have you ever home shopped. have you seen all the psycho home improvement that goes on? have you seen the horrible choices that have been made. choices and decisions that whoever was doing it thought, yes, this is gonna be great! the amount of fucked up people who have tools is astounding.
tk - I agree completely with those thoughts. The long road to licensure is a huge deterrent and the priorities of the education is just way off.
Unlike all those professions you mentioned, the most talented, educated or not, can move to the top (and rather quickly). They are also compensated for their talent and ambition, giving them the motivation to excel.
If it were easier to start your own practice out of school, or even during school, you there would be tons more people pushing the boundaries of both architecture as a creative venture and as a business.
As we can all clearly see, the current elongated path does not produce higher quality buildings, in any sense of the definition.
i deleted the tab for archinect on my browser quite a while ago and haven't bothered to visit much for about a year now because i was tired of what i felt was a disproportionately elitist vein running through a lot of the discussions...i'm sure it's the same for others out there that the architecture profession is love/hate...
instead i've been working in the culinary field for the past while as a break and i see the same debate there as well - the self-righteous faction who think parents that don't feed their kids organic this, and free-range that, should have child services pay them a visit...or the chefs who believe that every restaurant dish should be a piece of art with pureed this, and micro that...
to harold's original point - i'd say send those designers who use $99 software away to an engineer who's willing to stamp their drawings for accessibility/structural beam calcs/building code compliance and be glad you don't have to deal with a high maintenance client who will turn out to be insufferable...
architects are not like cooks and painters - home designers and builders are...
architects are more akin to chefs and artists...and it's a losing battle to work for clients who don't understand that distinction...
good architecture is usually qualitative and not quantitative...if joe schmoe wants to negotiate your fees by comparing it someone else's per square foot rate, start running...
oh, one more thing...this is an easy way to weed out clients...
google Voice of Fire, a painting by Barnett Newman, and discuss whether three painted stripes that you could do in your backyard is worth $1.8 million...
not saying that it'd be the first thing i'd go buy if i won the lottery, but you'll quickly know whether a client has any understanding of the intangible...
i teach a little and this one of my favourite discussion starters for first term/year students...
I fully agree about revamping the content of architectural pedagogy. ''Theory vs practice'' is an old, tired, and dull debate. The best firms realize it's about both, inextricably.
Isn't that kind of reframing the generalist vs specialist dialectic from a different vantage point? IE doesn't more pragmatic training really mean the architect is able to deliver more specialized knowledge/services?
I don't think we really can, nor want, to get away from being generalists, do we? The danger with using specialized knowledge as a means to value the profession is that the plethora of other specialists already have an advantage. They only have to specialize in one field. I think this is dangerous because it can lead to architects merely becoming space planners or information managers [IE most architects of record].
Whilst I agree more specialized knowledge isn't a bad thing in and of itself, it's just dangerous when it's used as the sole means of measuring worth.
I think we need to re-strategize how to value generalism, and how to make that perfectly clear to the client. Perhaps BIM? Perhaps a SHoP-esque business model [design + construction management]?
I'm taking a bunch of human factors classes and an industrial engineering class right now on product development. interestingly, a lot of what i'm learning now i've already picked up over the years between arch school and practice, mostly related to programming and concept development. but there is a difference.
the first is that programming, at least where i went to school, was not taught underpinned by any quantitative, qualitative or statistical method. It was taught mostly as an acquired skill of question asking, experiential engagement with site/materials/context, and secondary research. Still, based upon what I am learning now, it was actually a pretty complete user-centered-design methodology with the added dimension of participating in some sort of esoteric interpretation of the condition and response. It lacked two things.
First, the jargon of business/marketing/research. There is a lot of overlap between what we do during programming/concept design and what others do and charge good money for with respect to product/process development, but at least in my experience, we don't talk the language or realize what they are marketing and so we don't market an asset that we also already have. Seemingly, it is not a stretch to say that a little reframing of what we do and the addition of just a little bit of specific knowledge and we could legitimately say that we offer this kind of service.
The second is the statistical method, as mentioned above. But interestingly, statistical methods can so often break down when confronted with the realities in situ, away from the lab and simulations, which means that lacking this is not the hurdle one might imagine. There are a bevy of strategies less reliant on statistical underpinning. They also come closer to what we tend to do.
I mention this b/c I've had it in my mind for a while now that rather than lament the state of architectural practice, rather than architecture as a discipline stay on the defensive, trying to preserve its domain, it should go on the offensive, acquiring new intellectual and professional territory. From this perspective, it seems there are some low-hanging fruit, particularly with respect to product/process design. To extend our domain in this direction seems more a matter of tweaking our knowledge (and how we talk about it) and rebranding our services and less a matter of fundamentally changing what we do.
But to echo jplourde's comment above, opportunities like this should be addressed in school, and now, given the severity of the downturn, in practice as well. If what we're doing heavily overlaps with what another discipline is doing, then students and practitioners should be shown the opportunity and taught how to capitalize on it. How to participate in the related domain. How to market themselves to that domain. Architectural faculty should forge those relationships, too, so that the role of architecture as part of academic research expands. To this point, I have not seen much if any of this. Though now I wonder if this is the point of those programs (i think upenn offers this) where there is a framework in place to help designers get the MArch + MBA concurrently or back-to-back.
I'd actually inverse your analogy, building technology is very much a general understanding of architecture. The theory is the specialist and all architects have become specialists with no GENERAL knowledge of the profession. All legal shit typically relates to a result of good or bad building technology. If you don't know building technology and like most architects make design intent only to avoid lawsuits, you eventually get documentation that is laughable all the way down to the illegal immigrant taping...laughable because they don't mean shit and someone is supposed to build off them?!?
