Web 2.0 Goes to Work

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Some 30% to 40% of its members are using it as a project management tool—a way to manage project schedules, share information with far-flung team members, and even mark up drawings. Many tools were developed in response to the needs of Architecture for Humanity, the nonprofit founded by Sinclair in 1999 to promote architectural and design solutions to social and humanitarian projects around the world. (But, while AfH spearheaded the development of the OAN and owns the name, Sinclair is adamant that the network belongs to its community of users.)

Architecture for Humanity projects tend to involve people from different organizations based on different continents working with a tight budget. E-mail is cheap and ubiquitous, but ill-suited to sending large architectural files, while the cost of FedEx and international site visits can quickly burn through funding. As a result of the network, says Sinclair, "Our FedEx bills have dropped, my travel costs have dropped, and it has streamlined our operations allowing us to put more money into salaries for designers in the field. And we're a small organization. If the UN Habitat used this system you could be talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings." Of course, most of the architects on the network work for commercial firms, which would be equally keen on trimming costs.

More Tools and Resources Coming

"It has been particularly useful for travel on intensive projects," agrees John Gavin Dwyer, a Minneapolis-based architect currently using the network for two projects in New Orleans—an emergency mobile clean water and energy unit and a photography studio and gallery. "I just need to find a coffee shop, and I'm updating critical project information for the team," he notes.

More tools are planned, including multiple-language versions and a Google mapping application that will plot where projects are happening and reveal additional pockets of need. And soon, users will be able to view PDF and CAD files online on a Web page—a first and perfect example of how the OAN lives up to the 2.0 tenet of the "network as platform."

"One of OAN's greatest potentials lies in its yet-to-be-realized resources section," says Spencer, whose design for a women's center in East Timor found financial support through the network. (He'd begun working on the project as a Peace Corps volunteer in that country but it was back-burnered after Spencer was evacuated due to political unrest before funding was secured.) Ultimately, the resources will include information about architects, materials, structural systems, building-related legal and financial issues, and "every building code on the planet," according to Sinclair. It will also include useful case studies of successful projects—and failures.

Learning from the Runners-Up

The OAN will get a nice boost come fall, when it kicks off the first-ever AMD Open Architecture Challenge, a competition sponsored by the network's partner, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), to design a technology training center. The network is currently accepting proposals from potential hosts of the center (the deadline is July 20), and will announce the project specifics in early September.

Designers then have until Jan. 15 to submit proposals, and the winner, announced Mar. 25, will receive $250,000 in funding for the project. Perhaps more importantly, the nonwinning projects—which might include smart solutions that simply weren't the most appropriate for the site in question—will all become a part of the network. "Usually, those are all thrown in the bin—a waste of hours and hours of creative work," says Sinclair.

What's Truly Democratic Design?

It's this combination of community, peer production, collective intelligence, and difficult to re-create data sources that distinguishes Web 2.0 sites from other online destinations. While Sinclair doesn't reject the 2.0 label—and admits to borrowing Flickr's tagging function—he's quick to note that the OAN hasn't implemented some of the sexier 2.0 features because those might not be accessible to someone logging on from a village in Ghana.

"Everyone talks about the democratization of design and they mention Target (TGT)," says Sinclair. "That's not what democracy is. That's just making design cheaper. We want to give people access."

Jessie Scanlon is the senior writer for Innovation & Design on BusinessWeek.com.