Follow us on @designpriciplespod on Instagram.
If you wish to contact us hit our DMs or email us on info@designprinciplespod.com
Follow us on @designpriciplespod on Instagram.
If you wish to contact us hit our DMs or email us on info@designprinciplespod.com
Hello and welcome back to the Design Principles podcast. I am your host, ben Sutherland from Bear Architecture, and I'm here today with Sam Brown from Red Architects and Gerard Dombroski from Gerard Dombroski Workshop. Today we will be discussing taking on group home builders. But before we do that little segue, did you guys happen to watch the Super Bowl yesterday?
Sam Brown:I watched the first half and the half time show but then had to parent so I didn't manage to get the second half in.
Ben Sutherland:Oh.
Gerard Dombroski:I did the other half. I did the second half today, so between me and Sam we watched the whole game.
Ben Sutherland:Oh nice, it was a good game. It was a good game. It was a long game, but the reason I just wanted to bring that up real quick was Mahomes the quarterback. Guess how much he gets paid.
Sam Brown:You probably know this, sam, but Only because you told me last time, I have no idea.
Ben Sutherland:Half a billion dollars. They pay him half a billion dollars. Isn't that insane?
Sam Brown:And if he could put some of that money back into the community.
Ben Sutherland:Oh, mate, that's at least two architecturally designed houses you could afford with half a billion dollars.
Sam Brown:I saw that.
Gerard Dombroski:Just two. They put a stat up that it was 850,000 American dollars was the average wage. So, there must be some people right at the bottom off setting that wage.
Ben Sutherland:Absolutely. There was one guy on, you know, in one of the two finals, one of the teams, I can't remember which one, but he was only earning 890,000 dollars and the presenters were giving him grief about being so underpaid.
Sam Brown:Crazy wealth disparity.
Ben Sutherland:Oh, it's insane. Yeah, lewis Hamilton's seven time world champion, formula One world champion, and he gets paid $100 million, which is epic, but you know, no, not half a billion dollars, which is yeah, maybe we sell sports podcast. Formula One is basically, I would argue, the sport for architects, right, if architects had a sport, it would probably be Formula One.
Sam Brown:How do you justify that?
Ben Sutherland:Well, in my opinion, it's basically the same thing. Right, there's a high element of design and engineering. It's the design race I've been for? Yeah, exactly it also. So American Cup, Each one of those Formula One teams. They've got about a thousand people working for them for one car. Can you imagine maybe two cars? That's basically the same as building a house.
Sam Brown:So essentially they're like group home buildings. They have a thousand people working for them. No, no, no.
Ben Sutherland:They have the architecturally designed buildings, group home buildings the toyotas, you know your masters, your everyday the problem there Ben is.
Sam Brown:toyotas are a sure bet. They're safe. Yeah Well, are you arguing that a group home build house is of an acceptable quality?
Ben Sutherland:I'm arguing that they get that quality through consistency, repetition and economies of scale.
Sam Brown:Yeah, these are good points. Does that bring us back into the conversation Back?
Ben Sutherland:into the conversation. Oh God, who wants to kick us off with a description of what a group home builder actually is?
Sam Brown:I've got a little thing here. So what this? This is from Archipurin, so this is actually, I guess, from the architecture side, but group home builders and design home builders companies that generally offer packages which sometimes also include land, standard house plans and designs, project management and construction often described as turn key solutions that, when the house is completed, they're handed over and clients are ready to move into. That description to me, with the exception of the standard house plans, just describes what we do.
Ben Sutherland:Well, do you manage to build?
Gerard Dombroski:I guess you do, yeah absolutely yeah, if you don't buy the section or you know they all go around and buy up half and suburb first.
Sam Brown:That's probably. That is one key difference, for sure.
Gerard Dombroski:Put a huge amount of capital upfront.
Sam Brown:But that's and that again comes back into that economies of scale thing, right, you know they're dealing with and I've got an interesting stat here. Hold on, I'm just going to open up my show notes. I think it's GJ Gardner's.
Ben Sutherland:The number one residential builder in New Zealand.
Sam Brown:Number one residential builder in New Zealand.
Ben Sutherland:Quite a long.
Sam Brown:So last year they had approximately where is it? 884 projects. That doesn't specify the number of houses, but the number of dwellings constructed under that was upwards of 7,000, I think.
Ben Sutherland:So is that? Is that building consensus? You're talking about processed or?
Sam Brown:So dwellings is, but projects isn't. So what that's telling you is that they are doing projects where they're building a dozen houses all at once, essentially, or more, and again that comes back to that economies of scale thing, you know. Like when are we afforded that opportunity to do something like that on a regular basis?
Ben Sutherland:Well, they create those opportunities, don't they?
Sam Brown:Yeah, true, they take on a lot more risk.
Gerard Dombroski:You know if you're going to fire whole suburb or whatever.
