Naughty Architecture

For this weeks (3) blog about the different disciplines an architect works with, and how architects collaborate, I decided to talk to an Architect I've known for a couple years, Peter Couvaras.

We talked about the different consultants he meets with for the local church project he is working on.

Peter Couvaras mentioned that during different parts of the project he would collaborate with different types of consultants. For example in the design stage he'd meet up with the structural engineer, the client, etc. For the documentation stage he would collaborate with the aforementioned and also Hydraulics Engineers (plumbing), Town Planners, Electric Engineers (lighting) and Building Code of Australia consultants and mentioned you could even have Heritage consultants, Traffic consultants, etc.


They would primarily discuss the project at meetings, held with either the whole group or a subgroup focused on a certain problem relating to their fields. Files would be the auto cad format and emailed between disciplines, as well as the most current file being stored on an ftp server. For updating the file, the different disciplines would import the new version and annotate it accordingly.

Peter mentioned that this system worked decently until a member of the team couldn't make the meeting and then things started to fall apart.


I thought after talking to Peter about his project I should look back at our own project and see how similar it is. To start off we'd need a "Project manager" (something like the architect in the other case), who would oversee the project. Next would be an "architect", who would design the building. Since we are working with an existing design, the architect would work with the original plans, sections, images and concepts from the original architect.

A "Structural engineer" would not play such an important role in this case but could analyse the plans and sections presented by the "architect" and work out the feasibility of making it run smoothly in UT3, or he could change dimensions to accommodate the UT3 players dimensions etc.


An "Electrical Engineer" or lighting designer could work with the lighting of the map. This doesn't seem much of a task but the lighting makes about 90% of the atmosphere in my opinion, therefore an important task. They could also decide on the weather, day/night environment.

"Builders" would need needed to actually create the map from the ideas created by the "Architect" and changes made by the "Structural Engineer". Probably the majority of the work for this project.

"Decorators" (interior designers?) or modellers could be used to create items and decorations for the map which are too detailed for the builder. "Decorators" could also make textures for the models and map or this could be a separate discipline.

Although I don't think this has a parallel in architect, we could have a debugger (maybe a BCA consultant?) who would work with a final version and fix any problems that occur ed.

Another Discipline we could use is a tester to run though the map and see if it works as expected and displays the effects/atmosphere we wanted to portray with the project.


Collaboration between disciplines would be very similar with the first case. The "Architect" would work close with the "Structural Engineer" in the first stages. The "Electrical Engineer" would then work with the "Builders" and the "architect". The "Builders" would work with everyone, plans from the "Architect", changes from the "Structural Engineer", light designs from the "Electrical Engineer" textures/models from the "decorator", feed back from the "debugger" and "testers". Lastly the "testers" would report back to the "Architect" and "Builders" of their experience.