Crowdsourcing architecture and interior design 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.

Great experience! 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!

Designer’s Experience Let me share my experience from the designer point of view. I signed up as a designer and won 2nd prize on July 6 2023, the total project prize is $1000, for second prize i got $291, I followed their steps for withdrawing the money, but it never got to my account. I tried contacting them via email but never got any reply. I’m starting to think that this is a scam for the designers that signed up, we won the prize but never get the prize. As for the client, they were asked to pay in front first to them as organizer, but the money that should have been distribute as a prize for the designers that already submit design products for the client, never got distributed to the designers that actually won the contest. So its no problem for the client because they got the product, but not for the designers who actually submit their ideas and won the contest but never got paid. I hope my experience can help designers who is signing up in arcbazar to be more careful. Thanks.

Arcbazar is the perfect platform for architects I have been working in Arcbazar as an architect for about 2 years. I am very pleased with their system, thank you for providing us with such an opportunity.

In concept the process worked ok In concept the process worked ok. We provided a value, people participated, we gave feedback and generated some cool designs. The problems started when we wanted to download those designs; the website kept glitching. When we sought help by email it felt like we were talking to a developer…. The person was more interested in defending the functionality of the product than acknowledging the problem or helping us with a work around. To this day we don’t have our designs and my wife thinks the people at arcbazar are Harvard type jerks. They don’t make mistakes! The problem must be the user. Unnecessary hubris fail. Now I went to the trouble to explain our legitimate issues and this survey rejected my notes because we used your service in 2020 and that’s not recent enough; you sent me the survey. (Facepalm) Now your system doesn’t like the language in my review and wants nicer, more complimentary language? Nice survey….