Sam Brown:Yeah, it would be interesting to you know, it would be interesting if you had an architectural outfit that had the buying capacity or I guess the capital capacity internally of a group home builder, what we could achieve.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, potentially. However, do you think so? Group home builders they cater for a huge market segment, right, they? They?
Sam Brown:Somewhere I've heard 90% of the housing market in New Zealand is either group home or design build solutions. I searched and searched and searched to see if I could like it's hard to find that statistic. I couldn't find anything. I think I've just heard it colloquially through the profession. It's the same thing, and architects, you know, between like five and 10%, yeah, so yeah, they cater to, you know, the vast, vast majority of the community in New Zealand.
Ben Sutherland:Oh, 100%. And so their market is kind of different to typically what you see in architects market, which is generally more business class or first class or you know, the top two, three, four percent, maybe six percent to the country.
Sam Brown:Yeah, and I find that a really interesting point because that traditionally entered, to a certain extent is still the case, but it doesn't need to be we sort of. I think you know it's a little bit of a misnomer, and rightly so, sometimes that architects are for the elite, but I think that it doesn't have to be the case Like we're more than capable of creating architectural solutions for all of society, and you can see it so much now, particularly in Kauranga or our projects, where architects are being employed to come up with these like large scale solutions. Why can't we, why shouldn't we be considered to do this on a more regular basis, and maybe not necessarily on a large development scale, but even from an individual home to home scale?
Gerard Dombroski:I guess, like social housing has historically always been kind of a realm of architects and architects are always interested in tackling that challenge. It's like a huge part of modernism and why it failed pushing the boat out of the too far. But I don't know. Do we have any examples of architecture actually coming in on that sort of budget? I think like the main reason everyone goes for a group home is the predictability and they've got a limited sort of financial pool to work from and they want a sure thing and you can kind of understand that.
Gerard Dombroski:I guess the challenge for architects to get in there is how do you solve that issue of guarantee, a fixed price or something?
Sam Brown:Yeah, and I think that comes back again to we've already mentioned it a couple of times and this is probably going to be the crux of a lot of our discussion today is that economies of scale. You know, like for us, if we can design a house and we've attempted to do it ourselves the most bare-bones structure possible, but with a focus purely on performance, really, and aesthetics, obviously, because we would be doing our job if we didn't. But we're using a one-off bespoke builder, right. So his buying power, you know, he might buy 100 sheets of jib, for example, GJ Gardner or Genian or whoever one of the group home builds. They'll come in, they'll buy a million sheets of jib, you know, and they'll warehouse them.
Ben Sutherland:I'll start producing the jib. If they have you, fair them around All this stuff.
Sam Brown:You're all exactly right.
Ben Sutherland:Fletcher's right that you know they've got their own group home building arm. They're the second biggest, after GJ Gardner.
Sam Brown:Exactly so. You know a lot of it comes down to, you know, the ability that these guys have, or these big players have, to buy and stockpile material and also, in a lot of cases, get cheaper labor as well. It's sort of a shame that that can't somehow and I don't know how, I don't have the answer here but like how that can't infiltrate into the architectural realm so that we can be providing high quality, high performing designs but still have their buying power, if you know what I mean.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, absolutely. I think, just breaking it down a little bit further, they're doing a couple of good things. Well, I mean a couple of cheats really. First of all, they only really build on flat sites. Yes, so I think that's quite important to point out really, because I mean, yes, there are a lot of flat sites, but it definitely makes it a lot easier and a lot cheaper, that's for sure.
Ben Sutherland:Anyone who's built a house in Wellington will know firsthand. It is expensive Anything to do with earthworks. Your bill goes through the roof, and it's virtually impossible to put a figure to it up front, because who knows what you're going to uncover as soon as you start breaking ground, which is, you know, in terms of lending is very important point.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, all the big suburbs are like all terraced and pre-engineered for flat sites.
Sam Brown:But that flat site thing is interesting because what it contributes to is urban sprawl, particularly in some way like well, actually, regardless of where you are, if you're somewhere like Christchurch, where the city predominantly other than the Port Hills, but if you're going west, north and south, it's flat. So these sort of developments or the suburbs are able to grow, but they just keep growing out and out and out and out and out. Somewhere like Wellington, for instance, where we've sort of reached the limit of our city boundary, you have to try and find and inhabit the interstitial space. You know, these little leftover sites, these pockets of land that are remaining, and that precludes these group home build solutions, which is a shame because if they had a little bit more flexibility, you'd be able to use that buying power, that cheaper construction cost, but still be able to build on these more difficult sites.
Ben Sutherland:Well, Gerardo and I actually worked on a project together up on the hills up there in Wellington once, and I always. You know the neighbouring site was a group home build. Actually the whole development was, and it always used to make me laugh because basically they come in and they just put this gigantic retaining wall in to create a flat section on this side. These retaining walls were like I don't know, that was solid man. They were like 10 meters tall, Boom.