Back before instant media, back when there was a revolution in both architecture practice and theory, Modernism fused it all into one..the theory went with the building technoilogy that went with the manuf. And economic factors of society.
My story above sums this up. The portrayed architect studied car manuf., but when asked to design a car showroom, hasn't the slightest idea. And just to over exagerate my stereotype - the guy probably owns a bike and doesn't drive cars....
building technology is the GENERAL just like words and letters are GENERAL versus a novel, or numbers are GENERAL versus math formulas. Its the basic language of built architecture. The fact I have to qualify my statement with the word "built" indicates how far off we are.
Planning beyond a building, such as urban planning is a specialist degree, you get a masters in it. Planning a building is sophomore year expertise, if you can't design schematic space plan of a building with a defined program overnight by the time you are senior...ummm let's just hope you can detail well or render well...or maybe you can pick up some Eisenman and develop a special theory on planning (I say special as in RETARDED here).
Design build. SHOP. Rural Studio. KU DB studio, etc...skills like drafting and modeling. Applied technology to design projects - like structural calcs of beams, HVAC analysis, lighting analysis,. More time in the shop and less time losing sleep in studio. More time trying to make a concept real and less time trying to invent a concept.
Concept design is the easiest thing about architecture, assuming you are creative, so why waste 5-7 years of education on it in 6 hour design studios that eat up the students life!?!
Agreed, there are skills/knowledge sets that apply to the generalist, specifically [haha]. I do agree we should cultivate that.
So you agree with JPR when he says sarcastically [I'm paraphrasing] ''The creative act is three minutes of fornication, and 9 months of pregnancy and, god forbid, 24 hours of child labor, is merely execution.''
Creativity is super important, but I think school pedagogy generally teaches creative skills in the wrong areas. No one is ever going to see projects to completion when the design driver is French literary theory, or the interrelationship between calculus generated geometry and material flows [etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc....] without knowing how to push through things on a more pragmatic level equally well.
I think perhaps if we took some of that energy spent on conceptual analysis and provocation in the academy and invested it in how to approach pragmatism creatively and effectively, then the profession would be more fulfilling and rewarding not just for architects, but for society in general.
Doesn't this sort of schism between the realities of practice and the fantasies of academy really stem from the ''failure'' of modernism and the retreat of 'negation' [Here's looking at you, Eisenman.]?
''If I can't have my way in the real world, I'll just retreat into the Ivory Tower and call it a triumph.''
Jman brings up a very good point
There are others like those in marketing that the general public understand better than architects...because we decided to introvertically develop special concepts for somethning a normal person might understand...such as "loft like feel and open space with plenty of light"....a special architect might say "the human needs ligth to breath a psace with lots of air, need to decompress and provide walls that reach to the sky". Ok throw some derrida in there and some more blah blah and you have someone teaching studio,...
while it's true that studio focuses a lot of time on work that takes up less time in the profession, that - to me - is why it's critical that it get so much time in the educational environment. studio is an opportunity to develop habits and ways of working so that design process becomes almost second nature and does not require as much effort when one begins to practice. it's the development of a sort of 'muscle memory' for design.
it's problematic that the huge amount of time this takes convinces many architecture students that this is actually how they will spend their time. obviously, we all know that's not true. the purpose of studio needs to be reframed, letting students know what they're doing and why it's important to be so rigorous and clear in school - you're establishing the rules for how you will work and you want to be as well-prepared as possible.
as a principal (i.e., hirer & design team leader) i find it frustrating when an intern has big idea(l)s about design but no process for efficiently pursuing them. good design process habits are what i look for. i'm one of those who believes that a lot of the rest comes from the professional experience, whatever other practice leaders say they want.
Steven, that makes sense. What do you think about talking about the effort and method in a way that highlights the way our methods relate, compare and contrast to similar efforts in other relevant professional domains?
"Concept design is the easiest thing about architecture, assuming you are creative, so why waste 5-7 years of education on it in 6 hour design studios that eat up the students life!?!"
Beg to differ there...
Good Concept design is very often the SINGLE most important factor in getting a planning application / permit passed especially in areas with significant opposition from planners and public. When a planning permit is granted the value of the developers site increases to reflect this.And the Developer gets to borrow more tens of millions from the Bank.
It wasn't the technical guy who produced that leap in value ( the technical work hasnt started yet remember?) - it was the concept guy.
Unfortunately in addition to large swathes of the general public and the various other players in the construction sector, there are plenty of Architects who do not place value on conceptual design - usually because they themselves lack sufficient ability in that area. It often manifests itself in petty office one up-manship between designers and those who take the project through construction.
by good concepts i mean buildable and relatively rational. im not glorifying 'Blobitechture' or design fads
RR ditto on the disclaimer. I think another way to say it might be, it's not about concept vs no-concept, or even about de-emphasizing conceptual thinking. Rather, it's about being conceptual about the right things. Vis a vis, the CONTENT of the concept is what really matters.
one of the reassurances i've gained from taking the product design, research, and analysis courses is affirmation that the most important aspect of any study, forms of analysis, etc, is its design. garbage in, garbage out, they say. so good concept design skills is perhaps the most important skill in research and analysis, as well. all the more reason it should be part of our domain
Seems interesting, and on-topic with this thread. It seems like it may be a valid avenue to pursue some of these ideas in a 'safe' environment. How can architecture and business be mutually supportive? ''Why is a raven like a writing desk?'' haha
Also, I thought this was pretty interesting, if supporting the view that architecture and business are not so conducive always. From the Financial Times:
The driven designer who constructed a global empire
By Emma Jacobs
1519 words
31 January 2011
Financial Times
Copyright 2011 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Please do not cut and paste FT articles and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Lord Norman Foster
Chairman, Foster + Partners
The architect behind some of the world's most famous buildings tells Emma Jacobs why only his name is on the company masthead
Lord Norman Foster is reputed to be a cold technocrat. The modernist architect behind HSBC's Hong Kong building and Swiss Re's "Gherkin" uses glass and steel, his interiors are often white. Profiles refer to his "bullet head" and portray him as inscrutable. The only architect in last year's Sunday Times Rich List, he is renowned for being fiercely driven, having created a corporate machine unusual in an industry so vulnerable to recession and strewn with bankruptcies.
