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As I was watching Extreme Home Makeover this past Sunday, I could stop myself from getting a little upset with the lack of accurate representation of the design professional's duties to produce the project. Even in the behind the scene show they do not indicate the HOURS of time a design professional put into providing a complete set of drawings. In this week's past episode they used prefabricated building panels, all of us in the construction business know how long the turn arround time is.

AIA is always releasing information on how to "Educate the Public" on what it is architects do and the construction process. One would think that AIA would get involved to use Extreme Home Makeover as a way to make a major contribution into educating the public of how an architect can make the construction process go smoother.

My major concern is that the general public, that does not understand the construction process, is gettting the false representation that a house can be designed and built within a week, which we all know can't happen. There NEEDS to be a accurate account of the pre-planning that occurs before the week of construction. I am curious what other people think of the show.

I got the same jive from a would-be client. I just noted if they have a 100+ man crew, could get a design team and engineering team that will only work on their project non-stop untill the project is complete, and a multi-million (billion?) dollar International TV network to pay to back the whole thing, this yes , we can get your house built in a week. They reply was something to the extent of "uh, well..."

I actually wrote the producers a scathing letter about this topic and their lack of involving the building codes in how it restricted some of their design elements. I also pounded them for making it appear that the actors who work on the show "seemed" to be the designers of the project and not an architect or other licensed professional. Sent it off to them about 4 months ago. No great surprise that I haven't heard back from them or that the show has changed its tune. I stopped watching the show as my way of protesting their glossing over the real issues at hand.

I just found this really interresting article about ABC's Extreme Home Makeover on Datacad's website.

https://www.datacad.com/news/press_relea ... keover.htm

I also found this one that goes a little more indepth of the architect's duties. http://www.tecedu.com/news_events/docum ... treme2.pdf