Sam Brown:The funny thing that is the cost in doing that earthworks or I guess in those establishment works, must be huge. Who's absorbing that? Because it's clearly not getting passed on to the client, right.
Ben Sutherland:I guess it's just built into the feasibility at the beginning.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, I feel like that one was built into the client. But again, I guess then if you're going back to the group homes offering the solution, they probably already own the site, so then they've already done that For sure. The feasibility. Yeah, I think like there's multiple facets to this discussion. Like, if you step back further, there's like the urban issue of like why are we creating sprawling suburbs for that quarter acre dream which I guess everyone sees in movies, or these American movies as a kid?
Sam Brown:Well, I don't even think it's an American thing. I think it's an ingrained sort of a Kiwi. Maybe not expect. Well, maybe expectation, but you know, it's something that we have all grown up with to a degree.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, it goes through the back to the invention of a car and like putting all your things in a place where you can go, drive to and park and do your shopping.
Sam Brown:Yeah, but apartment living, such a foreign concept to us as a nation, you know.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, we have space.
Ben Sutherland:And we've got low population in comparison. Yeah.
Gerard Dombroski:I guess we don't really think about planning our cities around a future densification.
Ben Sutherland:So another reason why they do that, though, is obviously just going back to that whole repetition thing. Basically, that allows them to recycle plans over and over again by you know. Yes, they can just change this and that yeah, cleaning the color, cleaning type, a kitchen type but essentially, they're just redoing the same thing over and over again, which has huge advantages, like anyone who's, you know, tried to get into the prefabrication realm or anything like that, will know that mass production is your best friend when it comes to cost cutting or cost saving, because labor is expensive, and having to reinvent, reinvent the wheel every time is an expensive process. So wood architects or designers like how are they going to compete with that?
Sam Brown:Yeah, it's interesting.
Sam Brown:I'd be really intrigued to get your take on this.
Sam Brown:We recently have been developing in our studio and this what I'm trying to relate this to is that I guess that repetitive design nature and instead of basically cut and paste, cut and paste, cut and paste of a house, why could you not realize efficiencies in modulate modulization?
Sam Brown:And I'd be really interested to get your take, particularly from your time at Makers and the past work and research that you've done before, ben, but what we've recently started to do, we work a lot with SIP panels and we've developed over the last sort of six months these six SIP housing options and they're all very easily customizable because everything set out to a standard module, 1200 by 2400, and you can essentially reform or remodel a house however you want, as long as you stick to the rule of 1200 by 2400. And regardless of whether that, what I'm trying to say is you have full design flexibility to a degree, but you're still realizing those same efficiencies because you're not reproducing the same design over and over again, but you're reproducing the same design concepts and construction methodologies, but you're getting freedom of creativity, and I think that's an interesting area to explore.
Ben Sutherland:So you're recycling the design process, not the actual design itself.
Sam Brown:Correct. Thank you for clarifying. Yeah, great, great.
Gerard Dombroski:Details. All the same, yep these corners.
Sam Brown:And yeah, so you essentially like all your detailing is exactly the same. All that you're changing is you're adjusting the form however you want, based off this module.
Ben Sutherland:And would you consider that an economical or a more cost effective process?
Sam Brown:I think so, and I think twofold. From a design point of view and from my architects fees, engineers fees, consultant or the upfront costs before you're even on site. There's huge efficiencies there because we're not having to reinvent the wheel every single time we do a design or the back informations there, all the hard works being done you can essentially just shut a form and then, from a construction point of view and this is a bit of a chicken and egg scenario you need the egg before the chicken can hatch. In this sense, and what I'm trying to say there is that you need builders to become familiar with this construction technique, particularly with SIPs. You know it's quite new, particularly for a lot of builders in New Zealand, but once that knowledge and expertise is there, it's so quick and so efficient that I can see it being there's. I can see there being huge cost reductions. And I haven't even got to the point of performance yet. You know the performance outline from this type of construction is so much higher than standard stick frame.
Ben Sutherland:One question I have, because this kind of reminds me of back in the day we were building all these CLT buildings. But the problem is that you still have to conform to code or modern code, and I'm pretty sure, like it, a lot of improvements are happening in that realm around sort of more modular, especially around like SIPs and some prefabrication components, but there's still a huge element of it that has to be traditionally built Like. It's so easy to just get in there, put the SIPs up right, but then you have to put the cladding on and do all that stuff in a traditional manner. So where is the cost saving? Is it in the product or is it because frame standing frames that's not exactly a hard or a slow process, like standing the frames is actually quite easy.
Gerard Dombroski:So what is?
Ben Sutherland:it about that methodology that that could potentially or this is the same with prefabrication Like, what is it that allows you to be more competitive?