Lord Foster's grip on the international brand he has forged over four decades since founding Foster + Partners in 1967 is tight - so much so that he even insists that the typeface on all his buildings' signage and company reports is also used in books published about him. And his reputation as an interviewee is poor; he is said to know what he is going to say before he has been asked.
So it is a surprise to discover, when meeting him at his riverside London headquarters, that he is rather personable. The 75-year-old architect, dressed in a light-blue gingham shirt with a pink trim, speaks softly and appears relaxed, occasionally leaning so far back into his chair that he is almost lying down.
There is truth in his characterisation, however. He concedes he is extremely demanding. A point reinforced when, halfway through our interview, he takes a call from his youngest son. "Push for first Eduardo, push to be best," he implores the nine-year-old. But while demanding of others, characterising himself as a "tough but fair critic", he is "also very demanding" of himself.
It is this drive that has propelled him to forge an empire with a workforce of about 1,000 employees spread across 14 offices in 13 countries. In the architecture world, this is huge - the firm run his friend and rival Lord Richard Rogers currently has fewer than 200.
The scale of Lord Foster's ambition has attracted critics who suggest his hard-headed commercialism compromises his judgment, most notably with the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation in Kazakhstan. "There's a feeling that if you [are business-minded] then somehow you've tarnished your creativity," he observes.
Lord Foster's drive emerges as a central theme of the film How Much does your Building Weigh, Mr Foster? - a reference to the question posed by Richard Buckminster Fuller, the American engineer-visionary - which was released last week and traces the architect's career from his modest origins in Manchester.
Lord Foster's father was the manager of a furniture and pawn shop, who worked nights in an aircraft factory during the war. At the age of 21, through toil and determination, Lord Foster, who as a child spent stretches of time sketching buildings, won a place at architecture school where he had to pay his way by working. He went on to win a scholarship to Yale in 1961 where he met Richard Rogers, with whom he set up the practice, Team 4, together with Mr Rogers' first wife Su, and Wendy Cheeseman, who became Lord Foster's first wife.
At the time, having to fund his own education made Lord Foster "feel really hard done by". Now he believes it "was the best thing that happened to me . . . [because] I was so passionate about what I was doing that I would literally pay to do it . . . It taught me values. If I bought something, whether a sheet of paper or my tuition, I knew how much it was costing." And it showed him, he says, "how to optimise time". Even now, "if I'm in a car, I'm working".
A desire for financial security has never been his motivation, he insists, in spite of his passionate enthusiasm for piloting planes and helicopters. He rejects his characterisation as a tax exile, saying he pays taxes in the UK as well as Switzerland, where his Spanish wife, Elena Ochoa, an academic psychologist turned publisher, and two young children, are based.
Money "has absolutely nothing to do with what I do. In the past [the company has been] on the edge and gambled everything. It was like approaching the cliff edge."
Did it scare him? "It sharpens you." He claims never to have had sleepless nights over finances. "I'm more likely to lie awake [over bad] design direction."
That may be just as well. Foster + Partners has been hurt by the recession , which saw global demand for big building projects slide. Last year, it shed a quarter of its staff, as turnover fell to £134m from £154m the year before. The privately held firm reported a pre-tax loss of £15m. The company's heavy debt burden is £327m, having risen since 3i, the private equity firm, acquired a 40 per cent stake in 2007; the annual debt interest payments - almost £40m - wiped out operating profits of £25m.
Will there be more job losses? "It's probably guaranteed." A small smile flickers across his face, before he pauses, worried about appearing insensitive. "That's a trite way of saying that anybody who's been around any length of time is no stranger to cyclical ups and downs. But the fact that we are widely spread geographically, and providing more services [integrated] with engineering, provides insulation against downturns."
Lord Foster - recently a judge on the Zayed Future Energy Prize, which awards $1.1m for innovative environmental projects, as well as designing Masdar, the zero-carbon city being built in Abu Dhabi - adds that the firm's expertise in sustainability will prove increasingly valuable.
He maintains that the relationship with 3i will prove beneficial in the long term by giving the architectural practice access to expertise in foreign finance. "We have a fantastic relationship; [3i has] a very light touch, we do what we do and get on with it. Total non-interference."
Unlike Lord Rogers, whose firm changed its name to Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners in 2007 to lessen the impression that the firm revolves around him, Lord Foster has no plans to include others on his company's masthead. Is that due to vanity? "[It's] pride. Pride is a valuable, motivating quality. Vanity is dangerous because it's superficial."
Indeed, he dismisses the characterisation of architects as egotists intent on remaking the world in their own image. "The architect has no power," he says, suggesting he is simply an "advocate" for the client. "To be really effective as an architect or as a designer, you have to be a good listener."
Surely there are clients who are deferential, in awe of his reputation? "I think you'd be surprised how fast that would evaporate," he laughs, before eventually conceding that the more successful he has become, the less likely he is to hear criticism. "People do tell you what they think you want to hear."
