Architecture Controlled by Architects

Posts tagged Homebuilders

Reinvention Symposium – Deisgn for the 99 Percent

Oct20
2012 Leave a Comment Written by dave pollard

This past week, I was lucky enough to have attended the Reinvention: Designing for the Future conference that was held here in Chicago. I have received the email invitations to previous year’s meetings, but this year it was right down the street from me, and every conference topic was focused on my passion for delivering good design to the masses.

The week started with a bus tour to some fantastic homes around Chicago. The next day was Lawrence Scarpa’s keynote address “Design for the 99 percent”. Scarpa does beautiful work from his LA office, and he spoke about the social responsibility of design in non-profit, volunteer, and his rural studio-like projects. Scarpa also hit on the importance of sustainability in design and his hard work to deliver sustainable design affordably through thoughtful planning, and finding public grants. Although I have tremendous respect for Larry Scarpa, I was hoping for more. I do not believe that we can deliver design for the 99% through good design, policy, and public grants. There are deeper problems in our profession than just the products we deliver, and I think it begins with the services we provide and how we provide them, not just the same old architectural design process with a nice project.

The next session, “Innovating Community Design and Mass Market Housing”, had me intrigued in a very different way. Here seven different architects presented very different profiles of the firms that they operate. One was focused on public policy and design solutions for the greater good, proclaiming “every issue is a design issue”. This is a valid perspective of the 21st century architect, as we should return to the role of the renaissance man, more along the lines of Thomas Jefferson or a firm such as Ideo. Architect Donald Powers presented his development projects, and John Brown presented his company, Housebrand. Housebrand had me very intrigued as a new model for architect-led housing delivery. His firm vertically integrates design, construction, and real estate brokerage to deliver renovated homes to buyer clients. The reuse of existing housing stock is inherently sustainable, and his team takes on the Realtor by delivering a home for the clients’ real needs and not solely for square footage and granite countertops. (Plus they take some of that commision!)

The final day was quite surprising in its format and discussion platform. The focus seemed to be a debate between traditional architecture and modern architecture. It seemed an odd debate that does not really solve the problems with our profession, but instead expounds them. The presentations of the two sides had the traditional designers on the defense with Donald Powers showing a slide explaining that just because you like old buildings, that does not make you a nerd, and just because you wear all black and like shiny buildings, that doesn’t make you cool. The traditional group felt that they were responsibly responding to clients needs for experiential comfortable design, and the modernists felt like the traditionalists were marginalizing the role of the architect.

This was a very interesting discussion, but reiterates many of my earlier posts that the architect is pushing himself farther and farther from the end user by not engaging them at their level. I pointed out to Larry Scarpa that 55 million suburban single family homes have been built since 1960, and it is irresponsible for architects not to take them on and be involved in some way – as a result the large homebuilders have taken complete control. Larry responded that he disagrees and that it is a policy issue not an cultural one. When Jonathon Segal was asked why he doesn’t build good suburban homes, he responded that he is not interested in that sector. My conclusion is the brilliant architects on the panel have just simply turned their back on the majority of Americans who want to live in the suburbs, and as a result bad design will continue to win.

There was a lot of discussion about style and form, but I do not believe that is our primary problem in reaching the 99 percent. The irresponsible education of the consumer by our profession, our antiquated design processes, what to do with the existing housing stock, and the importance of off-the-shelf materials in each architects work, are all topics that I would have like to have been brought up and discussed in further detail.

I look forward to next years conference, and I hope to see more alternative design practices, and less presentations of images that have pushed us further and further from the consumer.

 

Posted in Design/Build, REO Housing - Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Architectural Enrepreneurialism With a Side of Social Responsibility

Jul26
2012 Leave a Comment Written by dave pollard

Over the last few months, much attention has been given to foreclosed homes and the large financial institutions that are purchasing them. Warren Buffett even said on CNBC that he would buy up a couple hundred thousand houses if it was practical to do so.

The logic is simple; purchase a quality asset at a severely discounted price and then sell it for a profit when it appreciates. However, houses are proving to be very complicated beasts for the financial industry to fully understand. The concept and money is there, but the wherewithal to preserve each homes value is lagging. Bloomberg reported that of the over $6 billion in institutional capital that has been raised to purchase single family REO’s, less than $2 billion has been spent. This is a result of the financially led teams’ inability to acquire and reposition so many properties in a way that effectively protects the long-term value of their investments.