Sam Brown:I think it's the, I think it's the potential and this is slightly untapped, I'd say but to construct essentially fully formed cassettes you know particularly the prefabrication side of things, ben is like you could create these modular wall panels that have everything in them from the cladding all the way through to the interior lining services, the whole works all built in a factory under perfect conditions. So you're realizing huge efficiencies there because you're not being affected by weather. You've got like you're maximizing material, like material efficiencies and that sort of thing, and I think that's where there's the opportunity or the ability to seriously reduce the costs is by maximizing efficiencies and time and material research, maybe not necessarily detailed, I think I think that one thing that you just said their timing.
Ben Sutherland:So, in my opinion, you have to offset these huge overheads of running a factory or owning a factory because it is expensive with speed, and so if you're not getting that speed, then you're not making those savings. One thing I will say, though, in terms of prefabrication, in my experience, is quality. I, in my opinion, quality is better, it's easy to control quality, so I'm obviously pro prefabrication. However, if you're not getting those speed, if you're not getting that speed of construction, then basically it ends up being more or less the same price as you would if you build it to build it on site. But yeah, once again, higher quality. So I don't know, I think you. Just it comes down to how fast you can construct these buildings, and I don't think you get that If you, if you had that repetition, then that's when those savings, that's when you start seeing some, some decent savings.
Sam Brown:Quality is an interesting point and this may be a bit of a segue, but I think it's worth discussing. I mean, a lot of the argument against this sort of design, build, a group home build options is that the quality isn't very high, and that's, you know, it's kind of widely understood, it's fine but it's not. You know, it's not from a performance point of view and even from a material and finishing point of view, it's you know, it's not the highest quality. Do you think that's necessarily a group home build issue, or do you think that's a code issue? You know a lot of these people, a lot of these companies are designing to the building code, which is absolutely acceptable. But is our building code good enough? I think that's an interesting type of kind of challenge.
Ben Sutherland:This is a tough one because we all know anyone who's had any experience in the construction industry, especially on the construction side, is we all know how expensive materials can be. So what these guys are doing is they're basically targeting that minimum standard, which is still above what is currently perceived as adequate within the construction standards, in order to keep costs down, so they can hit their target segment, who are generally, you know, don't really have the price, the money to buy more expensive products. So until you start seeing those supply chain economics, I don't think it's realistic.
Gerard Dombroski:Like in terms of detailing, you'll still see the same details underneath a rain screen. Like I'll ship a ton of houses around Queenstown. We have, like a beautiful rain screen over top and they'll still have parties all over it. We're not necessarily seeing a huge change in details. I think like the main differences like quality of design, where they well, they just design in a series of squares attaching to each other, so then you get like a real complex roof around it and then it's not really designed around the sun or anything, so it's just a very unthought out building plonked on a site and not overly fussed on where the sun's coming from or anything. So I think that's the major differences like quality of living spaces that they're making.
Ben Sutherland:Absolutely.
Gerard Dombroski:Generally pretty rubbish.
Ben Sutherland:And that's the issue, and that's why we need more architects or designers to really somehow figure out a way to build more. One thing I can potentially think about is just leaning into working with developers.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, you know they, they're doing all the feasibilities side of things and I'm I'm. Throughout my career I've seen more and more people kind of want to start to embrace working with developers. Weirdly, at the beginning it kind of felt like a gross thing to do and you're just going to end up designing rubbish. But in my opinion, designing less bad is still a huge win, which is a bad thing to say but if you're not going to do it, they could go somewhere else and the outcome could be significantly different.
Ben Sutherland:So I'm all for it.
Sam Brown:It's sort of the sort of two ways you can approach improving this huge chunk of the built environment or the residential, particularly residential built environment in New Zealand, like you said, bennett's us working more with developers, and it's not even just developers, it's like somehow ingratiating architecture or architectural input into the group home building realm a little bit more.
Sam Brown:You know, like you said, gerard, it's being able to have us as experts, you know, highly trained experts having that input about site placing, location of the sun and things like that.
Sam Brown:That's one avenue, and then I think another really interesting avenue is enforcement through, like, either code changes or standards, and code changes is a pretty clear one, and even with the new recent H1 changes, obviously a lot of these houses are having to up their performance standard, which is key, but it'd be really interesting to see something along the lines of, you know, like Homestar being adopted by the group home build sector that, just across the board, lifts the quality of their buildings. And then, and you know, and the built environment and it's really awesome that some you know an organization like Kaya and aura have adopted, you know, homestar as a standard. So all of their buildings now have to be rated and so they're almost holding themselves accountable in terms of quality, and it'd be really interesting to see group home builders sort of adopt that same mentality. You know, ultimately that's going to better serve the New Zealand general public.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, I think. I think there's lots of sides to the discussion. I think on the that one quality, I think it's a slippery slope because the more complexity and the higher you raise the bar and more rules you add, the higher the cost of housing is going to be. We're trying to I guess the huge part of building is trying to get humans into dwelling spaces and like we just like harder and harder with each rule that gets out of, like this runs all the way back to the economies of scale.
