This article may be confusing or unclear to readers. In particular, it is based solely on a few websites which claim to be a form of crowdsourcing, but it is highly questionable whether providing a choice of expert designs can really be called crowdsourcing. The websites themselves are ambivalent on that point.. Please help clarify the article. There might be a discussion about this on the talk page.(April 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Throughout history, architects have often been chosen by setting up an architectural competition and awarding the commission on the basis of the most favoured design. With the advent of the internet, a similar process has been set up by a number of businesses offering small-scale competitions for mainly domestic projects. Like an architectural competition, contributors must register but their designs are judged anonymously, and only the winning design is paid a fee.
A growing number of architectural crowdsourcing platforms direct their calls openly to members of the public, facilitating mass-participation and self-organized collaboration to build upon and improve architectural design solutions.[1] This follows from Jeff Howe's original definition of the term crowdsourcing, which emphasises the idea of an open call to an undefined group of people, because "the person who you think would be best qualified to perform the job, isn't always the best person to do it."[2]
Crowdsourcing architecture has been heavily criticized by professional architects and architectural guilds. Dwell, America's leading home and architecture magazine, called the launch of arcbazar "the worst thing to happen to architecture since the internet started."[3] This statement caused many heated debates among architectural bloggers worldwide.[4] The magazine Architects' Journal wrote: "Architecture crowd-sourcing website criticized: Architects have slammed a threatening new crowd-sourcing website in the US which promises to reduce clients' costs."[5]
