office interior design guidelines
next up in the short course: the cost of architectureand its role as a creative boundary for the work. by necessity, this discussion will bean oversimplification – a conceptual approach - because architecture is unique, complicatedand specific. now, i’ll show you how i use a basic framework to inform the design processfor our case-study project. up until this point i’ve only mentioneddeveloping a project budget once, this was right before we began the schematic designphase. i mentioned how we directly linked the budget for our project - in our case aresidence - to the overall square footage of the home. now, i want to spend some timeon this because although it’s not discussed in our training as architects in school, it’spart of the reality of making architecture
in the real world and it’s one of the mostbasic and obvious concerns for both architects and clients.â now, when we talk about the cost of architecture we typically break it out into one of twocategories: there are soft costs and hard costs. soft costs are the indirect costs ofconstruction: things like design fees, consultant fees for services like structural or civilengineers, lighting designers, energy auditors and landscape architects. there’s also permittingfees, insurance, financing costs, special certifications like leed and often times legalfees. now, hard costs are essentially everythingelse related to the real cost of construction, the bricks and mortar that make up the physicalbuilding. the full cost of a project includes
both hard and soft costs as well as any landacquisition costs. soft costs can be defined by soliciting proposals from the agents involved.architects will have a standard fee schedule: either a fixed fee calculated as a percentageof the cost of construction, an hourly fee model or some hybrid, some mix between both– hourly in the beginning perhaps and then fixed once the scope is determined. typicalfull-service design fees will range between five and twenty percent of the constructioncost. as a general guideline, smaller projects will fall on the higher end of the percentagerange and larger projects on the lower end. hard costs will account for the majority ofa building’s cost and the ones the design – the architecture - will have a considerableimpact on. now, before i even begin a design,
i evaluate the client’s hard cost budgetto determine whether it’s reasonable given their desired scope of work. now, naturallyin the beginning of a project we know very little about the building so it’s not possibleto do a detailed material take-off of the building components; we don’t even knowwhat they are yet. instead, we start by developing a detailed accounting of the spaces. thisis sort of a wish list, what architects call the program. from this list we begin assigningroom sizes for each space. knowing the overall size of the building willhelp us make sure the size needs correlates with the client’s target budget. but wehave to get a little more granular than that if we want a useful budget figure to workwith. to do that, we assign a multiple or
factor to each space in the program. as you’dexpect a living room with tall ceilings will cost more than one without tall ceilings;there’s more finishes, more labor, potentially more engineering and structural costs. andlikewise, a deck or a covered porch area won’t be as costly to construct as finished interiorspace with few or no walls, no insulation no heat. by factoring the square footage ofprogram spaces that are different than typical, conditioned interior space with an eight-foottall flat ceiling, we can more accurately develop an estimated budget for us to useas a decision-making tool. as an example, let’s take a living roomthat’s twenty feet by twenty feet or four-hundred square feet. our baseline space is a flat,eight-foot tall ceiling. spaces like these
receive a factor of exactly one. so, the factoredsquare footage and the actual square footage are equal. now, this is the case for mostof the spaces in our case-study residential project. let’s say one of our proposalsincluded a vaulted ceiling in the living room. for this square footage, we’ll apply a factorof one point five which effectively increases the factored square footage total for thisspace. for the living room example, rather than four-hundred square feet, the vaultedceiling would total six hundred square feet in our programming worksheet. we get thatby taking four hundred and multiplying it by a factor of one point five.â the spaces that i factor in the programming worksheet are as follows: first, garages,decks and terraces are all factored at point
five, screened porches or covered porchesare factored at point-seven-five, and then there’s any spaces with ceilings higherthan the standard eight-feet are all factored at one point-five.now, you’re probably wondering, why don’t we factor every space differently. after allhallway space and kitchen space they, they aren’t truly equal in terms of cost to constructbut under this model they’re treated as such. and while it’s true kitchen spacemight be five-hundred dollars per square foot and the hallway space perhaps one hundreddollars per square foot there’s a whole lot less kitchen space than there is hallwayspace. it doesn’t make sense to do this kind of detailed tweaking because it presumesa level of precision that this kind of early
estimate inherently lacks. in general, withthis method these inconsistencies will average out assuming you take care to apply the factorsi mentioned. now, why does all this matter? well, thisis the key, remember the budget estimate early on is linked directly to square footage. oncei total all the square footage for the project i multiply that total by a cost to constructper square foot. now, this number is always a range and this is for two reasons: firstbecause before you even have a design; a range is a realistic means of portraying the variabilityof the potential costs involved.â second,â because no two contractors will look at the design,the drawings and the specifications the same way, even when given the exact same information.â equally, building techniques vary from contractor
to contractor as do subcontracts and laborrates. now, imagine for a moment that the client hires the most meticulous local contractorto build their home. if you assumed and designed the size of the home around the three hundreddollars per square foot benchmark, sizing it to meet their budget during schematic designphase - if the chosen contractor is used to constructing things at six hundred dollarsper square foot the building is now one hundred percent over the client’s budget. it’simportant to have these discussions early on to correlate quality expectations.now, if we assume that the average local custom building cost here is between three and four-hundreddollars per square foot and then apply it to the factored building square footage we’llhave an estimated budget range to work with.â
now hopefully you can fully appreciate thevalue of our factoring exercise. with this model, the cost to construct the living spacewith an eight-foot ceiling would be one hundred and twenty thousand dollars at three hundreddollars per square foot and to construct the vaulted space the cost would increase by sixty-thousanddollars. now, will the space actually cost sixty-thousand dollars more to construct?perhaps not, but it’s definitely going to cost more and it’s not unreasonable to assumequite a bit more. really this is meant to provide a starting point to work from andcan be fine-tuned based on your own project experience. as you build more or collaboratewith other builders who might have a deeper backlog of cost estimates, you can dial-inthese spreadsheet factors.
