Ever wanted to build your own house but the potential cost of having it designed and being unsure if your grand design would fit on the site you have in mind put you off? Apparently it's a common problem, and one architect Brian O'Brien set out to solve when he teamed up with marketing consultant Gráinne Kennedy to develop the automated architectural platform and design engine Opoplan.
O'Brien has used the recently-launched system to create a selection of ready-made 3D house plans specifically tailored for the Irish climate and landscape. A basic set of plans costs €1,275, and there is a fixed price menu to cover any changes a buyer wants to make to them.
For those who want a fully customised build Opoplan will design the property from the brief provided, and customers pay a monthly subscription that allows them to access and tweak the plans, before signing off the design and paying a final fee.
As the Irish market is too small to sustain a business based around self-build homes, the founders have looked beyond Ireland and specifically to the large US self-build sector from the get-go. Consequently, the bespoke packages (which can, of course, be bought from anywhere) are priced in dollars.
The monthly subscription runs between $10 and $23 (depending on the amount of functionality required) and the final fee is $1,950.
"Opoplan is the world's first intelligent online design service for new homes, and we have created a unique platform and design engine that provides personalised architect-quality designs to families trying to build at an affordable price," O'Brien says.
"Our system keeps everything related to a project in one easy to access dashboard, and customers can experiment with different designs and different sites."
The Opoplan system can be used to design any simple building from a factory or warehouse, to a school or family home. It is based on a proprietary design system combined with AI analysis, building information modelling and 3D visualisation which means a customer can effectively walk around each room in their self-build at eye level.
Every year around 500,000 people in the US opt to self-build but the process can be fraught with pitfalls.
"Consumers often have to make all of the most important decisions on their own, often with disastrous consequences," says Gráinne Kennedy.
"Almost half buy a plan that's too big for their site. Three-quarters buy a plan for a house they can't afford to build, and seven out of 10 projects end up in a dispute between the builder and the homeowners over costly changes. Only Opoplan has the technology that allows consumers create a bespoke house plan for their specific site."
Inspiration
Kennedy and O'Brien met when Kennedy's misery with a badly designed house saw her go online for inspiration to solve her dilemma. She came across O'Brien's company Solearth (a sustainable architectural practice which O'Brien has run with international clients for over 20 years) and in 2018 the duo got together to found Opoplan which started trading last year.
"I'd encourage anyone thinking of building their own house to use an architect but for those who can't we're the next best thing because we add a lot of design intelligence and architectural judgement into the automated process," O'Brien says. "Good, as in well-designed, houses save people's sanity and make life so much better on many levels."
The cost of developing the system has been in the region of €500,000, with the co-founders working flat out on the start-up with no remuneration for 18 months.
The company has been supported by Enterprise Ireland under its commercialisation fund and by the NDRC. It is a spin-out from the school of architecture at TU Dublin, where O'Brien has been a lecturer for the last 20 years.
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