He will not be drawn on succession, except to say that the day-to-day operation works without his presence - and insists that he has no plans to retire. "I still get a great buzz from [work]."
A number of partners have been at the company for 30 to 40 years, and all senior managers, including chief executive Mouzhan Majidi, are architects rather than businessmen. "We're driven by design," he says proudly.
The vast open-plan white and glass riverside office - which is either the embodiment of modernist meritocracy or sleek sweatshop, depending on your point of view - is intended to encourage ideas.
"I don't have a desk. I'm moving around. Everything is transparent," he says. "That doesn't mean to say it is not hierarchical. Of course it's hierarchical. You have to have leadership."
What would his parents, who came from humble backgrounds, have said if they saw this huge office? "I think they would be incredibly touched and very moved and very proud."
Suddenly Lord Foster's voice wavers and his eyes appear to redden with tears. "But I think I would be more proud of them."
Why? "Because I [had] two exceptional parents - extraordinarily loving, very supportive, incredibly hardworking."
This flicker of intimacy spurs me to confide he is easier company than I had expected. Lord Foster admits he cannot identify himself in the severe and cold man described in interviews. He posits it may come from aloofness, borne out of shyness. "It's something I've had to overcome."
Steven you have valid points, but you'd never hire me and i'd never work with people you are looking for.
i designed while washing dishes, loading trucks and drinking at bars. studio was for work. that's a hard process to make work in an office enrionment with others.
frankly, if you took a few philosophy class and improv jazz or something, you'd see how easy concept is, the rest is work...
Please stop this conversation, this is very simple. If someone doesn't value your services, then don't sign them as a client. Most people I have found do value your services to a reasonable degree. Do not compare us to surgeons, these people have my utmost respect and I would never put myself on their level, ever. Pilots and firemen etc sure no problem, we are either on or above their level. The problem with the profession is simple, on one hand you have contractors that try to tear us down to boost their worth in a clients eyes, and since they spend more time with the client than we do they're usually successful until a building official steps in and agrees with us. On the other hand you have unlicensed people taking smaller bread and butter jobs from Architects who follow the rules, refuse to certify questionable or concealed conditions and who cant possibly charge what they do since they work out of their basements. These two items diminish the public's sense of value of an Architect's services plain and simple. There are many great Architects, many good ones and a ton of crappy ones thanks to these two items ruining the profitability of our firms. If we were paid what we deserve to be paid, then we as a people would be far better at what we do.
By and large I dont care how well versed you are at sketch up, it will not get you even 1/4 of the way into our services period. Even if it does, ask the client how much time he not only spent drawing it, but ask him how much time he spent thinking about it and discussing it with his wife, then ask how much time he spent researching it and then ask him what he does for a living ( I bet he's not college educated first off) and ask him how much he makes per hour, multiply those numbers together and then double it for overhead.... you know rent, computers, printers, insurance, licensing fees, advertising, support staff etc and see what number you come up with. Then tell him that only covers him for the design phase and ask him if he'd like you to keep going, you'll see how fast he shuts up after that.
In regards to the $10 an hour comment, you should have told him to go to McDonalds or Wendy's, they make about $7.25 an hour, and since anyone could do it, he'd get a far better deal over there.
First, the house example is always a good one. Everyone thinks that by reading a few of those house plan magazines they can be architects. Well, maybe for an 1,100 sf box. For a traditionally styled large home (over 3,000 sf) or a modernist home that is innovative in its design, you need an architect, and a good one. Not just one who graduated from a-school with all Cs in design. Fun as residential might be, the entitled bitchy wife is a handful to deal with. She, too, thinks she knows as much as you do. People often leave residential or don't want to residential because the interactions with a husband and wife (or partners, sorry) is so personal ... and unprofessional. The best way to do residential is to do multi-family or senior housing, so you mix features of residential and a savvy client who knows what the f**k they are talking about.
More on why architects don't earn money:
- they were bohemian in school, seeing themselves as tortured artists
- they are bohemian in practice, seeing themselves as tortured artists
- they don't present themselves well, tending toward the bohemian, so clients think you are worth less, in terms of fees, than another professional (accountant, lawyer)
- there is a legacy of "abuse" that gets passed on, and it begins in the schooling process, and it ain't stopping anytime soon from what I read and hear, whereas in other fields, the schooling process is to empower you and build your self-esteem
- it's just like acting - the stars are up there clutching their Oscars while the rest sit by their phones waiting for their agents to call
While all of the bullet points are slight exaggerations, some truth is also included in the observations.
observant - youre right, last summer I got threw some slacks on with a nice button up shirt and went to most of the arch firms in my city to see if I could get an internship. Out of the 10 or so firms I visited, 2 of them maintained (enforced maybe) a dress code where everone in the office wore nice dress shoes, button up/collar shirts, and dress pants.
Actually, the fact that I looked nice and presented myself well is what landed me a position.(despite my limited knowledge of architecture)
I spoke to an old architect some time ago and he told me that people outside of the arch realm think that architects get paid well because traditionally, only rich kids went to architecture school. Any thought folks?
The REAL answer to why architects don't earn money
have you ever home shopped. have you seen all the psycho home improvement that goes on? have you seen the horrible choices that have been made. choices and decisions that whoever was doing it thought, yes, this is gonna be great! the amount of fucked up people who have tools is astounding.
tk - I agree completely with those thoughts. The long road to licensure is a huge deterrent and the priorities of the education is just way off.