Sam Brown:The only reason that a lot of these things are considered difficult or expensive at the moment is that they're not mass Impot of them, if you know what I? Mean like if group home builders were all creating homes that had, you know, less than, or like one year change per hour rather than six to 10, then that cost of construction is probably not going to increase because it's across the board right.
Gerard Dombroski:And initially the price is always going to go up, and I've never seen prices come down again. After, like, builders realize they can make more money out of something Like through COVID, price materials skyrocket and they haven't really dropped, to my understanding. No, no, no, no, no, no they're still going up and like there's no regulation or like not enough.
Gerard Dombroski:I think like regulation of materials and actual like product competitiveness in the market is a hell of a lot better. Like, if you're going to supplement these other things that you need to like, manage the cost of these things as well. Like, otherwise, some of these larger building companies are going to make extreme profits and people like profits and it's a greed is a pretty natural human thing. So once it's tantalizing, once you have that money, you're probably not going to relinquish it that easily.
Sam Brown:But that's why maybe it needs to be code changed and needs to be sorted by potential like governmental input or subsidy, because I think regulation, like bringing more competitors to the market, is like, but yeah, open us up Like why, why do we have such a closed?
Gerard Dombroski:Why does one company control? You know a huge amount of materials, so we're at their mercy to a large degree. But I think if we, if we go back a little bit, I think the whole thing of Groupon Builders is your house on your quarter section sort of thing, and I think moving forward, sprawling cities, probably not the future, like, let's be fair, I think like some cities are starting to understand that, like Palmerston North's pretty progressive and discussions with Hamish on the island, and like Hobsonville and Auckland, I think like it's very different for New Zealand and New Zealanders take a little bit to get their head around it, but like I feel like that is the direction the societies will hopefully go, because I think it's the only super affordable option.
Sam Brown:So that is like are you talking about? Are you talking about shifting from?
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, I think, the whole type of the expectation, the whole typology will start to change, which I think that's going to be a major thing that all is more likely to bring more work to architects because they're you know big.
Sam Brown:Do you think that the Groupon Build realm is up to up to play with this? Do you reckon that they are realizing this change and trying to adapt to it as well, or not? I?
Gerard Dombroski:don't know. I don't follow them to a large degree, but I do know that there's a hell of a lot more architects working in like that Hobsonville area than non architects. I know Palmerston North made some changes or something.
Ben Sutherland:This is interesting, though. Consider Williamscorp, who are a group home builder. Yeah, yeah.
Gerard Dombroski:I can see the new type of group home builder.
Ben Sutherland:Exactly. It's a new type and it's going to be some rubbish. They are catering for a part of the market that designers currently can't.
Sam Brown:Yeah, that's a good point. You're right, ben, in the sense that they are I agree with you, gerard, and that they seriously need to take a look at what they are offering from an aesthetic point of view, but in terms of what they're being able to offer from an affordability point of view is huge, you know, and at least they're doing it, and there's not many really that are doing on that scale, which is which is pretty interesting, and, like you said, they're probably the only ones that I can think of off the top of my head that have made that transition or at least started in that realm of medium density. It's like the medium density group home.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, other than developers, I guess, who have been doing it for a while, and now, interestingly, some of those developers where we were like, oh man, that's rubbish. Actually, you know, when you look back, probably not that bad compared to some of the other stuff that's being built out there these days, unfortunately.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, I was looking to this lecture by Joseph Rezmus Prince from Rex Used to work for OMA, and the lecture was basically on agency, like until architects kind of take on a bit more risk, like you're not going to have much of a say in what happens in the world. And so I think where these companies sort of go, and why they get more opportunities, why they have more sway over the whole industry, is that they buy up a huge amount of land and front up the cash and you know they, they fund these whole things. So it's like it's not an uncommon problem for architects to want to solve, but it's like it does require, like you, to go all in.
Ben Sutherland:It's interesting, though, like if you break that down a little bit, they're still. They are basically getting investors on board, offering them a return, and that's how they're affording all these properties. So they're not paying for that out of their own pocket, they're paying for it with other people's money still.
Gerard Dombroski:So I guess yeah, but they're taking the risk yes, they are. Like if the buck falls on them. Whether you are, the money's literally yours, or you're, you know, got a contract with somebody else to make them money.
Sam Brown:So I guess the question here is like, how do we, as the architectural fraternity, how do we like ingratiate ourselves in this realm more, how do we kind of get ourselves in there to have a bit more of an impact? Because at the moment it feels like we've and like you said, our intents there, our desires there, it's always been there. You know you talk about going all the way back to modernism and you know the key principles of that. We've really been afforded the chance on a large scale to have an impact on the built environment of a nation. It'd be really interesting to kind of get your guys' thoughts on ways that we could somehow have a better impact or like ingratiate ourselves with these developers, with the group home builders, whoever, so that the outcomes are of a, you know, more considered and higher quality.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, I think it's been so. It's like leading into that developer sort of thing, because I think a lot of architects are scared of that, thinking that it's going to compromise your quality and stuff. I think I guess finding developers that you can work with or more in line with. I do want to point one thing out which I thought was pretty interesting. Frank Lloyd Wright, I guess, was the OG group home builder. Yeah, he had some series of plans back in the day. The old American system built homes.
