Why Architects Always Start from Zero

It went on forever with that window detail, and my architect drew and drew, conferred with the carpenter, who of course saw it all completely differently and countered with more drawings. Fine, it was the weather side in a region with lots of rain and the occasional bit of wind, but it wasn’t only my confidence in the two of them that dropped dramatically with every new line, it was also the question whether we were now entering uncharted territory and trying, as absolute pioneers of weather-exposed façades, to solve a problem of global significance for the very first time. The best part: water came in, during the first rain with moderate wind, nowhere near storm force. The real-wood floor suffered visibly. Architect and carpenter inspected the damage and shook their heads in disbelief. My head was boiling. I had somehow sensed it and hadn’t brought myself to ask whether this problem had already been solved somewhere else by someone who knew what they were doing and whether we might have been able to use that solution.

It was damage, and I saw a systemic problem. In architecture, apparently every detail is drawn fresh for every building because there is no system for passing on existing solutions.

If an architect in Northern England solves a window detail for a building on an exposed weather side and the solution works well, why does it end up sitting on his computer, where nobody else ever sees it? An architect in Southern Germany struggles with the same problem and draws everything from scratch. Whether he lands on the same solution or whether water comes in at his place is then pure chance.

Clients get inspiration on Pinterest and have all the choice in the world, but no implementation plans to go with it. The ideas are often very concrete, the detail behind them stays mostly hidden. Between the idea on Pinterest and the finished building lies a process that starts from zero every time, even though most of the difficulties have surely been solved a hundred times before. And in my experience, it really is over and over from zero.

Nobody benefits from this, because architects spend hours on detail drawings that others have long since figured out, and clients pay for it. And when the solutions then don’t work, it’s usually because they were reinvented under time pressure.

Since then, the question won’t let me go: why is there no online marketplace where architects share their solved details so that others can use them?

Every building is unique, every design is a one-off, the architect can at most pull his unbuilt plans out of the drawer again, but more exchange than that I honestly have never seen. I’ve built three houses. Always the same approach. It was definitely not the complexity of the details. A window detail is a window detail, and a solution for sound insulation between two apartments follows physical laws, there isn’t much artistic freedom there.

In mechanical engineering, this has been solved for what feels like a hundred years. Nobody reinvents a ball bearing, because there are standards, catalogues and standardised components. Fine, in architecture these exist from system providers too, but that’s where the next problem lies. There are manufacturer portals or manufacturer-sponsored portals, but no free exchange that offers solutions across manufacturers or systems for reuse or purchase. In software it’s also better solved, with open-source libraries, APIs and modules. Nobody programs a login screen from scratch, they take a solution that works and build on it. In architecture there is no platform on which an architect can upload his solved window detail, with CAD data, materials list and context description, so that others can license, adapt and use it.

The reason for this is certainly also technical. How do you protect intellectual property on a drawing, how do you make sure the creator gets paid fairly, and how do you prevent simple copying? When the tokenization trend came and IP protection on the blockchain suddenly became possible without expensive infrastructure, the starting point changed. Smart contracts can automate licensing models, digital signatures protect authorship, and transactions are traceable. The technology has existed for a while, but the industry has to open itself to modern approaches to trade.

If architects could offer their solved details, constructions and design modules as licensable building blocks, something entirely new would emerge. The architect in Northern England earns from his window detail solution even if he has never seen the building in Southern Germany. The architect in Southern Germany saves weeks of detail planning and can focus on what is really unique, namely a fully worked-out building where no water comes in.

What is really missing is a global exchange of architectural knowledge, where it’s not about copies but about further development, and where the architect is freed from the Sisyphean work that keeps him from doing what he does best.