The center of the struggle with re-commissioning single family homes on a large scale is that the construction industry is extremely fragmented and every single home is individual, especially in markets with older housing stock. Every single home of the 6 million show foreclosures in the U.S. has to be valued, analyzed for rental potential, estimated for rehabilitation, analyzed for life cycle costs, maintained and preserved.

A big question being asked is whether the banks and hedge funds are essentially becoming slumlords by purchasing these foreclosed properties, renting them, and selling long. A valid argument is that it is not in the investors best interest to do this. The better upside in this investment scenario is to preserve the value of the asset and produce income through single family rental. This means that these foreclosed properties need to become quality and marketable rental properties.

This is a fantastic opportunity for any architect who has a passion for housing, and especially for universal housing. The massive re-positioning of these millions of homes is also an important piece of the puzzle of solving the housing crisis. Being involved in making these homes quality places to dwell is right up most architects’ alleys.

This blog is subtitled ‘Architecture Controlled by Architects’, and this foreclosure crisis is one of those rare opportunities that architects have to control architecture on a massive scale. If every one of the architects in the U.S. bought and repositioned 3 single family homes, architects would make a dent in about 5% of the foreclosure shadow inventory. That’s a start. The American Institute of Architects says, “working with an architect member of the AIA can save time and money by making your new spaces more functional, comfortable, efficient, and environmentally responsible.” If we really do contribute value to housing in these ways, now is the time architects to put their money where their mouth is and become involved in this opportunity!

Posted in REO Housing - Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Response to Jeanne Gangs New York Times Op/Ed

Feb12
2012 Leave a Comment Written by dave pollard

Several people have sent me this very interesting op/ed article from the New York Times, titled Designing a Fix for Housing. I have the highest regard for Jeanne Gang, however, there is much that disappoints me about this piece.

Gang and Greg Lindsay say, “Too often during the bubble, banks and builders shunned thoughtful architecture and urban design in favor of cookie-cutter houses that could be easily repackaged as derivatives to be flipped, while architects snubbed housing to pursue more prestigious projects.” This is a tremendous understatement in my opinion. Subsequently, I do not believe that the rest of the article addresses the ‘architect’s snubbing’ of housing with any significant solution.

Architects to Solve the World’s Problems?

The article is written from a typical outsider architect’s perspective – Everyone else screwed up housing, and if the world would just listen to us houses would be beautifully designed…

I do not disagree with the argument that municipal restrictions limit the creativity and even financial feasibility of good design, but these regulations came about through architectural lobbying and community democracy. Additionally, most municipalities allow Planned Developments or PUD’s that allow a new master plan to have variances or even circumvent the existing zoning code.

The book The Politics of Place: A History of Chicago Zoning, cites the evolution of the “four-plus-ones” in the early 1970’s Chicago. These efficiently designed, dense housing blocks were a developer response to solving the cheapest most economical equation for apartment buildings. Once these popped up all over the lakefront, residents protested and the zoning ordinance was rightly changed to dictate more sensitive residential design.

1970's Four-Plus-One in Chicago

 

Houston Texas is the best (or worst) example of an American city with no municipal zoning ordinance, and the result is a unconnected and poorly planned mega city. In Houston’s case, the result was not a beautiful city designed by architects, it was a horribly planned urban landscape created by developers who had only economic rules to follow.

It seems to me that Gang and Lindsay are proposing that municipalities give the power to the architects to fix the housing landscape. This sounds great, but the reality is that not all architects are Jeanne Gang, in fact 99.9% are not. Chicago’s Cabrini Green housing project is an example of the architects’ naivety giving way to a poor planning solution. The designers said that by turning the buildings inward towards central courtyards, the low-income residents would have a utopian community space of their own to share and make wonderful. Consequently the reality was the designed planning solution moved the low income community away from the street where it was unable to be patrolled or controlled, and massive crime ensued. These designed solutions have since been razed.

The Education of the Consumer

The inconvenient truth is that municipal regulation is what keeps most architects in business. Chicago requires an architect’s stamp to be on construction drawings. Also most developers would much rather pay an architect to navigate the Illinois Accessibility Code, Chicago Zoning Ordinance, the UL assembly databases, Chicago Building Code, etc. than do it themselves. If these regulations did not exist I would be willing to bet that most developers would not hire architects and would just hire a General Contractor to build a combination of what they sketch in their proforma combined with some images of other projects.

