DESIGN REVIEW

Why do some people have problems in the design review process?

For several years I served the Design Review Board (DRB) for the city of San Rafael, reviewing numerous architectural/planning projects in the city. At the end of the term, the staff at the Planning Department, including the Planning Director and the Principal Planner, as well as other DRB members and Planning Commissioners hoped I would stay as a DRB member. However, my architectural practice was getting busy. Also, we had a new baby! So, I decided not to seek re-appointment. Serving the position was a very demanding task, but it was a rewarding experience. During my term, I tried to support and encourage good designs. However, I was quite shocked to see that a substantial number of projects submitted to the city were so poorly designed that they failed in obtaining DRB's recommendation of approval. Some of these projects kept coming back to the DRB for the second, third and even fourth time, and still were not approved. Why does this happen? The applicants were spending months, even years, of time and a substantial amount of money as their projects went through numerous revisions. There are several reasons why this waste of time and money occurs.

First and most common reason as I have seen is that the submitted plan is just simply a bad design. By bad design, I do not mean that they are not nice-looking buildings, but the lack of very basic design considerations. For example, I have seen designs that completely ignore the context, such as orientation, noise, view, adjacent and surrounding environments. Those designs are not only bad to the community, but also, not a good place to live and/or work. Bad design also tends to have an inefficient plan layout, circulations, use of spaces and materials, resulting in unnecessary cost increase.

Secondly, some projects come in without checking basic zoning and building codes, such as height, setback, slope, handicap accessibility (State law Title 24). For the design professionals serving the Board, it often becomes clear that in order for the plan to meet those regulatory requirements, the design must go thorough major overhaul. Those are the projects which are denied of further review at the outset of the review meeting.

Another type of problem I have observed is that some plans are drawn inaccurately with respect to critical aspects of the project design. For example, the topographical information is insufficient for us to evaluate, building heights are inaccurately drawn, or even faked, grading does not work, floor plans and building elevations do not agree, etc. When inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the plan are related to important issues of the design review, the projects are not approved.

The problems discussed above point to a very simple lesson: hire a good architect. When we saw well designed projects, they went through the review process very smoothly. Unfortunately, quite a few people don't understand the complexity of designing projects, and select an incompetent professional, often because he/she charges less than others. My observation and discussion with other DRB members and people who are frustrated indicate that the money people save by hiring a cheap professional quickly disappears as the cost increases with the additional work of re-designing. Delayed project time schedule also consumes one's time and energy. It is simply not worth.