Sam Brown:It says catalog houses.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, so like if we create everything as a design exercise, as we often do, I think, like I don't know. Everyone's been trying to find a solution to this for ages, but I guess Frank did his right on World War One and then that kind of blocks a lot of that.
Sam Brown:Well, that's an interesting point. Like you said, we've all been trying to come up with a solution. You're talking about Frank Lloyd Wright coming up with his. I'm thinking about what we've been doing recently with our offerings. Why is it that they haven't been able to get off the ground? Is it because you don't where's architects aren't, as I guess we don't have the gumption to go forward and really seek funding and finance to like make this thing a reality. Is that our shortcoming?
Ben Sutherland:Potentially maybe those group home builders. A lot of them are actually run as a business and their number one is to make money, and they do that by leveraging other people's money to purchase property and develop it, taking on that risk themselves, whereas we're just kind of a profession, so we kind of take it job by job. We have individual clients. Often those individual clients are just after a standalone home, so you're only servicing one to four people, whereas you know, a lot of the times these guys are doing, like you said, whole neighborhoods, servicing a lot more people. And also not to point out that these are franchises remember, they've made it easy. Their barrier to entry is extremely low. It's not that difficult to purchase a franchise. They'll basically help you on your feet, no matter what part of the country you are. They've got all the systems set up, ready to go and you basically just start your franchise, you get your builders on board and you're off, whereas you know there's no such thing currently, anyway, that I know of as an architecture franchise Interesting.
Sam Brown:Good point, I guess as well, what they've got which we don't have at our disposal, as much as the full raft of services. If you know what I mean, like particularly design, you know the design build outfits which most of these are. They've got the design and house and they're working directly with the builders, so you're not having to go out on a regular basis and renegotiate or reengage with the builder time and time and time again.
Ben Sutherland:There's more and more design build companies out there.
Sam Brown:For sure, we just started a construction arm.
Ben Sutherland:So we're basically trying to do the. We'll be doing the design thing, build side as well.
Sam Brown:Your case is interesting though, ben, because you're coming at it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd say that you're coming at it from a design first, build second point of view, whereas I feel a lot of these design build outfits a build first, design second, in terms of what their initial company like.
Ben Sutherland:yes, the clients that come to them. They want to build a house and then they're using their internal systems, which is whatever. They've got some architects or whatever to pump out these building consent so they can get the construction underway 100%, whereas, like Savas, I guess it would be the architecture first and then the construction after.
Sam Brown:Yeah, you want people coming to you for high quality design and a good, you know, a good solution, but you can offer to build it as well, rather than vice versa.
Ben Sutherland:Absolutely, that's quite important. That's interesting as well. Yeah, just a different perspective, I guess.
Sam Brown:Well, your position is so. You know it's pretty unique and rare. I don't I can't really think of many others that come out from that design. You know the architecture first point of view, but also offer the build nature be interesting whether we as architects start to realize this Issue I guess that we have in the built environment and start to go or shift down the path that you're going down a little bit more. I know for us, for instance, went by no means Approaching it in the way that you are, but what we do do is we have a group of Builders or consultants and everything that we will work with regularly, time and time again, which offers efficiencies for the clients because we're not having to go out and shop out every single time we're like they come to us for a design. We use this team. Yeah, we recommend them highly, yeah you know what you're gonna realize efficiencies through that process, as well, which is?
Sam Brown:obviously saving the client money at the end of the day.
Ben Sutherland:Absolutely yeah.
Gerard Dombroski:Don't? Don't you have a couple of Set plans that you have? So is that?
Sam Brown:yes, I've been kind of been talking about that as well. So that's what we've been developing, this we call it sceptris. It's sort of based gotta be careful here because we got slapped with a copyright order for calling it Tetris housing, so it's called sceptris now. So we've sort of taken the concept of Tetris and the idea that you know these six very basic forms that can be sort of Fit it, that can fit around each other. So we use those as the basis for our design and have designed six housing options based off that and the idea being is that one day Easily replicable so they're great for development a lot of them can be sort of like tessellated and turned into duplexes or triple X's or whatever you and also they're off, they're off the off the plan.
Sam Brown:You know we've done all the the design work up front. Clients can just come to us and be like oh, we like that one, we'll buy it off you. And there's, you know there's a purchasing fee for the design and the consent process and then we can recommend builders for them as well and take them through the bill process if they want, or they can, you know, take it from the building consent.
Gerard Dombroski:Do differentiate that from a rich, from your, from your company?
Sam Brown:What was that Sorry?
