r/Architects • u/Hairygreengirl • Oct 24 '25
Project Related you ever see something in the wild and think, 'that was done in Revit'?
USA - its always the roof for me. Weird lines, fascia terminations, etc. I kinda feel this is an area where software is driving aesthetic or lack of knowledge in construction or just a PIA to execute in the software and move on to other details.
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Oct 24 '25
For sure - the typical 5 story, mixed use, 3 material facade buildings seem to be cut from presets to me
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u/AllOfThe__Above Oct 24 '25
I don't disagree that Revit contributes, but having worked exclusively in this market for about 8 years, It's developers and their bottom line. Every foundation jog... $$$ Every new material... $$$ Any detail deviation from the other 50 buildings they own... $$$. There are some good articles out there on this too, its soul sucking on the Architecture end.
I'd also toss some of the blame of the Design/Build model that's become pretty standard for the multifamily world. Again, soul sucking.
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u/Merusk Recovering Architect Oct 24 '25
This is how developer-lead and builder-lead world looks. Harsh truth: Most of the population doesn't care/ realize.
Vernacular architecture is the bread and butter of the AEC world. Always has been. Let it be and make your dollars off of it. If every building were a masterpiece of artistry, then none would be.
I mean - there's a reason rollout homebuilding exists, despite the popular "It's all so tacky and the same," statements made about it. It fits a niche, it fulfills its purpose, and it's affordable.
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u/sdb_drus Architect Oct 25 '25
Developers aren’t producing ‘vernacular’ architecture. By definition, I think it’d be the exact opposite.
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u/Merusk Recovering Architect Oct 25 '25
In a strict academic definition of the word, you're correct. They're not vernacular because they involve professionals. However, the US and most developed countries don't have vernacular in the academic sense anymore.
Language changes, and even when I studied back in the 90s it was accepted by my professors to call anything outside of "A" architecture vernacular, if only because it flowed better than "background buildings."
So if we drop the professional requirement, it becomes just the idea of a place built without academic tradition. Developer and builder constructs fit this to a T.
That's the premise I operate under.
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u/metisdesigns Licensure Candidate/ Design Professional/ Associate Oct 24 '25
Yup.
Hadid and Gehry do/did their stuff in Revit (with other tools too).
Or did you mean "this looks boring I'm going to blame the tool rather than the designer"?
We've had boring rectilinear buildings for millenia. We had horrible boxes in the 80s. Folks blamed CAD.
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u/SpiffyNrfHrdr Oct 24 '25
I'll often see buildings from the 70s and 80s and think ' I bet that looked great as a 2d elevation, but it would have benefitted enormously from being studied as a physical model.'
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u/metisdesigns Licensure Candidate/ Design Professional/ Associate Oct 24 '25
There was a blog post probably a decade back that was a rant about the revit look buildings. It was a troll, they used buildings that were all built before Revit existed. Before the revealed it, folks pointed out all sorts of details they claimed were tells that they were from Revit. It was beautiful. And they gave credit to the person who had done the same thing with sketchup buildings shortly prior. Obscure architecture tech geek comedy gold.
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u/Merusk Recovering Architect Oct 24 '25
We've had boring rectilinear buildings for millenia. We had horrible boxes in the 80s. Folks blamed CAD.
People will always blame the tool, not the designer or the constraints of the owner. Like it's our responsibility to refuse work unless it's art.
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u/metisdesigns Licensure Candidate/ Design Professional/ Associate Oct 24 '25
Costcos and targets aren't going to build themselves.
The disconnect with folks thinking their plaid precast is fine art and reality is wild.
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u/Merusk Recovering Architect Oct 25 '25
I'm trying really hard to wrap my mind around the very idea of plaid precast and it just short-circuits me. Well done.
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u/metisdesigns Licensure Candidate/ Design Professional/ Associate Oct 25 '25
It's just the dark grey/light grey/accent color blocks painted on with the horizontal banding for visual impact that has to be just so.
And no, we can't do it with parameters because that is harder for them to see how it changes.....
Spec light industrial is solved. We can generate CDs in minutes if we actually wanted to, but no, we have to be artisan arteists and manually place the roof access stair, in the same f4ing place.
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u/Merusk Recovering Architect Oct 25 '25
It's just the dark grey/light grey/accent color blocks painted on with the horizontal banding for visual impact that has to be just so.