Unlike all those professions you mentioned, the most talented, educated or not, can move to the top (and rather quickly). They are also compensated for their talent and ambition, giving them the motivation to excel.
If it were easier to start your own practice out of school, or even during school, you there would be tons more people pushing the boundaries of both architecture as a creative venture and as a business.
As we can all clearly see, the current elongated path does not produce higher quality buildings, in any sense of the definition.
i deleted the tab for archinect on my browser quite a while ago and haven't bothered to visit much for about a year now because i was tired of what i felt was a disproportionately elitist vein running through a lot of the discussions...i'm sure it's the same for others out there that the architecture profession is love/hate...
instead i've been working in the culinary field for the past while as a break and i see the same debate there as well - the self-righteous faction who think parents that don't feed their kids organic this, and free-range that, should have child services pay them a visit...or the chefs who believe that every restaurant dish should be a piece of art with pureed this, and micro that...
to harold's original point - i'd say send those designers who use $99 software away to an engineer who's willing to stamp their drawings for accessibility/structural beam calcs/building code compliance and be glad you don't have to deal with a high maintenance client who will turn out to be insufferable...
architects are not like cooks and painters - home designers and builders are...
architects are more akin to chefs and artists...and it's a losing battle to work for clients who don't understand that distinction...
good architecture is usually qualitative and not quantitative...if joe schmoe wants to negotiate your fees by comparing it someone else's per square foot rate, start running...
oh, one more thing...this is an easy way to weed out clients...
google Voice of Fire, a painting by Barnett Newman, and discuss whether three painted stripes that you could do in your backyard is worth $1.8 million...
not saying that it'd be the first thing i'd go buy if i won the lottery, but you'll quickly know whether a client has any understanding of the intangible...
i teach a little and this one of my favourite discussion starters for first term/year students...
Olaf,
I fully agree about revamping the content of architectural pedagogy. ''Theory vs practice'' is an old, tired, and dull debate. The best firms realize it's about both, inextricably.
Isn't that kind of reframing the generalist vs specialist dialectic from a different vantage point? IE doesn't more pragmatic training really mean the architect is able to deliver more specialized knowledge/services?
I don't think we really can, nor want, to get away from being generalists, do we? The danger with using specialized knowledge as a means to value the profession is that the plethora of other specialists already have an advantage. They only have to specialize in one field. I think this is dangerous because it can lead to architects merely becoming space planners or information managers [IE most architects of record].
Whilst I agree more specialized knowledge isn't a bad thing in and of itself, it's just dangerous when it's used as the sole means of measuring worth.
I think we need to re-strategize how to value generalism, and how to make that perfectly clear to the client. Perhaps BIM? Perhaps a SHoP-esque business model [design + construction management]?
I'm taking a bunch of human factors classes and an industrial engineering class right now on product development. interestingly, a lot of what i'm learning now i've already picked up over the years between arch school and practice, mostly related to programming and concept development. but there is a difference.
the first is that programming, at least where i went to school, was not taught underpinned by any quantitative, qualitative or statistical method. It was taught mostly as an acquired skill of question asking, experiential engagement with site/materials/context, and secondary research. Still, based upon what I am learning now, it was actually a pretty complete user-centered-design methodology with the added dimension of participating in some sort of esoteric interpretation of the condition and response. It lacked two things.
First, the jargon of business/marketing/research. There is a lot of overlap between what we do during programming/concept design and what others do and charge good money for with respect to product/process development, but at least in my experience, we don't talk the language or realize what they are marketing and so we don't market an asset that we also already have. Seemingly, it is not a stretch to say that a little reframing of what we do and the addition of just a little bit of specific knowledge and we could legitimately say that we offer this kind of service.
The second is the statistical method, as mentioned above. But interestingly, statistical methods can so often break down when confronted with the realities in situ, away from the lab and simulations, which means that lacking this is not the hurdle one might imagine. There are a bevy of strategies less reliant on statistical underpinning. They also come closer to what we tend to do.
I mention this b/c I've had it in my mind for a while now that rather than lament the state of architectural practice, rather than architecture as a discipline stay on the defensive, trying to preserve its domain, it should go on the offensive, acquiring new intellectual and professional territory. From this perspective, it seems there are some low-hanging fruit, particularly with respect to product/process design. To extend our domain in this direction seems more a matter of tweaking our knowledge (and how we talk about it) and rebranding our services and less a matter of fundamentally changing what we do.
But to echo jplourde's comment above, opportunities like this should be addressed in school, and now, given the severity of the downturn, in practice as well. If what we're doing heavily overlaps with what another discipline is doing, then students and practitioners should be shown the opportunity and taught how to capitalize on it. How to participate in the related domain. How to market themselves to that domain. Architectural faculty should forge those relationships, too, so that the role of architecture as part of academic research expands. To this point, I have not seen much if any of this. Though now I wonder if this is the point of those programs (i think upenn offers this) where there is a framework in place to help designers get the MArch + MBA concurrently or back-to-back.
I'd actually inverse your analogy, building technology is very much a general understanding of architecture. The theory is the specialist and all architects have become specialists with no GENERAL knowledge of the profession. All legal shit typically relates to a result of good or bad building technology. If you don't know building technology and like most architects make design intent only to avoid lawsuits, you eventually get documentation that is laughable all the way down to the illegal immigrant taping...laughable because they don't mean shit and someone is supposed to build off them?!?
Back before instant media, back when there was a revolution in both architecture practice and theory, Modernism fused it all into one..the theory went with the building technoilogy that went with the manuf. And economic factors of society.