Similarly I believe many CPA’s would tell you that a confusing tax code is good for business. I do not think that this is an ethical or productive business model for the design community, but it is a reality. Therefore before preaching to change the zoning code and give all the power to the design community, I believe architects need to put a system in place that convinces the consumer (not necessarily the developer) of our value, allows affordable access to this value, and engages the architect economically at the homebuyer level.

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em Join ‘Em

As a child I went to a sailing camp as a camper for several summers. I had a fantastic time, and later worked as a counselor there in College. As a Senior Counselor, we used to say “You don’t know what it’s like to be a camper until you are a trainee; you don’t know what it’s like to be a trainee until you are a junior counselor; and you don’t know what it’s like to be a junior counselor until you are a senior counselor. We were always referring to the control that each hierarchical figure has on its subordinates in terms of the activity structure and individual freedoms.  Of course when you are a camper you do not realize the structure and limitations behind your daily activities because you are so busy having fun.

Similarly, as I now work as the design director for a developer that hires outside architecture firms, I feel that I now know much better what it’s like to be an architect than I did working for design-only service firms. The reality is the developer is in control of the ship, and at the end of the day the developer just wants the architect to do what he says. There is no time or system built-in for a real round-table design process, and the architect burns all of his time thinking outside-the-box pro-bono.

The end-user, or homebuyer in the housing case, really isn’t the client, because the developer typically just builds what worked the last time. So when an architect proposes something in the design that he may consider better design for the homebuyer, more times than not, the idea will be shot down if it is not something that the developer has done before.

In my opinion the simplest and most direct solution for architects to engage the future of housing and “Design the Fix for Housing” is to MAKE HOUSES.

The old system of an architect selling his services to a developer just doesn’t work. Just look at the 1.6 million cookie-cutter houses that were built in 2006. If architects really want to fix housing through design, I do not believe it is time well spent to lobby municipalities and work out new financial models for funding homebuyers.

Steve Jobs did not spend his time lobbying to give technology companies control of the music industry. Over a long period of time he simply developed great products that consumers did not even know they needed until they had them. He then saw opportunity in the music industry and integrated his great products with great interfaces to deliver incredible experiences to the end-user. Steve Jobs did not work for the music companies or some other large industry – he worked for us, the consumer.

Similarly architects who want to fix housing design need to just make houses. This could be a number of scenarios from creating a fund to buy foreclosures and rent them, to working with manufacturers to make and sell an affordable vanity that isn’t terrible. I simply wish that architects would just take all of the pieces and parts that go into a typical production home and re-arrange them into something better. There are so many small scale applications of architectural talent that can make housing better if we just focus some of our energy away from the AIA’s Architectural Record magazine, and turn it towards the NAHB’s Builder magazine.

Whatever the scenario is, it involves architects who want to fix housing rethink what exactly it is that their firm provides. There is certainly a place for architects in housing but it will first take a retooling of the architectural industry before we can even think about restructuring the municipal codes and financial systems. To use the Apple example, architects need to find a way to affordably deliver well designed homes that homebuyers do not know they can’t live with out until they have them.

Architects need to stop judging the failures of housing design from the outside, fix our own internal issues, and get our hands dirty on the inside.

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Financial Downturn = Great Opportunity for Architects in Homebuilding

Nov07
2011 Leave a Comment Written by dave pollard

Continued downturns in the real estate market have led to a large number of foreclosed, short-sold, and bank owned development properties. The large bank-owned properties have now been dubbed Redfields. Similar to Environmentally tainted properties being called ‘Brownfields’, and park/forest preserves defined as “Greenfields”, Redfields are financially damaged properties that will need creative planning, financing, and design to bring them back to financial stability.

Most of these properties were originally slated for Alpha Type developments. Alpha Type meaning the old slam-dunk, previously low-risk, model of mass homebuilding. Just five years ago, developers merely had to plan, finance, and build homes the way they had for the previous twenty years, and the buyers would show up, no question. These properties are now Redfields because the previous model does not work. The collapse of the housing market has essentially removed the Alpha Type, and given an opportunity for the Beta Type. Beta housing concepts involve rethinking the housing financing, planning, design, and delivery process. The SchoolStreet project in Libertyville is a prime example of Beta housing on a Redfield. The bank-owned property was obtained at a discounted price and re-planned to a new working housing model.