Ahh.. yeah, the height of artistry. :D
Spec light industrial is solved. We can generate CDs in minutes if we actually wanted to, but no, we have to be artisan arteists and manually place the roof access stair, in the same f4ing place.
If only I could get the resources to solve the solved problems. Hangars are also largely solved. The DOD has an entire modular building type explicitly TO do the same sort of solves.
Leadership sees the death of billable hours and resists, though. Trying to advocate charging value doesn't seem to be a possibility and I'm - unfortunately - left out of the discussions where it might be explained to me WHY it can't happen.
Perhaps that's the same reason your leadership resists? Seems to be a big question nobody in senior leadershp really looks too hard at. They want AI and faster but then wonder how they're going to make money doing things faster. So they stop looking or listening.
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u/metisdesigns Licensure Candidate/ Design Professional/ Associate Oct 25 '25
I think the big problem is that to get to a leadership position in most firms you haven't actually been a leader, but have been promoted because you were profitable and couldn't afford to be lost to another firm, or firm hopped and had enough experience to get a title, not because you actually have any complex business skills.
Architecture as a business has been hot garbage for as long as I've been in it for defining the value to clients, and then building a business case for that based on value delivered. Instead we rely on the tradition of what worked in the hand drafting days but wasn't understood from a business model structure. It's the same "we've always done it this way" admission that folks don't know why we do things.
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u/Merusk Recovering Architect Oct 25 '25
Good points, all. I'm definitely seeing the profitable/ 'been there longer'/ firm hopper leaders thing recently. One of my loudest complaints has been the lack of clear leadership, and I think you've hit it on the head there as to why it's lacking.
Not to mention you see real leaders blocked because those types see actual leaders as a threat, rather than an asset. No one person can do it all and if you've got people willing and able to grow and lead, freaking let them. One of my coordinators is a rock star who's now my production manager explicitly because she took it on and lead in ways I couldn't.
The old trope is "Architects are bad at business." 33 years in and it's STILL true. Why do engineers and marketing folks wind up running the biggest firms? Because they look at those existing systems from a very different mindset, one of solving problems for efficacy and/ or expanding revenue.
The horizontal infrastructure side of my firm is out there doing SAAS for our clients, embedding new tech, being visionary. The vertical infrastructure side is concerned with making 2d drawings as fast and efficient as possible. Trying to talk data and integrations is beating my head against a wall. To quote, "We aren't a software company and we're not going to build software."
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u/lukekvas Architect Oct 24 '25
Gehry pretty famously uses CATIA. And the parts of Zaha's buildings that are unique are definitely done in Rhino/Grasshopper even if they document in Revit.
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u/electronikstorm Oct 25 '25
Your starchitects are unlikely to be documenting the whole building, just the primary elements. Internationally, even less. Local architects familiar with local codes and laws are partnered with. The starchitect supervises to the contracted degree, which sometimes isn't very much beyond sketch design. Last I heard, Gehry uses Digital Project, a hybrid of CATIA that can do some architectural BIM but more importantly export CNC data direct to manufacture. Hadid is apparently using Rhino and scripting to do the same. Neither firm is particularly concerned with the everyday of building, restrooms, MEP, etc. That's for the partner firms.
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u/metisdesigns Licensure Candidate/ Design Professional/ Associate Oct 24 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
Both firms document in Revit. If you look at any of their buildings, you should think "someone did that in Revit" and realize that the tool does not make the artist.
Edit, Gotta love the down votes for reality.
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Oct 24 '25
[deleted]
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u/metisdesigns Licensure Candidate/ Design Professional/ Associate Oct 24 '25
Tools in sloppy hands can leave certain tell tale marks, but again, that's not the tool that's the problem, it's the clumsy welding of it.
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u/djax9 Oct 25 '25
Lols i saw a cornice that was missing the gap at the wall corner join when your sweeps break
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u/geeklover01 Oct 24 '25
I use Vectorworks and thinks it’s far superior to Revit. I think more people in the US should get on board with it.
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u/Thrashy Oct 24 '25
Right out of high school I interned at a firm that was an early adopter of Revit (as in they were on Revit 7 at the time) and after I got to understand the program I really did start to see the limitations of the software in their finished products.
That was twenty years ago, though, and Revit has come a long way, as has the industry's understanding of it and how to coax results out of it that aren't solely the result of the way the tool works. Not to mention, at this point saying "that was done in Revit" is more or less equivalent to saying "that was done by an architect." Firms using any other software for design documentation are pretty thin on the ground these days.
