DESIGN / BUILD, THE DESIGN PROCESS,
AND CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS

Except on very rare occasions, we have always done the planning, architecture and construction for our projects. We believe this is the best way to make good buildings and good projects. The design/build process suits us. Recently we added an interior design department, which means we handle another critically important part of the process.

2D at work

By practicing in a small region, we have been able to stay connected to our buildings and our clients and learn from them. Principles have emerged to guide our work and allow us the comfort to explore a variety of interesting paths rather than striving for dramatic architectural statements. The design/build process has enabled us to develop an intricate web of good relationships with consultants, subcontractors, regulatory officials, suppliers, and, most of all, clients.

Let's say, for the sake of clarity, that design/build is when buildings (or anything else for that matter) get built through an integrated process - that is, when the design and construction process are united and carried out by a single firm, entity, or team working in concert with the client/owner. This approach has historical precedent - the "master builder" concept was prevalent before the industrial revolution and indigenous peoples from time immemorial have built this way. It has longevity in the various arts and crafts - a practitioner, in most cases, designs and produces a piece of work, whether it is a painting, a piece of furniture, or a piece of jewelry. This integrated approach is not, however, how most buildings are created in today's world.

Design/build keeps the responsibility in one place. It's very direct - just SMC and the client, working as a team, fully responsible to one another. Although many other important contributors are involved, and become part of the team, this central relationship provides clarity and integrity to the complex process of making settings and buildings.

How We Work with Clients

Over the years we have developed a collaborative design process to attain the results we seek. Most projects begin with the clients and John Abrams, our president. John introduces prospective clients to SMC - to our values, our projects, our methods, our people. He then evaluates, often in concert with others, whether the potential project is a good fit. See the "The Work We Do" If it's a project that is out-of-the-ordinary, or controversial, or risky, he may bring it to the Owners for consideration. If we decide to pursue the project, he will work further with the prospective clients; if there's a match, both parties sign a design agreement.

The big picture

Our design contract is un-conventional; because SMC and the clients are agreeing to a design/build relationship, and nothing is designed yet, there must be two central aspects in one agreement. First, both parties agree that SMC will be doing all design and planning for the project on an hourly basis (we find that design, planning, and permitting is generally 8-12% of construction costs, depending on size and complexity of the project).

The second part is the terms of construction. These are provided, and the contract states, "It is the present intention of the parties to enter into a Construction Contract, but neither party is obligated by this agreement to do so. South Mountain Company, Inc. is planning the construction of this project into its schedule, and assumes that the Owners will follow through with plans to proceed unless extenuating circumstances prohibit it." This says that we are both committed to building as well as design, but it's so early in the process that neither party can make an ironclad arrangement.

All construction work is done on a cost/plus fixed fee method, which works like this:

• When design is complete, we do a construction estimate; this becomes the ceiling price.
• Each month we bill all costs (materials, subcontractor expenses, miscellaneous expenses, and labor at specified rates) and add 20% - 25% (depending on the project) for overhead and profit. For community projects and affordable housing projects, we reduce these mark-ups.

Zeroing in

• Let's say our estimate shows that the costs are $100,000. The fee will be an additional, let's say, $25,000. If we go over $100,000 in expense, the client still pays all the bills, but our percentage is capped. If we go under $100,000 in expense, we still get the full $25,000 fee.
• During construction, if significant changes are agreed to by the parties, these are detailed and the ceiling price is adjusted up or down (usually up!) as appropriate.
• This method has worked well for several decades. We have a strong incentive not to go over-budget (we don't like to work for no profit), but because we don't take a beating if we do go over, we can give the client a fair estimate, rather than a fixed contract price that is inflated for every possible contingency.

