Blueprint for Design

The old Seinfeld joke – “When you are moving, all you see are boxes everywhere, and you think: That looks like good box!” I have been involved in several office moves in my career and they all suffer from one commonality: Too Much Junk! Especially samples.

I was a temp at an A/ID office that was moving from Wicker Park to Downtown and we filled two dumpsters. A lot of it was samples. We all love getting things for free, concrete simulated stone, granite counter tops, glass blocks, binders full of paint chips and Formica planks. But home much space do they take up? How often are they used? I spent hours of man power throwing all of these things out. I could have built a house from the debris.

Every architecture office seems to collect tons (literally!) of this material, and has to provide space for it. Granted during the shop drawing review stage we may need to select colors, finishes, but then what? For the needs of documentation we’ll need it to prove we selected “bone white” not “Autumn white” for the trim at the 9th floor. But do we need to keep the actual sample?

There is a hidden cost in accumulating all of this stuff – it takes up space – either in square-footage we pay rent on, or in garbage costs when we end up filling a dumpster with it, or when we pay to have it moved to our new office. Then we find out a few years later they have discontinued that color or texture of that material entirely.

Has anyone found a solution to this? Is the internet and your used monitor trust-worthy enough to forgo a sample entirely? Will clients put up with making all of the color selections themselves? Is it considered cheap to send samples as Christmas gifts to in-laws? Let’s discuss what we can do before I have to fill another box full of brick samples.