Gerard Dombroski:Differentiate that service from your architecture practice.
Sam Brown:No, we haven't at this stage. We kind of, you know, we've started it relatively recently and we just want to see if it, you know, gains any traction or if it's got any legs.
Sam Brown:I know, for instance, at first light, yeah, they Develop the flip house and really which is sort of like their equivalent to what we're looking at doing, and they have Kind of that's a whole separate company. Now it sort of runs on its own legs. So there's definitely a few Architecture firms out there that are looking at providing this off the plan solution and you know these are high performing. I know, for instance, first lights ones are all homestar rated. Our sips ones are all homestar, will be all homestar design rated. So they're like high quality Affordable. They're not group home affordable because, like I said, we just don't have that buying power. But in comparison to a one-off bespoke house, you know they're definitely Far more accessible to a wider range of society and so we're hoping that you know it sort of fits into that middle ground and for people that are looking for a high quality, high quality new home can sort of, you know, benefit from, from those options being out there. So you?
Gerard Dombroski:have you gone through any of those?
Sam Brown:Built any yeah no, I mean, we only started working on the design. So we've built three sip houses and we sort of taken our learnings from those and have applied them to the citrus designs and we started working on these designs, you know, late last year, maybe in sort of September, october last year and we're just completing or putting the finishing touches on the last two designs. We've got a series of six. Yeah, we've had a few inquiries come in about them, but but no traction yet and I think it's just a matter of being able to get, get it out to the general public and promote it in a better way. Potentially for us and this comes back, you know, to like what we're talking about earlier Architects maybe not having the right gumption to really like push for these things and from a development sense, maybe that's something that we need to. We need to look at a little bit more seriously. Yeah, I.
Gerard Dombroski:Wonder if a chunk of that is marketing. So it's like I don't think architects particularly know how they're allowed to market. Like I emailed NZ red asking if I was allowed to like Market, I guess put posters out. Yeah, I never got an email back so I was like oh, what should I Posts out.
Sam Brown:But like it's an interesting one, like our code of ethics is pretty prescriptive and you're right, gerard, it's sort of it's really prescriptive, I should say, but it's also a what you can and can't do, so things like round the pond, so like we're kind of left with Publications and word of mouth.
Ben Sutherland:Hey, sam, just going back a little bit to the, the sips, who do you purchase those through? So does the build a purchase those through a like a car, a whole, our car there's, or a Distributor, or do they purchase direct?
Sam Brown:So we Design partners with a company called formants, run out of Christchurch.
Ben Sutherland:And so they so they manufacture the product or they. So you're just saying you're so, you're purchasing direct, so there's no kind of middleman there, because another thing that we need to be really wary of is, you know, these, these groups homes.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, merchants, uh, you know, like I don't want to burn any bridges from us out here, but Like I can see that every time I drive past a Gj gardener house, you know, and they've got their building wrap up. It's clearly their own product and I think they've kind of bought a lot of that in house. And so, yeah, I think I think just trying to go direct as much as possible Is, if that is an option without kind of burning any bridges, then that should be something you should look to do.
Sam Brown:Yeah, it's interesting one. So, like for the. You know, we as architects we don't really have any buying power, right, we don't have any money.
Sam Brown:Yeah, it's not a lot of capital behind us. It's not like we is at the architecture firm can purchase this material, but what we have been doing With four months and and the builders that we use is because we are design partners with them what? What we do a lot of the time is the clients will buy or purchase this, the panels themselves. So we're already cutting out the contractors margin aspect from it, yeah, which is a huge saving. You know, margins these days are between 10 and 15 and it's a lot of money.
Ben Sutherland:You know what percentage of a build do you think that those sips cater for?
Sam Brown:Well, if you consider it to be your internal lining, your exterior wall framing, your insulation, your rigid air barrier, yeah, probably about 20 seen, Maybe up to. Yeah, yeah, probably.
Ben Sutherland:Interesting, do you?
Gerard Dombroski:sort of run electrical on the face or internal.
Sam Brown:We've got a few different options. You know we've run them within the SIPs. We've run them. We try and run as many services internally as possible so we're not penetrating the SIPs. But we've also played around with using the SIP spline joints and routing out, particularly for electrical cable runs through that. But also you're having little service skirts or packing up the SIP to run your services and that. So there's lots of different ways you can tackle it. But yeah, it's all learning experience still at the moment. You know we're still developing designs and coming up with new solutions.
Gerard Dombroski:I do want to jump back on marketing quickly, because I think that's a huge difference between architecture and group hormones, that you know Jib or sponsor the all blacks, and I don't know GJ, or sponsor huge sporting events and stuff, so and their ads are absolutely everywhere.
