Most of the time when I go any celebrations, ceremonies or family functions I find friends and acquaintances asking me -
"Why do we need an Architect for?"
They can easily prepare a plan from different sources; hire a contractor, who in turn will be asked to modify the plan further and then start constructing their house. So why hire a professional Architect who do not justify the HUMONGOUS FEES.
Oh GOD!!! What do you mean by HUMONGOUS FEES???
I hardly get 3% while the Council of Architecture insists on charging 7.5%. First of all they, client, are underpaying and then they talk about the sum being humongous. WTF!!! The clients, mostly having 3-4 year degree education, themselves prefer to get a high paying job so obviously I too after a 5 year degree education would prefer a reasonable pay cheque. Mind you we too make in thousands only and not in lakhs like you assume. If it were the case don't you think by now I would have built castles for myself. Think dumbos think.
Also, they think that once the design is done, the work of an Architect is over. How do I explain them that designing is just 30% of the job. Who will take care of the execution and also co-ordination with different specialists? Who will prepare the working drawings and also details? Who will get them an approval? (Debatable in India) Who will check whether the specialists has over quoted or under calculated the requirement? Definitely they, the Clients, wont. Also they would not know how to co-ordinate different drawings so that the construction process goes on smoothly.
Anyways we seem to be deviating a bit from the topic. I have though of a small example which I think is apt of explaining or conveying the message - Why Hire an Architect? Now, you want to bake or prepare a cake. You remember seeing and tasting one particular cake which fascinated you. For preparing this, you refer a good cook book (written by a professional Chef) and buy all the ingredients. You are doing it for the first time therefore you might not right away get the appropriate mixture. So after a few trails, permutations and combinations you get it right. Once the mixture is ready you bake it. You take care while baking so as to not end-up with a burnt cake.
By the time you finish preparing the cake you observed the following things –
You ended using more material than required.
The taste is not even close to the one you had or fantasized.
Your finish is not proper and/or the cake did not turn up as you expected for you are not a regular chef trained in the medium.
It actually cost you more for preparing it yourself while you could have got it at a lesser price from the Chef’s bakery.
You now know the process so will avoid the mistakes done but will require a lot of time and effort to actually master it.
You will not be able to experiment with the set formula for baking the cake thereby not be able to reduce the preparation time or cost of the final product even if possible.
Once you master this method of preparing cake, you will be able to do this only. Preparation method of any other type or variety of cake will make you clueless and yes, also look stupid. You will be like the blind man who's touching the trunk of an elephant and thinks that's what an elephant is. Once you touch the tail portion you become clueless as to what animal it is.
These can be applied to any profession and particularly in this case of NOT HIRING AN ARCHITECT –
You can create your house plan looking at the plans available from different sources, give it to the Contractor who can do it but you will end up using more material.
Also since you have created it out of various sources, the house may be a hotchpotch of ideas not fitting in. Look shabby with no proper space arrangement.
Your house might look unorganized due to lack of appropriate storage. Please understand the difference between having lot of storage space and having appropriate storage space. It matters.
You might end up with odd sizes for your rooms making the house congested even when you have ample space. Hope you don’t want a scenario where you have to dry your undergarments in front of the road or for that matter don’t want your living room to be congested while the adjoining puja room has space for a bed.
You might have not considered the building by-laws of the city, town or region. So multiple trips to the approval authority. What could have been a single visit turns into frequent visits. Do they love those regular visits.
Also the Contractor, like the person in the above example, has mastered the art by doing it again and again. Once any change is suggested he will try to avoid it by telling different type of stories instead of reasoning.
You might also end up noticing that you could have avoided few of the suggestions provided by the contractor as they were unnecessary. You yourself are to be blamed not the contractor as he just did what he knew and thought was right.
Also more material, frequent trips, odd shapes, unnecessary storage means more money. Budget increased unnecessarily. Imagine you had a budget of 30 Lakhs but you end up with an expenditure of 45 Lakhs.
The final finish similar to the case above will not be present. Water might get stagnated at different locations without proper slopes/ drain areas, lack of lighting even during daytime making you switch-on the lights, etc.
So the end result is you ended with a shabby looking building which has got all the problems that deteriorates the building faster, with a longer duration taken for construction plus the unnecessary economic burden with no SATISFACTION of owning your DREAM HOUSE.
The impact of these errors can be seen for your whole life through the electricity bill, water bill, medical bills, telephone bills, etc. All these costs will not be even noticed by you but these are actually being caused due to that small hesitation of appointing an Architect. It is after all a small fraction of the overall cost. Imagine the life-long savings in comparison to cost of appointing an Architect.
The cake is matters of few thousands while the rate at which the construction costs are going we are talking about anything between few Lakhs and Crores.
Please make an informed Choice.