Public design in the culture of silent designers (Washington)

This is a study of the design-build model executed not on private land and under private ownership but on land owned and financed by the public. The project in question took place on the State of Washington's Capitol Campus. Contracting out government services for both design management and construction to a single corporate entity is frequently referred to as privatization. This is a relatively new phenomenon, which emphasizes the alleged benefits of fixed project costs and on-time project delivery over traditional design-construction methods.; The lack of empirical information about the advantages or disadvantages of the design-build model in terms of a large-scale public project is a serious gap in the literature of American civic architecture. This case study examined public documents to reveal the decision-making processes used by key public officials (KPOs) in managing the design-build model as it applied to a large-scale state government project. There were 608 separate project communications linked to seven KPOs over a 74-month period. Every project communication in the database was recorded and coded for computer content analysis.; One of the major themes that emerged was the gap between what KPOs promised citizens and the actual outcome of privatization's developer/contractor-led design-build model. Documentary evidence indicated that the design-build model did save time but at the expense of citizen representation. Moreover, perhaps the most startling outcome was the loss of efficacy and design management control for many important project issues. This loss can be attributed in large part to the design-build model's organizational structure and its management strategies.; At least in this case the alleged benefits of the design-build model remain elusive. Furthermore, KPOs had little regard for the deregulating effect of privatization's developer/contractor-led design-build model on effective citizen representation in the public design context.