So what is the Beta housing model? It begins by thinking about what homebuyers’ lifestyles really want and need, not just what was previously delivered in the Alpha model. At the macro level of SchoolStreet is the planning concept of “urban infill”. Downtown Libertyville is already a thriving urban center featuring historic buildings, dozens of bars, restaurants, shops, a farmers market, music, and an outgoing, energetic population. The community sells itself, and is where a shifting homebuyer demographic can see themselves living for a longer term, not just a two-year condo-flip. Additionally it is a walkable community, with public transportation access to surrounding areas and even downtown Chicago.

At the semi-macro level, the Beta housing model rethinks the community planning of the development. More in tune with an energetic, urban community; out is the big front lawn, and in are sidewalks, front porches, roof decks, and narrow lots. By moving garages to the rear, accessed through an alley, the life of the homes moves to the street. Some of the SchoolStreet homes even break the mold so far as to plan kitchens at the front of the house. Homebuyers and the community appreciate the new streetscape oriented planning concepts; it is something they have not seen in suburban developments, and it is easy to picture themselves living such a community-oriented lifestyle.

Lastly at the micro level, the Beta housing model addresses innovation, specific homebuyer needs, productivity, construction quality, and quality of design. To achieve this, it is necessary to work in holistic approach in which every team member is working for the good of ‘the project’. SchoolStreet’s developer, StreetScape Development, has a diverse team of in-house experts ranging from developers, to production housing builders, to architects. In addition StreetScape, partners with subcontractors, architects, and industry-leading consultants to deliver the best home possible. For the SchoolStreet project, architect, Sarah Susanka’s involvement in the Not So Big Showhouse developed a better Beta housing model. Working with the carpentry subcontractors, the SchoolStreet project developed a manufacturing area for framing the walls of future houses off-site. This innovative approach increases productivity, limits worker fatigue, and helps to keep construction ahead of schedule.

The Beta housing model also realizes that information is the key to limiting risk, delivering a quality product, and keeping the customer happy. StreetScape has been implementing a Building Information Modeling approach to design, which creates a building simulation prior to construction. Efficiencies are gained through early construction conflict detection, and accurate costs can be placed on design decisions. The building simulation also has the potential to offer visualization for the design team and customer. StreetScape also plans to unveil a new web-based customer portal, giving the customer open access to project documents, drawings, and feedback.

Through the sale of 21 of 26 homes in one year, the SchoolStreet development has demonstrated that in this difficult housing climate, it is still possible to build homes, by rethinking the development and delivery process. A dormant redfield site can become a successful development by contributing to the community and offering a the homebuyer a new end-product more tailored to their long-term needs and lifestyle.

The success of the SchoolStreet project also demonstrates that by focusing on innovation, quality, and taking design directly to the consumer, houses will sell. Sarah Susanka says in her MarketWatch interview, “People have money to spend if it is on something that is in line with their values.” Believe it or not, people value good design; and if architects can rethink the process, we can deliver it efficiently and affordably.  With the alpha homebuilders out of the way, now is as good a time as any in history to deliver this.

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Housing2.0 the Book Now Available on Amazon!

Oct24
2011 Leave a Comment Written by dave pollard

For anyone who has been itching to get their own personal hardcopy of my thesis, it is finally available on amazon.com:

GO TO HOUSING2.0 THE BOOK

 

 

 

 

 

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Two Fantastic Articles That Propose Architectural Engagement in Architecture!

Oct05
2011 Leave a Comment Written by dave pollard

A friend sent these to me this week, absolutely fantastic articles that I would have loved to have referenced in my thesi, and they really parallel and present similar problems and solutions as my study.

To me, the bottom line is that there is a huge shift in housing demand from a delivery perspective. The old cul-de-sac model is out, and people are looking for good design, walkable locations, smaller spaces, and a more sensible home for a long term living solution… not a “what will this home be worth in two years so I can flip it” solution.

With the big guys (homebuilders) out of commission and/or on the DL, they are frantically trying to figure out how to re-invent their deliverables, and break the sales model thay have used for 50 years. This is the time, the small amount of time, available for architects to get in and pitch their good designs directly to the homebuyers. It will take some work, a lot of work… but this is the best era since 1949 for architects to take over single-family housing. Learn from the failures of the case study houses and the Usonian homes, and learn from the successes of Apple and Google. This is the time for architects to break from their dependence of developers; developers who follow the old homebuilding model, and take their creativity, passion, and problem-solving spirit directly to the consumer.