Our Buildings

Close-up

At the beginning, 25 years ago, our geometries were very simple, pre-determined by our skills. With limited abilities we had to conceive of the building, design it, and build it. As our skill and confidence grew, we were able to reach further and our design freedom increased. A variety of influences crept in: the work of the Shakers, Bernard Maybeck and the California Arts and Crafts practitioners, the timber framed New England colonial buildings, the shingle style, the passive solar pioneers (of whom Frank Lloyd Wright himself may have been the most important), and Christopher Alexander. These blended with our handmade hippie sensibility and environmental ethic to produce, over time, our own particular design language.

We have ambitions for our buildings - there are qualities that we feel our buildings must have to be worth making at all: they need to be durable, flexible and easy to change, energy efficient, healthy to live in, made from materials that diminish dwindling resources as little as possible, artfully crafted, well adapted to their site and community, and satisfy the needs and desires of our clients. And most of all they must be loved. Only buildings that feel good enough to be loved are well cared for and well maintained.

Design Process

Designing buildings, communities and landscapes is a complex process of establishing criteria and priorities, gathering information, expressing feelings, testing hypotheses, and synthesizing solutions. When designers and clients understand the process, and their parts in it, it's an adventure. In 30 years, our range has greatly increased, but we've learned especially how much more there is to know than what we can know (but what we can know is exciting anyway).

Our usual pattern is that one of our primary designers - Peter, Derrill, Laurel or Ryan - shepherds each project through design and construction, working with clients, engineers, consultants, crews, subs, suppliers, and municipal officials, but it's very much a team effort, with everyone playing important roles in the design, as well as the construction. John is involved in all projects - sometimes more, sometimes less. The site and landscape designers at Indigo Farm are brought in early. Deirdre, our interior designer, and Tim, our lighting and mechanical designer, are primary players. See "Who Does the Work"

Early on, in schematic design, we try to get everyone in the same room so intelligence is concentrated. We develop relationships that go from project to project, so teams don't need to be constantly re-built, but only adjusted. The more participants the design process gathers, the more intelligence we concentrate, the more everyone becomes a designer, and the better we avoid designing buildings and communities that are, as longtime collaborator Bruce Coldham says, ".. a settlement between the various designers and consultants, each defending their own turf." Synergies require collaboration.

The process begins with a lengthy written questionnaire. This provides us with the basic information we need to develop a design program. It also begins with a budget. There's no point in designing a beautiful house that satisfies every need but costs three times what our client has to spend. We take the design program we've developed and the budget our client has suggested, and determine whether they roughly fit together. Only then can we move to the most important part of the process: using past projects as design laboratories.

Over the years we have discovered something that may be self-evident to others: there is no better design tool than the act of experiencing a building with a client. We are fortunate that much of our work is in a small geographical area. We've built and kept strong relationships with our clients and made a point of cultivating access. We spend a lot of time in the design phase in and around past projects with new clients. Here is where we find connections with the clients, gauge reactions, and start to weave the fabric of the new building. This is what virtual reality is trying to do. Why not use actual reality? All it takes is some care and planning. Our initial design discussions lead us to formulate an idea of what combination of past projects most nearly approximates this new clients' program. From the 50 or 60 past projects to which we have access, we choose 3 or 4 and spend time in each. We work in those houses together. A pattern evolves that's full of individual meaning. We remind them that when their project is complete, we'll want to use their house for the same process. No one has ever denied us this; people enjoy it, and they feel that it is only right that they extend to others the opportunity that was extended to them.

Once this process is complete, we are ready for schematic design. We create sketch plans and elevations; these are often accompanied by a set of design concepts or a design narrative. Sometimes we're right on the mark with the first effort, or close; sometimes it's back to square one. But usually the first schematic design effort gives us, at least, something to build on. From then on it goes back and forth with our clients until the design is fully resolved.

The Designer/Client Relationship

The designers' role is to ask, to listen, to ask again, and to suggest solutions. The clients' job is to articulate needs, desires, and constraints. (see all our questionnaires Design, Interiors, Technology/Lighting for further information.) Designers and clients together test solutions and hypotheses to see if they satisfy.