no matter how accurate you think an estimatedcost projection is, there will always be some things you leave out. some things you missed.materials or systems not accounted for, price increases, labor shortages, unforeseen subsurfaceconditions. i recently had a project where the shingle costs were increased by twentypercent due to a new tariff placed on imported wood products from canada. literally overnight,material acquisition costs for the shell package increased by twenty percent. to cover theseunforeseeable circumstances, always add a contingency to your estimates. a contingencyis like a slush fund, a percentage of the overall budget reserved unknowns. it startsout in the early phases of design as a rather high fifteen percent; there’s more at thispoint that we don’t know than we do know.
then we reduce it as we define more and moreaspects of the structure from ten percent down to five percent. the more we know aboutthe building, the more accurate our estimates can be and the less need we have for contingency.as the building progresses in construction we can begin to release some of the contingencyfund back to the owner’s control – hopefully unspent.all this information helps both the architect and the client to guide scope decisions. beforethe design concept is established and before you start drawing lines, use the total budgetto determine the overall building size the client’s budget will support. doing thisensures the client isn’t surprised by the reality of construction costs – that stickershock – and equally that the architect isn’t
spending their fee designing something thatthe client ultimately can’t afford. in the early stages of design, it’s nothing morethan a best guess and it’s good practice to involve a contractor as a partner soonerrather than later to help evaluate costs. for larger projects this process will likelyinvolve a cost estimating consultant and it’s much more involved. but,the concept is verysimilar. so how does all this relate to design? well,cost is an important creative boundary. without cost limitations, anything is possible. whenyou begin to constrain the projects in various ways, new design opportunities will presentthemselves. look for economies of scale, use humble, inexpensive materials, simplify designmoves, do more with less, design spaces that
can serve multiple functions, question justhow much space you actually need to accomplish a certain task. when you realize that everysquare foot costs between three and four-hundred dollars it holds you accountable for eachone in a much less abstract way. it’s why i regard building your own dwelling, at leastfor an architect, as an essential part of professional education. it forces you to experiencethe real cost and financial stakes involved in building.perhaps most importantly, every added square foot is another one you’ll have to heat,cool, light, maintain, and clean for many years to come. â buildings use an incredibleamount of energy and here in the usa our homes are substantially larger than our europeancounterparts. â be ruthless about what you
really need and what you can live without.be responsible,â by consuming fewer resources your self-less act gives to generations thatfollow us. once we bring in a builder and begin definingmore of the building details, the square footage estimate can be jettisoned and replaced bythe builder’s estimate which will be refined at the major waypoints to ensure we’re proceedingaccording to the budget. during the early design phases to be serious about controllingcosts will most often require reducing square footage.â this will be the easiest and bestopportunity you have to do so.â when the foundation has been poured and hammers are flying theamount of impact you can have on building cost is severely limited. don’t think youcan save money by simply changing materials
at this stage, the bulk of your costs aretied up in square footage. this is the power law of the economics related to architecturaldesign. as we translate our sketch plans into workingfloor plans, invariably the size changes. returning to our project, our client chosetwo of the schematic plan schemes to hybridize and i developed a few plan options for each.to make things more realistic, i translated the sketches into cad line work which alwayshas a sobering effect. sketches are forgiving, they’re easy to fake. but laying thingsout in cad is different, you’re working with real sizes and alignments and wall thicknesses.â having roughed it out i massaged a few functional, if not rather primitive, floor plan optionsfor the client to review. now, as part of
this process, things got larger. i spreadit out on the site a little bit, bedrooms increased in size, hallways lengthened. and,when i revisited the square footage take-off, the footprint – and consequently the buildingcost - had increased significantly. so, again i retooled, and revised, made things smaller,pushing and pulling to align the two. in the end, there was an overall expansion of theprogrammed square footage. but, i’m happy to say that this was a client driven decision,spaces were increased to accommodate certain wishes and desires and this too is the benefitof the programming and budget exercise. it allows the client to be in control of whereand how they spend their project dollars. it’s fine with me if they want to spendmore or less, i’m here to provide the information
which allows them to make the most informeddecision possible. having a baseline tied to a budget keeps thetwo in check. it’s always a good idea to revisit the square footage and cost estimatesat different points in the design process in the same back-and-forth manner as we dowith the other aspects of our design. next up in the short course: materials. howi chose them, how they support the design concept and an inside look at one of my favoritewaypoints in the design process. until then, please hit the thumbs up below if you’vefound something useful here, it helps me grow the channel and please subscribe if you haven’talready. cheers!