So these two articles are must-reads and a tad inspirational:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/shifting-the-suburban-paradigm/?hp

http://places.designobserver.com/feature/beyond-foreclosure-the-future-of-suburban-housing/29438/

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Sarah Susanka on the Value of the Architect in New Housing Concepts

Sep22
2011 Leave a Comment Written by dave pollard

 

The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch posted a story today featuring our SchoolStreet Project in Libertyville. Since I work for SchoolStreet’s developer, StreetScape, I was of course excited for the publicity of our intriguing successful housing development in 2010-2011.

Aside from my pride in the project, I especially appreciated the headline, and it’s subtitle:

Where Small Houses Mean Brisk Sales

The housing market is a bust, with builders struggling and new-home sales sunk in the mud. But that’s not the case at one development in suburban Chicago, where prices are rising due to strong demand. Why? It’s all in the design.

To me the beauty of this article is that it explains the importance of good design in the success of the project. Sarah Susanka says, “The reason that this particular community is selling, is that people actually do have money to spend, if it’s something that embodies their values.”

The new Beta housing model is something that addresses personal lifestyles and longer term living for people and families. The Alpha, buy-to-flip, model is gone, and this is an unprecedented opportunity for architects to rise to the challenge and deliver creative, personalized, housing solutions; just as Sarah Susanka and our team are doing on SchoolStreet.

See the whole story:

http://www.marketwatch.com/video/asset/where-small-houses-mean-brisk-sales/5C68D2F6-0C18-4140-A21A-83982FC0AC39#!5C68D2F6-0C18-4140-A21A-83982FC0AC39

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Taking Back the Building…. 26 Houses at a Time

Aug19
2011 Leave a Comment Written by dave pollard

In my previous post, I spoke about the generalities of my new professional endeavor, but I did not get too specific. I figured I would explain a little more about what we are doing in this post. I did, however, also write that I am not going to use this blog to talk about our projects. With that said, this will be the only one that gets specific, and I have started a parallel blog with StreetScape Development. This will document School Street, as well as our future concepts and developments. So I urge you all to check out StreetScape Blog to follow the construction of our “Not So Big” single family homes and the school building conversion into lofts.

I am now working for StreetScape development, and we are attempting to take back the building by delivering well designed homes to the masses. This begins with the School Street development. Here we are building a working laboratory for defining the rulesets to deliver controlled customization in housing. On this particular project we are working with a “Bungalow Style” home, but the principles of the ruleset and library will carry through as we continue to develop new design systems.

At the heart of it is a basic principle to streamline the design process into a flexible, rule-based, system… just like what my thesis proposes. Where it gets really exciting is that the person who is guiding our rulesets is none other than Sarah Susanka. Widely considered one the most accomplished residential architects of the last two decades, Sarah’s success stems from her incredible ability to communicate with the consumer, and deliver them creative design solutions to fit their lifestyle.

Sarah’s numerous books have communicated spatial design principles to homeowners in new and friendly ways. She has broken the stigma of architectural arrogance that Frank Lloyd Wright and other greats of the 20th century have created. Architecture should be a choice in which the homeowner is involved, and Sarah has found a way to do this efficiently without compromising good design principles. Sarah’s tremendous knowledge-base of prior successes and lessons learned is also an invaluable resource to defining our rulesets.

At StreetScape we hope to incorporate this way of communication and buyer input into a robust, efficient, and quality system of home delivery.

At the same time, we have a parallel laboratory for the conversion of existing structures into usable spaces for modern living. This begins with the School Street Lofts project. Here we are converting a 1939 school building into 15 lofts. Repositioning of existing buildings is a very sustainable approach to housing development, and we hope to crack the code for this process as well. There are numerous challenges to retrofitting an 80 year building, of course, and the largest hurdle is energy efficiency.

With the invention of air conditioning, the physics of building construction had to change tremendously. When introducing air conditioning into an 80 year old building and changing the use of it… the balance of the physics is totally out of whack. We then have to come up with some very creative solutions to bring the building back into harmony with its environment.