Sam Brown:So the ads are an interesting thing, gerard, and this again, this kind of peels back to our code of ethics to a degree. But you know, you hear, gj Garden is New Zealand's most trusted home builder by his metric. You know, you know, there's a couple of them out there In homes. I think it's 100% trusted or whatever these taglines are. They are able to, just, you know, throw out these marketing ploys in terms of, like, a customer response tagline or whatever it is.
Ben Sutherland:But you know, if we did that, that's pretty funny, how hugely accountable I think they went. There's like the certified builders association and the master builders association and that sort of thing and they have their own. They're kind of like the NZIA for construction and they have their own awards, and that I'm not sure. But I'm pretty sure that you know GJ Garden often wins. You know quite a bit, but that's pretty funny though, because when you're building a thousand buildings, surely one of them's got to be a winner, right?
Sam Brown:Yeah, well, that's it. But then also, surely one of them's got to be a winner. But, like you know, not every project is as roses. You know, we've all been in this game a long time and you only hear it's funny because you only hear about the glowing success of a lot of these group home builds. Right, I feel like that's what's put out into the community, that's what's promoted, whereas from an architectural point of view, often what we all hear about is the pitfalls, and my architect ran over budget, they were difficult to deal with, blah, blah, blah. So it's like we almost are on the back foot from a marketing point of view, because we're, I guess, from the general public's point of view, maybe perceived to be a little bit.
Ben Sutherland:I don't know. That is a great pod architects pitfalls. We have to do that.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, I think it's a huge conversation marketing, but, like the fact that architects don't really market let's be fair, we don't market other than Facebook or like Instagram or something, and we hope to get magazines and we hope that does gets us some mileage. But I think, like, if the Institute is something like marketed for us, you know, like a couple of ads on TV or something, it'd be interesting to see if, like, any of that market share would shift because, like, there's a lot of, there's a huge amount of architects in New Zealand that do cater for that smaller, I guess lower end, like trying to make affordable housing. Like all architects, I think, are pretty intrigued by affordable housing, and Frank Lloyd Wright very famously took on a very affordable house and ended up working for free for a long time to make it meet the budget. So I think you'll find architects with that that want, I guess, to overcome that challenge like, oh yes, I can definitely create something affordable. Yeah, that's that's what we think about this in a whole new way.
Ben Sutherland:Just every architect in New Zealand to do one pro bono property and we're good to go.
Sam Brown:That's over 2000 houses in one year. It's affordable, but it's also, you know, it's also quality right Like. It's also aesthetic, it's also appearance, and I've just got this.
Gerard Dombroski:Well, the house Frank Lloyd Wright did was you know, massively ahead of his time, one of the first like open plan houses. Like he ticked all those boxes.
Sam Brown:I've got this really good quote here from Gerald Parsonsons from Parsonsons Architects, which I pulled out of an article the other day.
Sam Brown:I just want to read it out because it's quite interesting.
Sam Brown:He said apart from the odd council design guide, New Zealanders have complete, complete freedom to express their architecture, but the style of these new areas, of these new areas, is often conservative and bland. The homes are promoted with product driven material choices Interesting point there and colors are often muted in grays, beige and whites. Very literally, acres of roofs and shades of gray, with the odd design features such as a schist wall or a colored front door laid out along meandering roads and cul-de-sacs. There are too many areas that were once beautiful locations that have been destroyed by bad or dominating development and I think that's a really interesting point to potentially end on, unless you guys have any feedback on it. But I think the key here is that we have the fortune we're very fortunate in New Zealand that we almost have complete design freedom across the board, but we're so often paging, holding ourselves with these vanilla type outcomes and I think that there's definitely scope from us and the group home builders to just be a little bit more creative maybe.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, I guess it comes right back to appetite for risk and that's why people go with group home builders, because they offer a fixed price, a clear, tangible deliverable.
Sam Brown:They do but maybe they could do it with a little bit more flair and pizzazz. What I'm hearing here Sam is.
Ben Sutherland:We need to design more feature walls.
Gerard Dombroski:I was listening to that marketing office talk podcast. The Australian guy and then Chamberlain Architects in Melbourne have this company called Rum, which is essentially what you were discussing before, but a separate company. They have a series of plans and then in the podcast it seemed like it was going off like a cut snake. So I think there's huge effort for it and it's just another design challenge, I guess, on identifying the issues and how we come across them. I think marketing is a massive one and actually, within the profession, understanding what we're allowed to do for marketing might bring up more market share.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, nice.
Gerard Dombroski:I guess the different client. You get appetite for risk, somewhat creativity and somewhat a short thing, but I think we can deliver both.
Sam Brown:Yeah, nice, all right Ben.
Ben Sutherland:Well, we're going to say a shout out to Conor Doleman, the absolute legend, who helped us with all of our original artwork and website and whatnot, and also Jacob Marshall for his awesome work on the introduction music. So yeah, thank you very much for your help.
Sam Brown:Cool guys, and if you enjoyed the pod, don't forget to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast channels and we'll see you next time.
Gerard Dombroski:That's the part. Go to See.