With a new firm name and a unique offer, Design Farm announced their new offer: Free Schematic Design Services to Individuals, Non-profits, Small Businesses and Developers. This is the essence of what makes this competition so unique. You submit the building project while you get to ride along through the design process from a licensed architecture firm.
The exciting competition titled “On the House” allows three lucky nominees to be chosen to work with a licensed architect to develop a complete schematic design package including preliminary floor plans, elevations, and 3D renderings of the selected project . If you like what Design Farm designs for your project, you can hire them to take it through the completion of the project. If you do not like what they put together for you, it is still on the house although they will retain the copyright. More information on the competition after the break.
What types of projects are we looking for?
All building types are welcome: tiny homes, traditional single family houses (100 sq. ft. to 10,000 sq. ft.), multi-family residential, restaurants, office buildings, schools, retail, etc. Projects of all budgets are encouraged to submit – we have experience on projects from $300 to $3,000,000. If you are unclear about the details of your project, do not worry. We will guide you through the process, although projects should not be submitted without realistic timelines and budgets.
Our mission for hosting the On The House competition:
According to national statistics architects are only involved in 10 % of all buildings and only 2-4% of houses. We would like to see these numbers increase. In an effort to change these startling statistics, we understand that we may need to prove ourselves to you before you can take a leap of faith. So we would like to give you a little teaser of what we were trained to do. We also want to make ourselves more approachable as architects and encourage people who have never thought they could afford to hire an architect to submit their project and let us take you through the exciting design process free of charge.
We could just sit around and design LEED Platinum Barbie Dream Houses for ourselves in order to enhance our companies portfolio, but that is a little bit too narcissistic for our style. We are lovers of humanity striving to build our own cultural capital. We would love to put our energy to good use and design something for you or your company. We strive to serve all social classes, as all are entitled to good design. Our goal is to create lifelong relationships and clients from this endeavor, so we know we have to get it right the first time.
What is this schematic design phase you keep speaking of?
Schematic Design is the initial and usually the most fun and exciting phase of project development. The design will be conceptual in character and based on the requirements of the program (all the spaces/rooms you want in your building). Please note that you will not be able to take the schematic drawings and construct a building with them as we provide them in this initial design phase. If you would like to continue with the design beyond the free schematic design package and potentially build our proposal, you will have to hire us by signing the appropriate architect/client contracts in order to have the rights to use our design. Please do not let this scare you away. As licensed architects we have to protect ourselves in our overly litigious country. Once we are officially hired as your architect to take the project beyond schematic design, we will work together to lead you through the remaining project phases: design revisions, material selections, meet building code regulations, obtain municipal approvals, conduct bidding with contractors, oversee construction, etc, and walk you into the front door of your new building. Sounds fantastic, does it not?
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