Earlier this week I attended a talk with a manufacturer who was giving us a brief rundown of the differences between British/European standards (BS, IEC) and American standards (NEC and NEMA). I came into that talk with a host of mostly founded preconceptions however I left with a changed view for the emerging design philosophies and how certain constraints around you will motivate and influence design.

Preconceptions

I will rightly admit that before this talk my I considered American design over-designed, bloated, over-sized, unrefined (with the exception of somethings of course, this is after all a gross generalisation). The impression I had of American design could be summed up into, BIGGER is better. In fact there was an element of contempt when designing buildings to American standards, because I felt that I was cheating my clients of a superior design due to being constrained by bloated design.

As it turns out I was right, after a fashion. I had considered the reasons but what I hadn’t considered was the added value that could be brought to the table in an attempt to justify the reduction of good design and engineering practices.

External Influences

I don’t want to get into specifics here, but ultimately a lot of gear that I specify for a building is 40-60% larger for a building that is designed to American standards than one that is designed to European standards. The reasoning behind this is partly due to constraints by the standards as set by a bunch of lawyers that have FUCK all understanding of what it is they are lawyering about and thus the end product is already on the back foot in terms of design because the constraint asks for an enclosure (no matter what the inside contains) of a specific size; a one size fits all mentality. The inards are then rated upwards or downwards as required.

The end result is bloated, unrefined engineering/design because of these external constraints. Which does nothing but fuel the fire to preconceptions because they are partly true.

Added Value

You’d think such products would then be pretty hard to sell if their counter parts where that much more supperior right? Well that’s what i thought was well. I thought that the only real reason for going down that route was because it was with stuff that the client or whomever felt comfortable with because that’s all they knew. Maybe as their trusted consultant we should present variations and ideas on this. We are after all engineers that try and push the boundaries and present the best solutions to try and make things run better, provide a more efficient, cost-effective and ultimately greatly design final solution. By their own admission they’re more expensive and bulkier in size.

The guys in America know they can’t compete on physical size and overall design elegance. However one thing that they’ve enhanced (which is where the difference in philosophy comes to play) is the product’s expandability and it’s endurance. The American products will last much longer and take a longer beating because they’ve been designed to do that. They also allow individual components to be augmented within the field. This enables changes and enhancements to a particular component to be done out in the field, sometimes when spares are not readily available or expensive to get.

Therefore these products have their own marketplace outside their origin but it’s really on a case by case basis. For me it was interesting because although I knew the constraints and the reasons what I hadn’t anticipated was the fact that the products were not stagnant in their design and just hid behind the standards. They pushed their design boundaries within the set constraints.

I guess the crux of the matter is that no design is better, except when taken into context. People have to be open to bringing in other elements that they may not be familiar with or uncomfortable with in the hopes of creating a better design.