Like someone mentioned in another thread, tradesmen and customers are pretty much creatures of habit. We've been basically building houses the same way for 50+ years. Yeah, we now have I joist, engineered wood, OSB and Simpson influencing the codes but nothing has really changed much. I had my personal home designed (but never built it) by a commercial building architect. Being a commercial contractor and former residential carpenter, I wanted to build a home that was "out of the box" and more like we build light commercial. Foundation was ICF's, steel "c" floor joists, (Deitric industries) perimeter walls were engineered wood studs with densglass exterior sheathing. All non-bearing partitions were metal studs. Roof trusses were all metal. (Deitric Industries) Roof was prefinished standing seam. (Atas) Yes it did add about $25 sq ft for the cost of the home but back when things were booming, I got a glimps of a market where people were willing to pay a little more for quality and more enviornmently friendly homes. To help offset the costs, the trade off would be to build smaller and smarter. These days, we're building these homes larger than we were 40 years ago. But we now have so much unused and wasted space. This whole thought process was stated when I read a book called The Not So Big House. "...a house that values quality over quantity, with an emphasis on comfort and beauty, a high level of detail and a floor plan designed for today's informal lifestyle." In other words for those that build for status, show off your home with quality instead of size. (that sounds like something my wife would say, hopefully)
Back on topic, I'm not convinced we can move onto advanced framing methods as a stand alone thing. I think it's more a package deal, where the customers, designers, contractors all buy into the whole "build it smarter" Most people that see studs 24" oc and single plate think "cheap builder" instead of "smart builder"