My story above sums this up. The portrayed architect studied car manuf., but when asked to design a car showroom, hasn't the slightest idea. And just to over exagerate my stereotype - the guy probably owns a bike and doesn't drive cars....
building technology is the GENERAL just like words and letters are GENERAL versus a novel, or numbers are GENERAL versus math formulas. Its the basic language of built architecture. The fact I have to qualify my statement with the word "built" indicates how far off we are.
Planning beyond a building, such as urban planning is a specialist degree, you get a masters in it. Planning a building is sophomore year expertise, if you can't design schematic space plan of a building with a defined program overnight by the time you are senior...ummm let's just hope you can detail well or render well...or maybe you can pick up some Eisenman and develop a special theory on planning (I say special as in RETARDED here).
Design build. SHOP. Rural Studio. KU DB studio, etc...skills like drafting and modeling. Applied technology to design projects - like structural calcs of beams, HVAC analysis, lighting analysis,. More time in the shop and less time losing sleep in studio. More time trying to make a concept real and less time trying to invent a concept.
Concept design is the easiest thing about architecture, assuming you are creative, so why waste 5-7 years of education on it in 6 hour design studios that eat up the students life!?!
Agreed, there are skills/knowledge sets that apply to the generalist, specifically [haha]. I do agree we should cultivate that.
So you agree with JPR when he says sarcastically [I'm paraphrasing] ''The creative act is three minutes of fornication, and 9 months of pregnancy and, god forbid, 24 hours of child labor, is merely execution.''
Creativity is super important, but I think school pedagogy generally teaches creative skills in the wrong areas. No one is ever going to see projects to completion when the design driver is French literary theory, or the interrelationship between calculus generated geometry and material flows [etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc....] without knowing how to push through things on a more pragmatic level equally well.
I think perhaps if we took some of that energy spent on conceptual analysis and provocation in the academy and invested it in how to approach pragmatism creatively and effectively, then the profession would be more fulfilling and rewarding not just for architects, but for society in general.
Doesn't this sort of schism between the realities of practice and the fantasies of academy really stem from the ''failure'' of modernism and the retreat of 'negation' [Here's looking at you, Eisenman.]?
''If I can't have my way in the real world, I'll just retreat into the Ivory Tower and call it a triumph.''
Jman brings up a very good point
There are others like those in marketing that the general public understand better than architects...because we decided to introvertically develop special concepts for somethning a normal person might understand...such as "loft like feel and open space with plenty of light"....a special architect might say "the human needs ligth to breath a psace with lots of air, need to decompress and provide walls that reach to the sky". Ok throw some derrida in there and some more blah blah and you have someone teaching studio,...
while it's true that studio focuses a lot of time on work that takes up less time in the profession, that - to me - is why it's critical that it get so much time in the educational environment. studio is an opportunity to develop habits and ways of working so that design process becomes almost second nature and does not require as much effort when one begins to practice. it's the development of a sort of 'muscle memory' for design.
it's problematic that the huge amount of time this takes convinces many architecture students that this is actually how they will spend their time. obviously, we all know that's not true. the purpose of studio needs to be reframed, letting students know what they're doing and why it's important to be so rigorous and clear in school - you're establishing the rules for how you will work and you want to be as well-prepared as possible.
as a principal (i.e., hirer & design team leader) i find it frustrating when an intern has big idea(l)s about design but no process for efficiently pursuing them. good design process habits are what i look for. i'm one of those who believes that a lot of the rest comes from the professional experience, whatever other practice leaders say they want.
Steven, that makes sense. What do you think about talking about the effort and method in a way that highlights the way our methods relate, compare and contrast to similar efforts in other relevant professional domains?
"Concept design is the easiest thing about architecture, assuming you are creative, so why waste 5-7 years of education on it in 6 hour design studios that eat up the students life!?!"
Beg to differ there...
Good Concept design is very often the SINGLE most important factor in getting a planning application / permit passed especially in areas with significant opposition from planners and public. When a planning permit is granted the value of the developers site increases to reflect this.And the Developer gets to borrow more tens of millions from the Bank.
It wasn't the technical guy who produced that leap in value ( the technical work hasnt started yet remember?) - it was the concept guy.
Unfortunately in addition to large swathes of the general public and the various other players in the construction sector, there are plenty of Architects who do not place value on conceptual design - usually because they themselves lack sufficient ability in that area. It often manifests itself in petty office one up-manship between designers and those who take the project through construction.
by good concepts i mean buildable and relatively rational. im not glorifying 'Blobitechture' or design fads
RR ditto on the disclaimer. I think another way to say it might be, it's not about concept vs no-concept, or even about de-emphasizing conceptual thinking. Rather, it's about being conceptual about the right things. Vis a vis, the CONTENT of the concept is what really matters.
@ RR
one of the reassurances i've gained from taking the product design, research, and analysis courses is affirmation that the most important aspect of any study, forms of analysis, etc, is its design. garbage in, garbage out, they say. so good concept design skills is perhaps the most important skill in research and analysis, as well. all the more reason it should be part of our domain
this is where we accel
Some additional thoughts:
I briefly glanced at the Penn MArch/MBA dual degree.
http://www.design.upenn.edu/about/dual-degrees-other-university-programs
Seems interesting, and on-topic with this thread. It seems like it may be a valid avenue to pursue some of these ideas in a 'safe' environment. How can architecture and business be mutually supportive? ''Why is a raven like a writing desk?'' haha
Also, I thought this was pretty interesting, if supporting the view that architecture and business are not so conducive always. From the Financial Times:
The driven designer who constructed a global empire
By Emma Jacobs
1519 words
31 January 2011
Financial Times
Copyright 2011 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Please do not cut and paste FT articles and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Lord Norman Foster
Chairman, Foster + Partners
The architect behind some of the world's most famous buildings tells Emma Jacobs why only his name is on the company masthead
Lord Norman Foster is reputed to be a cold technocrat. The modernist architect behind HSBC's Hong Kong building and Swiss Re's "Gherkin" uses glass and steel, his interiors are often white. Profiles refer to his "bullet head" and portray him as inscrutable. The only architect in last year's Sunday Times Rich List, he is renowned for being fiercely driven, having created a corporate machine unusual in an industry so vulnerable to recession and strewn with bankruptcies.
