Why don't our drawings reflect how a building is actually built?

This isn’t where I was intending my second blog post to go. I wanted to continue reading Porges and go back to my notes and make an actual thoughtful post about the beginnings of tying architecture and psychology together. 

However, life happens. Projects come. People get tired. The post hasn’t happened yet. 

But I can tell you what did happen. Why do architects organize drawing sets the way they do? The more I go down my brain rabbit hole, it always comes back to the same thing: drawings are for contractors. And yeah, that seems like okay duh we all know that. But do we really? I think one of the most common things I say when explaining things to younger associates is that you're communicating to a builder. 

So why don’t our drawings reflect that? Why aren’t they ordered in the way a building is built? Why don’t we communicate where plumbing is in relation to the edges of the slab? Why don’t we have pages dedicated to every subcontractor? 

Simplifying drawings to communicate efficiently and clearly will have an impact on the end product. Why are we making people go from page to page searching for information? In my opinion, it leaves room for error. An error in the drawings is never a great first step. 

The way we communicate information shapes how it’s received and acted on. That’s true in drawings. It’s true in buildings. And it’s the thread I keep pulling.