Nick Noyes, Flexahouse, photo by Cesar Rubio

After the New York Times wrote about the renewed interest in stock plans, Archinect called it a War on Architects. Michael Cannell picked up the story at Fast Company and asked “Do we need architects? I think they both got it wrong, we need architects more than ever, and this isn’t war on architects, it is a great opportunity. It isn’t a new idea, either.

Frank Lloyd Wright was a big supporter of the idea, and was the first architect to work with Life Magazine on their dream house, where the house would actually get built, covered in the magazine and the plans sold to the public.

They kept this program going for the life of Life, hiring many of the best. In 1998 the New York Times interviewed a few of the architects involved.

Hugh Newell Jacobson 1968

Life Magazine is no longer with us, but Houseplans.com is, with a selection of architects’ designs edited by Dan Gregory of Sunset Magazine. Nick Noyes’ Flexahouse is particularly interesting.

The problem with so many of the plans in plan books is their incredible banality. The Flexahouse, on the other hand, is designed around the idea of people putting together the house that meets their needs, budgets and sites, from a conventional suburban form with snout garage to more more unconventional designs.

They think about the details, too.

It isn’t just for the big names, either; Greg Lavardera built his career selling plans online, exposing his work to a far larger audience than the traditional young architect’s website that might have a house addition or mom’s cottage on it.

Jay Shafer has built a career of it, selling plans and building his cute tiny houses through his Tumbleweed Tiny House Company.

At Freegreen, David Wax and his team are taking the idea one step further and giving the plans away. We wrote earlier:

William Turnbull at Houseplans.com

In some cases, the architect may not even be alive; the revenue from Bill Turnbull’s designs supports the Environmental Design Archives at U. C. Berkeley.

The traditional model of the profession is broken. Now, in the current housing crisis, the traditional development model is broken as well. Instead of sitting on their hands waiting for the phone to ring, why don’t all of the underemployed architects flood the internet with plans for small, green, efficient, and lovely architect-designed plans?