Lord Foster's grip on the international brand he has forged over four decades since founding Foster + Partners in 1967 is tight - so much so that he even insists that the typeface on all his buildings' signage and company reports is also used in books published about him. And his reputation as an interviewee is poor; he is said to know what he is going to say before he has been asked.
So it is a surprise to discover, when meeting him at his riverside London headquarters, that he is rather personable. The 75-year-old architect, dressed in a light-blue gingham shirt with a pink trim, speaks softly and appears relaxed, occasionally leaning so far back into his chair that he is almost lying down.
There is truth in his characterisation, however. He concedes he is extremely demanding. A point reinforced when, halfway through our interview, he takes a call from his youngest son. "Push for first Eduardo, push to be best," he implores the nine-year-old. But while demanding of others, characterising himself as a "tough but fair critic", he is "also very demanding" of himself.
It is this drive that has propelled him to forge an empire with a workforce of about 1,000 employees spread across 14 offices in 13 countries. In the architecture world, this is huge - the firm run his friend and rival Lord Richard Rogers currently has fewer than 200.
The scale of Lord Foster's ambition has attracted critics who suggest his hard-headed commercialism compromises his judgment, most notably with the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation in Kazakhstan. "There's a feeling that if you [are business-minded] then somehow you've tarnished your creativity," he observes.
Lord Foster's drive emerges as a central theme of the film How Much does your Building Weigh, Mr Foster? - a reference to the question posed by Richard Buckminster Fuller, the American engineer-visionary - which was released last week and traces the architect's career from his modest origins in Manchester.
Lord Foster's father was the manager of a furniture and pawn shop, who worked nights in an aircraft factory during the war. At the age of 21, through toil and determination, Lord Foster, who as a child spent stretches of time sketching buildings, won a place at architecture school where he had to pay his way by working. He went on to win a scholarship to Yale in 1961 where he met Richard Rogers, with whom he set up the practice, Team 4, together with Mr Rogers' first wife Su, and Wendy Cheeseman, who became Lord Foster's first wife.
At the time, having to fund his own education made Lord Foster "feel really hard done by". Now he believes it "was the best thing that happened to me . . . [because] I was so passionate about what I was doing that I would literally pay to do it . . . It taught me values. If I bought something, whether a sheet of paper or my tuition, I knew how much it was costing." And it showed him, he says, "how to optimise time". Even now, "if I'm in a car, I'm working".
A desire for financial security has never been his motivation, he insists, in spite of his passionate enthusiasm for piloting planes and helicopters. He rejects his characterisation as a tax exile, saying he pays taxes in the UK as well as Switzerland, where his Spanish wife, Elena Ochoa, an academic psychologist turned publisher, and two young children, are based.
Money "has absolutely nothing to do with what I do. In the past [the company has been] on the edge and gambled everything. It was like approaching the cliff edge."
Did it scare him? "It sharpens you." He claims never to have had sleepless nights over finances. "I'm more likely to lie awake [over bad] design direction."
That may be just as well. Foster + Partners has been hurt by the recession , which saw global demand for big building projects slide. Last year, it shed a quarter of its staff, as turnover fell to £134m from £154m the year before. The privately held firm reported a pre-tax loss of £15m. The company's heavy debt burden is £327m, having risen since 3i, the private equity firm, acquired a 40 per cent stake in 2007; the annual debt interest payments - almost £40m - wiped out operating profits of £25m.
Will there be more job losses? "It's probably guaranteed." A small smile flickers across his face, before he pauses, worried about appearing insensitive. "That's a trite way of saying that anybody who's been around any length of time is no stranger to cyclical ups and downs. But the fact that we are widely spread geographically, and providing more services [integrated] with engineering, provides insulation against downturns."
Lord Foster - recently a judge on the Zayed Future Energy Prize, which awards $1.1m for innovative environmental projects, as well as designing Masdar, the zero-carbon city being built in Abu Dhabi - adds that the firm's expertise in sustainability will prove increasingly valuable.
He maintains that the relationship with 3i will prove beneficial in the long term by giving the architectural practice access to expertise in foreign finance. "We have a fantastic relationship; [3i has] a very light touch, we do what we do and get on with it. Total non-interference."
Unlike Lord Rogers, whose firm changed its name to Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners in 2007 to lessen the impression that the firm revolves around him, Lord Foster has no plans to include others on his company's masthead. Is that due to vanity? "[It's] pride. Pride is a valuable, motivating quality. Vanity is dangerous because it's superficial."
Indeed, he dismisses the characterisation of architects as egotists intent on remaking the world in their own image. "The architect has no power," he says, suggesting he is simply an "advocate" for the client. "To be really effective as an architect or as a designer, you have to be a good listener."
Surely there are clients who are deferential, in awe of his reputation? "I think you'd be surprised how fast that would evaporate," he laughs, before eventually conceding that the more successful he has become, the less likely he is to hear criticism. "People do tell you what they think you want to hear."
He will not be drawn on succession, except to say that the day-to-day operation works without his presence - and insists that he has no plans to retire. "I still get a great buzz from [work]."
