ARCHITECTURE FOR THE CROWD BY THE CROWD: A NEW MODEL FOR DESIGN ACQUISITION
İmdat As, Takehiko Nagakura · DergiPark (Istanbul University) · 2016
This paper discusses the use ofcrowdsourcing as a new approach for architectural design acquisition. We arguethat crowdsourcing can have a vast impact on smaller scale design needs, e.g.home remodeling, or landscape and interior design projects, and can potentiallycarry these often neglected projects into the architectural design sphere. Inthe US alone, there are about 15 Million smaller-scale projects of which only11% make it to the hands of a professional designer. The remainder of projects- accounting for a staggering $170B in construction expenditures- isimplemented with a contractor or done by the clients themselves.What are the reasons behindthis discrepancy in high “desire and need” for design and the few projects thathave professional design? The causes are manifold, and can be termed as “thecustomer pain:” a. architectural offices are not easy to access; b. there is aperceived high cost associated with professional design work; and c. the highrisk of a single solution that cannot meet the client’s expectations. In orderto address some of these real or perceived discontinuities in thedesign/construction project flow, we developed Arcbazar, an onlinecrowdsourcing platform for architectural design. The platform, born within theVenture Mentoring Service (VMS) Program at MIT (Cambridge, MA), has nowsuccessfully completed about a thousand projects worldwide; and collectedhundreds of thousands of visuals, conversations, audio-video files, and relatedvisual graphic material from designers and clients around the globe. Here, wewill analyze the massive design data generated over the last five years ofArcbazar, discuss methods and techniques of crowdsourcing, and illustrate onecase study with overall analytics of the platform. We will then evaluate theprotocol and outcome of architectural crowdsourcing, convey professional andpopular media responses, and argue for its potential to disrupt traditionalarchitectural practice.