Duo Dickinson: ‘Pay for play’ sites remove human touch from architecture

“The Internet changed everything!” so says everybody about everything. But for homeowners looking to explore rethinking their home, places like HomeAdviser, Houzz and Porch are making connections with architects and designers as effortless as a dating site. And perhaps as disappointing. After sixth months of millions of us being sequestered in their homes, Connecticut may be experiencing a boom in residential construction. Or maybe just a boom of interest in rethinking our homes after a season of staring at our four walls. Since “social distancing” often precludes up-close and personal visits to see housing options with real estate agents, the internet offers the vicarious thrills of virtually peeping into others’ homes on places like Houzz and Zillow. But what most who innocently look at Houzz do not know is that the website is a marketing machine, funded by architects paying for exposure. You may think that Houzz is just like a magazine, where editors chose beautiful work for features, or like Zillow where homes are blindly compared by region, cost, or size, aggregated off of real estate agents’ listings. No, Houzz, Porch and HomeAdviser are “pay-for-play” promotional vehicles for architects. A couple of years ago I received an email that would flatter anyone: “I was looking at your website and your work peaked (sic) my interest. … When I saw your work I thought you may fall into that level of professionalism that I choose to work with,” said “John,” a salesman for Houzz. I had written for Houzz, met with one of its founders and knew it was a veiled ad-sales effort, so I followed along until the pitch was made. Eventually, I made it clear to him that the site’s motto — “The New Way to Design Your Home” — is the antithesis of the human way architects and designers help families create their home. But no potential client of mine ever saw that conversation. Sites like Houzz do not clearly promote “ads.” Instead, they silently promote those who pay them for preferential treatment. Depending on how much you pay, they put your name at the top of searches, link your site into more geographic areas and offer you up on their home pages. The more an architect or designer pays, the more they are exposed. Mark LePage started the website EntreArchitect.com in 2012 for those starting out in the architecture profession. With more than 6,000 members, the conversations are fast and furious, none more so than those that explore how architects get work without a portfolio or track record. In endless forums on EntreArchitect, LePage says a common theme is that “HomeAdviser is destroying our profession.” The reason? They promise low fees to those seeking services from the architects who are willing to pay for the connection to the homeowner. Do the math. In one of those forums, architect Dave DelVecchio of New Jersey said that “Home Advisor keeps calling me and hounding me about signing up. ... Nothing like encouraging a futile race to the bottom.” Architects, lawyers, even doctors now advertise and the internet is the quickest, cheapest and most interactive way to connect with people who are thinking about using or buying anything. The cultural slide into the Internet providing remote everything has made “Touchless Food,” using your phone to scan your body for your dress size, or just looking at a car to buy. The human touch is vanishing from the marketplace. But homes are the most human of possessions. The disconnect for those interested in architectural services is that while architects facilitate making a product, they offer a service — a fully human service. The cut-and-dried transaction of buying a lamp from the Houzz image on your screen is nothing like hiring an architect. The person designing is, well, a person — with values, an aesthetic, a personality — but unlike Match.com, only the product of an architect is visible. Of course each architect provides information to the website before they are posted to it, but the connection is only easily visible if the architect is willing to pay thousands of dollars to advertise their services — without any indication of their process, ethics or ability to communicate. We are programmed by sites like Pinterest, Etsy and (of course) Amazon to turn life into a two-dimensional binary — “Like” or “Delete.” The chicken-and-egg of young architects is how can you build projects that enable you to have a reputation that gives you the credibility that leads to other projects. As traditional print media declines, “Advertorials” in design magazines often offer the same “pay-for-play” exposure for designers and architects that Houzz and HomeAdviser offer, so it might be good for the consumer to take direct control of the process of connecting with an architect. Rather than trust profit-based soulless algorithms to judge the exquisitely human process of home making, why not trust other humans, who have had real-time actual experiences, rather than words and pixels frozen on a screen? Why not talk to those you know, those you know of, those building owners of places you see? Humans contacting other humans. What a concept! Duo Dickinson is a Madison-based architect and writer.

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