A number of partners have been at the company for 30 to 40 years, and all senior managers, including chief executive Mouzhan Majidi, are architects rather than businessmen. "We're driven by design," he says proudly.
The vast open-plan white and glass riverside office - which is either the embodiment of modernist meritocracy or sleek sweatshop, depending on your point of view - is intended to encourage ideas.
"I don't have a desk. I'm moving around. Everything is transparent," he says. "That doesn't mean to say it is not hierarchical. Of course it's hierarchical. You have to have leadership."
What would his parents, who came from humble backgrounds, have said if they saw this huge office? "I think they would be incredibly touched and very moved and very proud."
Suddenly Lord Foster's voice wavers and his eyes appear to redden with tears. "But I think I would be more proud of them."
Why? "Because I [had] two exceptional parents - extraordinarily loving, very supportive, incredibly hardworking."
This flicker of intimacy spurs me to confide he is easier company than I had expected. Lord Foster admits he cannot identify himself in the severe and cold man described in interviews. He posits it may come from aloofness, borne out of shyness. "It's something I've had to overcome."
Sorry for the novel,thoughts?
Tell the client "NO".
A doctor and lawyer gets their license to regulate the system - to prevent/control the possibility of malpractice.
If a doctor prescribes wrong drugs, he is liable. A lawyer can also be sued for malpractice - forging of documents, etc...
If an Architect simply stamps a design, is like saying a doctor approved the purchase of certain regulated drugs from a pharmacist... (Not aspirin)
Tell the client, an architect is trained to handle many things. It's not just the aesthetics and looks.
We need to stop selling our profession as a shape-maker or a conceptual artist.
jp post that as a seperate post.
optimise time, learn what money means, etc...
Steven you have valid points, but you'd never hire me and i'd never work with people you are looking for.
i designed while washing dishes, loading trucks and drinking at bars. studio was for work. that's a hard process to make work in an office enrionment with others.
frankly, if you took a few philosophy class and improv jazz or something, you'd see how easy concept is, the rest is work...
Please stop this conversation, this is very simple. If someone doesn't value your services, then don't sign them as a client. Most people I have found do value your services to a reasonable degree. Do not compare us to surgeons, these people have my utmost respect and I would never put myself on their level, ever. Pilots and firemen etc sure no problem, we are either on or above their level. The problem with the profession is simple, on one hand you have contractors that try to tear us down to boost their worth in a clients eyes, and since they spend more time with the client than we do they're usually successful until a building official steps in and agrees with us. On the other hand you have unlicensed people taking smaller bread and butter jobs from Architects who follow the rules, refuse to certify questionable or concealed conditions and who cant possibly charge what they do since they work out of their basements. These two items diminish the public's sense of value of an Architect's services plain and simple. There are many great Architects, many good ones and a ton of crappy ones thanks to these two items ruining the profitability of our firms. If we were paid what we deserve to be paid, then we as a people would be far better at what we do.
By and large I dont care how well versed you are at sketch up, it will not get you even 1/4 of the way into our services period. Even if it does, ask the client how much time he not only spent drawing it, but ask him how much time he spent thinking about it and discussing it with his wife, then ask how much time he spent researching it and then ask him what he does for a living ( I bet he's not college educated first off) and ask him how much he makes per hour, multiply those numbers together and then double it for overhead.... you know rent, computers, printers, insurance, licensing fees, advertising, support staff etc and see what number you come up with. Then tell him that only covers him for the design phase and ask him if he'd like you to keep going, you'll see how fast he shuts up after that.
In regards to the $10 an hour comment, you should have told him to go to McDonalds or Wendy's, they make about $7.25 an hour, and since anyone could do it, he'd get a far better deal over there.
Why don't architects make any money?
First, the house example is always a good one. Everyone thinks that by reading a few of those house plan magazines they can be architects. Well, maybe for an 1,100 sf box. For a traditionally styled large home (over 3,000 sf) or a modernist home that is innovative in its design, you need an architect, and a good one. Not just one who graduated from a-school with all Cs in design. Fun as residential might be, the entitled bitchy wife is a handful to deal with. She, too, thinks she knows as much as you do. People often leave residential or don't want to residential because the interactions with a husband and wife (or partners, sorry) is so personal ... and unprofessional. The best way to do residential is to do multi-family or senior housing, so you mix features of residential and a savvy client who knows what the f**k they are talking about.
More on why architects don't earn money:
- they were bohemian in school, seeing themselves as tortured artists
- they are bohemian in practice, seeing themselves as tortured artists
- they don't present themselves well, tending toward the bohemian, so clients think you are worth less, in terms of fees, than another professional (accountant, lawyer)
- there is a legacy of "abuse" that gets passed on, and it begins in the schooling process, and it ain't stopping anytime soon from what I read and hear, whereas in other fields, the schooling process is to empower you and build your self-esteem
- it's just like acting - the stars are up there clutching their Oscars while the rest sit by their phones waiting for their agents to call
While all of the bullet points are slight exaggerations, some truth is also included in the observations.
observant - youre right, last summer I got threw some slacks on with a nice button up shirt and went to most of the arch firms in my city to see if I could get an internship. Out of the 10 or so firms I visited, 2 of them maintained (enforced maybe) a dress code where everone in the office wore nice dress shoes, button up/collar shirts, and dress pants.
Actually, the fact that I looked nice and presented myself well is what landed me a position.(despite my limited knowledge of architecture)
I spoke to an old architect some time ago and he told me that people outside of the arch realm think that architects get paid well because traditionally, only rich kids went to architecture school. Any thought folks?
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