrong here and we're making it worse by summarily accepting current practices as inevitable or unchangeable.
So, let's keep asking ourselves what's hidden behind each question or statement, let's try to find the real problems that are behind them and see how these relate to each other. Quite often they require bold decisions and demanding strategies but the rewards can be much bigger and infinitely more secure.