Of course the economics of building a multi-family are tricky these days too. Unless we sell all of our units prior to construction, we will be dealing with some spec units as we move forward. This means that we need to introduce very specific rulesets and library systems to allow adjustments for future customers. The idea is to build a system that could be adapted for use in many other retrofits.

I think all of this is very exciting, and I look forward to seeing where it leads. So if you find it interesting as well (if nothing else, the story of a successful residential development in 2011 is a hell of a headline) please subscribe to the StreetScape blog and you’ll get frequent updates on our progress.

 

 

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Am I Selling Out?

Aug11
2011 1 Comment Written by dave pollard

I must admit that my blogging has been a bit lax lately… about two weeks since my last post. Although I plan to continue a minimum of one post per week (and hopefully 2 or 3 per week), I blame my aloofness on my re-entry into the real world.

After wrapping up my thesis three weeks ago, I immediately began working full time for an design/develop/build company about an hour outside of Chicago. Although this has kept me physically detached from my blog, I think about what to write next on every train ride to and from Libertyville… so I have a mental backlog of writings.

I have struggled with how to write about this endeavor, because I do not want to use this blog as a platform for just promoting or talking about our projects. So it took some time for me to figure out how to breach the subject that I am essentially working for a “developer”.

A month or so, I was having lunch with my old friend/architect/colleague/nerd Brad. When I told him about this new adventure out in Libertyville, he laughed and put a dagger right in my heart by saying that I was selling out. I was taken back a bit, because at no point had that thought ever crossed my mind; although I am really good at always telling myself what I want to hear.

I quickly retorted by saying, “no… going back to a Chicago architecture firm would be selling out.” He did not disagree, but needed further clarification on how building houses out in the suburbs was not selling my soul to the devil.

There are two important books that helped to justify my decision and explain my position to Brad. First, The Art of Innovation, by Ideo’s Tom Kelley; and second, Built to Last by Jim Collins. In The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley writes a fantastic chapter on the importance of building “Hot Teams”. Hot Teams are the heart of Ideo and critical to innovation.

I have been indirectly working with the developer John McLinden since last year. Once he read my thesis proposal and my blog, six or so months ago, we started having some very dynamic conversations about the future of housing, and what architectural design can, and should play in it.This conversations led into a real proposal about what I can bring to Streetscape development and what they can bring to the world of affordable design.

After starting working with John and his crew full time, three weeks ago, I realize now that he has been building that Hot Team. At the core, there are four of us. We all have very different backgrounds, expertise in different fields, and differing personalities. We are all driven by a common core ideology, a passion to succeed, and an ambition to do things better. We all have specific expertise, all while our roles overlap. At the same time we all highly respect each other and are not afraid of conflict. John has, and continues to build our Hot Team, and I think we can do great things.

With regards to Built to Last, this book really supported my decision through its insistence of the importance of a company’s core ideology. I have defined my professional ideology as “to allow everyone affordable access to good design.” After the last few weeks, I believe it is fair to define Streetscape’s ideology as “it shouldn’t be so g-d difficult to build good homes for good people”. This completely parallels my thoughts and passions; meanwhile I have had trouble finding an ideology anywhere close to this in most architecture firms.

Lastly the real reason this move makes sense for me is that I believe, to truly make a difference in housing, you need control. As John says, “you have to own the shop.” Most architects make websites and monographs only for other architects. They are rarely taking their genius, intuition, and expertise to the end-user. As the developer, however, we are taking the design and delivery directly to the consumer and we can control the process the whole way. IT’s the old WWDHD. (What Would David Hovey Do)

I would not say that I am selling out. I would not even say that I am doing the “if you can’t beat them join them.” I think that to truly engage architecture in mass housing, we need to step out of our homebuilder/developer/architect/engineer/contractor/client labels, and create a new entity and image for home delivery.

Housing2.0 is not about selling architectural homes on the internet, its about redefining the process so that the end-user has a say and affordable access to good design. And that is exactly what we are doing at Streetscape.

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Thesis Submitted… Degree Complete

Jul18
2011 Leave a Comment Written by dave pollard

I have submitted my thesis document and it has been approved by all the necessary parties. The full thesis document is available to view on Issuu.com, and I will be self-publishing it soon. So all of you hardcore thesis junkies out there will be able to purchase your very own copy from amazon. Thank you to all of my blog viewers who have offered their support, criticism, and support of this thesis. Hopefully it proposes atleast one solution for architects to take back the building, and maybe provides some inspiration.

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