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6. Schematic Designs

• Schematic design is the first architectural step. When this step is completed, you should have:
  
  
  • Floor plans (including tentative furniture placement) and elevations (drawings of your building seen squarely from each side).
    
    
  • A site plan (showing how your building will fit on your site) and a vicinity plan (showing how your site relates to your community).
    
    
  • Outline specifications.
    
    
  • A cost estimate.
    
    
• Because mechanical systems (electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and so on) can represent from a third to 45 percent of the cost of construction, it's a good idea to have basic engineering concepts included in schematic designs.
  
  
• There are many methods of moving from the needs statements in your program to a schematic design, and different architects have different approaches. But whatever approach is taken, the building design should evolve from a concern with the individual spaces needed and their relationships to each other.
  
  
• Much of the creative design work of the project takes place during schematic design. Architects may correspondingly bill a substantial portion of their total fee at the completion of this stage. Although the AIA says that schematic design is 15 percent of the project, some architects bill much more than that. If done well, the schematic design phase consumes a tremendous amount of very expensive architectural time.
  
  
• For the vast majority of public libraries, it's important that schematic designs emerge in stages. Libraries do not benefit from architects who work backwards from concept or appearance. If a full-fledged design is delivered at stage one, that's a bad signal. Beware of pretty boxes with muddled or uncertain interior arrangements.
  
  
• Some libraries, however, are intended more to make dramatic architectural statements than to function in practical ways. If this is your desire, it will alter your approach—and your selection of an architect.
  
  
• The evolution of a schematic design involves at least four essential parties: architect, library board, library staff, and consultant. When design problems occur, one of best problem-solving approaches is to have representatives of these four sit down as a group and thrash out specific design issues.
  
  
• Very few architectural firms will actively encourage you to include your consultant in schematic design meetings, but it is to your strong advantage to do so.
  
  
• Owners and architects frequently have disagreements at the schematic design phase. If your architect doesn't want to change an idea you don't like, you have a right to insist on specific reasons, and to reject those reasons if they aren't relevant to your needs or wishes.
  
  
• If you don't like a proposed idea, stop it as quickly as possible. Unwanted concepts tend to take on a life of their own and need to be brought to a quick halt. You are not doing your architects a favor by failing to say "no" the minute you see something you genuinely don't want, since the longer they work on a design you don't want, the more of their limited time they'll waste.
  
  
• Be careful not to be sidetracked in arguments over minor points (such as the shape of a window) when there are major conceptual issues to resolve. At the schematic design phase, concentration on broad issues is important.
  
  
• In reviewing schematic designs, watch for the many functional problems that can occur in libraries. Look for problems with security, physical relationships between areas, lines-of-sight, wasted space, difficult maintenance, and so on.