This horizontal array lists different costs for non-residential buildings.

These are the investment costs of a building. The percentages indicate the average subdivision of the different investment costs for a non-residential
building.

These are the operating costs of a building. Again, the percentages indicate the average subdivision of the operating costs for a non-residential building
(Petzinka, et al., 2008, p. 33).

Underneath each cost is a vertical array of pictograms depicting inspiring economization strategies to diminish the specific cost.

The topmost pictograms are generally very effective (e.g. by mitigating the cost), lower pictograms are generally less effective or induce other financial
downsides.

Clicking on a pictogram opens a screen with more in-depth information about the specific economization strategy. It also lists possible induced other
financial (dis)advantages.

These are the phases a typical design process goes through.

Clicking a phase fades out the economization strategies that cannot be applied in that particular design phase. In this example, it shows the strategies that can be integrated when designing the building volume.

In this example, strategies are shown that can be integrated in the technical details.

The purpose of this website is to facilitate the design of intelligent synergetic cost-effective architecture. Synergetic architecture allows economization without compromising on architectural quality (Van Doorn, 2012, pp. 153-155).

To facilitate the design of (cost-effective) synergetic architecture, it is necessary to examine the cerebral procedure of making designs (Boekholt, 2000, pp. 10-11).

When designing, the brain (subconsciously) makes combinations of the different information entities we allow in our thoughts (Boekholt, 2000, pp. 11-13).
These information entities can be anything from abstract ideas, problems to opportunities.

A synergetic idea is found during the process when the brain creates a specific fortunate combination of information entities (Boekholt, 2000, p. 15).

However, our limited brain capacity hinders this procedure of designing integral ideas. Research indicates that our brains can retain and process only 3 to 7
information entities at a time (Boekholt, 2000, p. 13). This reduces the chance of quickly finding synergetic combinations, as well as reducing the amount of
information entities we can integrate into one design.

Fortunately, extra information entities can be incorporated in the design process by looking at simple visualizations of information (Boekholt, 1984, pp. 80-83).

Looking at simple pictograms enriches the cloud of information we process in our brain. Instead of bisociating 3 to 7 information entities, this example shows the bisociation of 6 to 10 entities by looking at three pictograms: increasing the chance of making innovative and cost-effective synergetic designs.

Cost-Effective-Architecture.com is designed to serve as an external memory of information entities, ready to be synergized into qualitative cost-effective
architecture.