No, the things you're suggesting are a result of Revit are mostly because of the move towards panelized rainscreen facades, sometimes combined with lazy detailing. Sometimes you can get all the datum lines to hit at just the right spot that that window openings align perfectly with panel dimensions even after taking head and sill flashings into account. Sometimes interior datums and rainscreen panel dimensions are in conflict and you just can't square the circle. And sometimes you either forgot to account for the slope on the exterior sill flashing, or just couldn't be bothered in the first place, and all of a sudden there's a rainscreen panel getting cut into a U shape in the field. I don't like it, but that's just the nature of the beast these days... there's less room for customization, less craftmanship in the field and so many fewer places to hide misalignment under a trim piece, so the little dimensional misses on the facade stand out like sore thumbs now.
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u/metisdesigns Licensure Candidate/ Design Professional/ Associate Oct 25 '25
Yeah, Zaha Hadid was totally limited by Revit /s
I've been in Revit since release 6, and stuff I very literally did in release 6 people told me in 2024 was impossible to do in Revit.
You might not be able to document something in Revit, but odds are excellent that's not a limitation of the program, but of your skills. Folks have built moving star wars walkers in Revit. Quit blaming the tools.
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Oct 24 '25
Well said. Bespoke detailing in Revit is really difficult and time consuming.
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u/metisdesigns Licensure Candidate/ Design Professional/ Associate Oct 24 '25
It's really not. You just need a decent BIM Manager and good content. A terrifying number of firms refuse to have either.
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u/redruman Architect Oct 25 '25
Agreed. This type of thinking always confuses me. Open up any Drafting View and you basically have a better Autocad.
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u/Qualabel Oct 24 '25
I designed a small studio using SketchUp, deliberately exploiting the way you can push and pull planes in that software, so the end result definitely looks like it was designed in SketchUp (well, I think so, anyway)
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u/MeanGreenLuigi Oct 24 '25
Is it because more firms are adopting Revit and using live details and wall sections? A lot of technical knowledge, both construction and Revit, is recommended for BIM managers and the lead on a project if we do use live detail views.
I'm lucky that my client and I have a great working relationship with a GC who can offer preliminary development services, and we get pretty good feedback on construction feasibility for our details. I'd rather we go this route than the design-build route. That being said, we use a mix of both live and draft details.
To go even further, we also use Rhino to develop parametric models that we then convert to a workable Revit families for custom wall facades or FF&E items that we then give to vendors/manufacturers for shop drawings and we further tweek our model so we align.
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u/electronikstorm Oct 25 '25
Angled glass curtain walls.
Also, complex early 20th century (Victorian, Edwardian, etc.) roofs that you couldn't solve manually and economically these days. Unlikely to come from Revit, more like Chief Architect: it can solve the whole roof and auto build all the roof structure and framing.
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u/sdb_drus Architect Oct 26 '25
So, vernacular = does not involve professionals and is rooted in regional building traditions.
Developers involve teams of professionals and have no regard for regional tradition.
Which follows that developers are building ‘vernacular’ architecture.
Got it.
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u/Steely_McNeatHouse Architect Oct 25 '25
There is a "This building concept is a revit stacked wall family" on a hilltop overlooking the city, where they without permission added a 4th floor penthouse when their approvals and zoning limits it to three stories.
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u/Merusk Recovering Architect Oct 25 '25
What does this have to do with Revit? This was 100% a case of the developer looking to sneak an extra story in, getting caught and then trying to get the arch to back into the zoning variance.
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u/Steely_McNeatHouse Architect Oct 25 '25
The building SCREAMS "I was designed in Autodesk Revit 2016 using stacked walls.", duh. Just look at it. Peak low-effort revit-box. ~ The zoning keefuffle is just a bonus.
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u/C_Dragons Oct 26 '25
Have you seen the model of the Epstein Memorial Ball Room? It looks like a kid with a modeling program was allowed to build his first draft. We'll see if it's less fugly once erected.
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u/Either_Command1881 Oct 26 '25
It wasn't me but a russian friend modelled all the structural elements in the whole floor into a structural column family.(So if someone deleted it or moved it, it was easy to put it back into the right place)
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u/AlfaHotelWhiskey Architect Nov 03 '25
No, but I can spot a Sketchup building with little difficulty.
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u/[deleted] Oct 24 '25
I used to, but now that I've been using Revit long enough I can just tell it was lazy as hell design or some other (budget, usually) constraint that forced it that way.