HOW IT'S DONE

An architect has three primary functions on a building project, and is an expert in those tasks. They are: Designing it, Drawing it, and Seeing that it is correctly constructed.

We begin with the site. The first thing we do is study what our site is. If it is a piece of land we get to know its physical composition, its topography, its size, its accessibility in terms of transportation and in terms of utilities, and its municipal/historical/ecological limitations. If it is a pre-existing building, we get to know its structure, its material composition, its systems, and similarly its limitations. We draw our "existing conditions" up, and those drawings are the basis for our design work. Depending on the nature of the project, we draw in plan, elevation, or in three dimensions, and often construct models to describe our design ideas to Owners. For SmartArchitecture, this process of drawing ideas, and talking with Owners about them is a back-and-forth exchange but with a forward momentum, and ultimately results in "The Project."

We "draw it up". When we've come to that satisfactory point where design needs are satisfied, including an indication that The Project fits the budget, we move on to producing a set of drawings that completely explains what The Project is to those who are going to issue a building permit for it and those who are going to construct it. The "Construction Document" set of drawings has a lot of purposes: to explain to the municipality what the project is and how it meets the requirements of the State Building Code, to obtain apples-to-apples prices from different general contractors, to act