We have clients whom we see frequently during the design and construction of their project; others we may not see for months. We have to make a staggering number of decisions for these clients. How do we make the right decisions? Not by them telling us what they want us to decide. We do it by getting to know them, talking to them, gauging reactions, and trying to understand their careful articulation of who they are and what they want. This becomes the basis for all decision-making. Sometimes this information is formally presented as a program and a set of design objectives and solution concepts. Sometimes the information is informally collected and stored in our gut. Generally we use a combination of the two methods.

Here's how we use information. If someone tells us they want many skylights in their house, our response is "Why?" They may say they like a brilliantly lit house, or that they like morning light in their bedroom, or that when they were a kid they once stayed somewhere with a skylight over their bed and they loved it, or they always dreamed of having a skylight over their bed, or they like lighting from above. There may be conflicting information, like: I always dreamed of having a skylight over my bed, and I like a cool bedroom in the summer (skylights over the bed will tend to heat up the bedroom). The information that comes from asking the question, "Why do you want skylights in your house?" may lead to skylights, or it may not. It may lead instead to dormers, or high clerestory windows, or a particular kind of artificial lighting, or skylights with shading devices. If the clients concentrate on giving information, the designers can do their work. If the client concentrates on providing solutions, the real information never becomes available, the patterns don't develop, the design process is short-circuited, and the designers can't do a good job.

At the heart of the design process is trusting that a good solution will emerge, and allowing room for it to do so. Quick solutions come from a lack of faith in the process, the fear of not knowing the answer, and sometimes from a fear of expressing needs. Designers are used to not knowing. If we're lucky, we've learned to handle the fear of not knowing because experience has taught us that if we keep working the process, good solutions will come. We relish the not knowing because that means the rush of discovery still lies ahead. If the client trusts this too, the designer can keep working until the right solution develops.

When the design process feels best is when both designer and client know their job so well that the collaboration becomes fluid and playful. We don't expect this to happen early in the process, but it's something to shoot for as we proceed.

In the end the relationship between client and design/builder is all about honesty, and forthrightness, and expectations fulfilled. We have to do everything we say we're going to do, without fail. If we say, oh yeah, I can send you a sample, we have to send a sample. If we say a set of preliminary drawings is coming on April 3, it needs to be there on April 3. If our clients are bombarded with commitments fulfilled, they will come to expect it. This sets a pattern of honesty, so that they are equally forthright with us. We grow to be allies, and learn to work well together. We tell them when we feel that they're doing a good job, or not, and expect the same of them. When we screw up, we tell them we screwed up. These relationships become a trail of events, and they become the history of our Company. When people look back down this trail, they see events which inspire trust and respect. This makes our job easier. Only by conducting each relationship, no matter how seemingly insignificant it may be, as the most precious gift we've got, will we create the web of associations that will cause our practice to prosper and thrive.

And the chemistry must be right. The best clients are people who are very good at what they do, who are secure with their competence. These are people who are looking for someone who works the way they do. They won't pretend to be able to do our job; they know they can't, just like we couldn't do theirs. We are fortunate; most of our clients have been people like these. And the job doesn't end when the client moves in.

A lovely story illustrates best what we're trying to achieve:

In the late 1600s the finest instruments originated from three families in the small Italian village of Cremona. First were the Amatis, and outside their shop hung a sign: "The best violins in all of Italy." Not to be outdone, their neighbors, the Guarnerius, hung a bolder sign proclaiming: "The best violins in the world." At the end of the street was the workshop of Anton Stradivarius, and on its front door was a simple notice that read "The best violins on the block."

That's what this is about. It's about making the best buildings on the block. Good buildings, not important buildings. Buildings that, first and foremost, serve the needs of the people who inhabit them by supporting and nurturing their health, satisfaction, productivity, and spirit.

For more information on the way we work and the work that we do, click links to these articles:
"The Art & Business of Design/Build" in Designer/Builder Magazine;