Arcbazar.com Tracking Order Status

Arcbazar is a terrific concept that mostly delivers. Their customer service has largely been one person, busy but well-intentioned and generally capable of handling issues. I'm told they're upgrading it, which would be an improvement. And there are some technical limitations which bring it down from five stars to four in my view. I would love to see what Arcbazar could do with a truly robust, fully-featured web platform, because it's already pretty terrific even with a relatively basic one. The heart of its greatness is, of course, the designers. Advanced students and young professionals worldwide, in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and interior design compete to show you what they can do with YOUR specific, personal project. You assign winners, who divide up your prize money according to a formula (with AB getting a cut off the top), but no matter who wins, you get to keep all the ideas, images, etc to use as you see fit. You can also invite your winner (or, in theory, anybody else you wish from your competition) to continue on working with you and your building team to realize your design. I have run four contests through AB so far. Two were just for fun -- I wanted to see what my basic ideas would look like in the hands of professional designers -- and two were put into practice. For the latter, I didn't use any one design exactly as the architect gave it to me... instead, I took the features I liked best from several, and melded them together into something not quite like any of the designs. But the best designs helped me solve problems that I didn't have the knowledge to handle myself, such as how to arrange all the necessary features of a bathroom plus plenty of storage in a tiny and slightly oddly-shaped space. I have lived with the spaces I designed based on my AB contests for several years now and I'm very happy with them. I couldn't have done so well without my AB designers.

The designs I got for my yard were far better than anything I could have imagined. Their site is easy to use and the price of the competition was very reasonable. I will use this service it again for my next project

Most efficient way at sourcing a multitude of rapid design ideas.

It is a very, very nice tool. Efficient way to have a 1st cut of a project with multiple inputs. It would be great to have 1) a bit more clarity/consistency in pricing and timing of projects, 2) easy way to move to a detailed project that combines bits and pieces of those you like...

Thanks to Arcbazar I got some awesome designs for my project. The idea of bringing architecture contests to the crowd is fantastic and the whole team at Arcbazar is doing a great job to make this happen. Special thanks also to Ana who was really kind in supporting me with some issues. I can fully recommend!