Many firms tout it, but many (at least in my experience) don't really deliver, especially from the POV of a late 30s architect. Mine in particular loves to talk about it but the reality is it's top heavy with 10 principals and 8 lower staff. This results in a very unbalanced environment IMO. I have been here 5 years and have pretty much given up on trying to contribute much to designs b/c I'm always talked over, or not listened to, ever. It's the just way the leaders are here, which sucks. The environment doesn't spawn collaborative creativity at all.
For you who work at collaborative firms, what is it that makes it so? Ie. in the Pritker thread someone mentioned Snohetta is a firm of talented individuals working together in concert...is this a result of being lucky - having people that can work well together or is it something special that the firm can do to encourage this result?
Just like that person who talks about being honest all the time is anything but, so is a collaborative environment the oposite. At best it's marketing double-speak, at worst it's wishful thinking.
You do need some hierarchy in a design studio. How well the pieces collaborate comes down to individual personalities. If your higher up is a control frak, you will never achieve the balance you are aiming for.
From my experience, offices that were super busy and would throw their young into sink-or-swim situations out of necessity were also the most collaborative ones.
I think what Jefferson is talking about is very different - a heavy management structure in general leads to a very constrained workplace. Its a recipe for disaster really, speaking from experience.
Yeah, I'm talking about the leadership being extremely heavy handed, so much so that they never give the younger architects a change to explore ideas, or even layout a friggin bathroom. I guess that is does come down to individuals, but I wonder if there's a way a firm can evolve into an environment that inspires more creativity and ownership from all.
"Snohetta is a firm of talented individuals working together in concert...is this a result of being lucky - having people that can work well together or is it something special that the firm can do to encourage this result?"
Snohetta, if the lore is correct, was formed in a bar. In fact, after they became successful... they bought out the office above their favorite bar. To go even further, the bar is named after the local mountains there near Oslo. Snohetta is the tallest peak of those mountains.
The basis of their firm was to incorporate architecture and landscape architecture (and I'm assuming planning, too) into one single design process. More or less, it would be hard to have a strict top-down hierarchy in their office. Not to mention, it seems most of their principles are outgoing social types.
right now, Revit Revit Revit, given that there are only 5 people who actually do the work...but god forbid I actually take the initiative and do something unconventional with, say, a furniture plan, then all hell breaks loose...
When I began working at my current firm the management structure was a lot like you've described: very top-heavy, with principals basically handing down sketches for the younger designers to draft.
In tough times with fewer and finicky clients, many firms will reduce the amount of input from junior designers just to play it safe.
Eventually as more projects come in and the designers get more experience (especially in the principals' own design ideas and flaws), there's simply too much design work for upper management to handle. But it has to start with the younger designers taking initiative, calling out things that might not be right and proposing alternatives.
Now that I'm a senior and more involved in the design process, it's actually a struggle to get the new juniors to respond with some design initiative instead of just drafting up sketches...
i think this is a tricky one for medium sized firms. larger firms with many projects allow for their employees to move up the ladder into a design positon.. and very small firms with a principal and only one or two employees may see this simply because the principal needs you to be a "jack of all trades" however the medium sized firm finds itself in a bind. there is not enough work to create design teams but there is enough work that the principals need their staff constantly producing construction documents.
imo its just the nature of the business structure. and this nature is ever more evident in this type of economy
i think this is a tricky one for medium sized firms. larger firms with many projects allow for their employees to move up the ladder into a design positon.. and very small firms with a principal and only one or two employees may see this simply because the principal needs you to be a "jack of all trades" however the medium sized firm finds itself in a bind. there is not enough work to create design teams but there is enough work that the principals need their staff constantly producing construction documents.
imo its just the nature of the business structure. and this nature is ever more evident in this type of economy
often, though, i have found that the people making decisions lack perspective on certain things --- it may be a specific code issue, it may be a detailing issue that requires fresh research, it may be a CAD or rendering issue, it may be a sustainability issue --- leadership has their strengths and weaknesses, too, and there is too much change with these more mundane technical aspects of the process for anyone in a leadership role to keep up on all of them --- in a collaborative environment these issues tend to surface and get dealt with quickly --- the alternative is someone taking a best guess or getting into something just a little and not fully understanding it and making an educated guess which can lead to over-promising or false assurances --- there is no shame in not knowing; recognizing a need for open collaboration is not an indictment of anyone's skill or knowledge and it is not a superfluous luxury layer added to the design process --- in my experience, it makes the design of large projects flow more smoothly and reduces risk by lowering social barriers to knowledge transfer
The firm I work for keeps adding principals and project managers, making it very top-heavy, while the production staff is on the brink of mutiny.
11 principals
7 project managers
8 production staff
The last place I worked for had PM's helping out with production every now and then, but these guys don't even know autocad, much less revit, which is what we use most of the time. When I first started here, we had about 4x the production staff and it was ideal for collaboration in each project, but now each production staff member is in charge of about 2 or 3 fast-track military projects. We used to work on a variety of stuff, but the economy has forced us to pursue military projects now. Mine may be an extreme case, but it seems pretty common nowadays in just about every industry the increase in workload throughout the ranks.
Collaborative practice can mean many things - and it's often just a buzz word (like how many firms jumped on "sustainabilty" without really knowing what it meant).
For some firms it actually means 'inter-discipliniary' of allied fields, while in others it takes a more applied role of approaching design as a team, with several members of the office earning credit for/contributing openly to the project design.
Then you also have the firms that use this word, but it's only a gimmick (smaller firms) where the principals may utilize input from design staff but when it comes to promotion it's only the top row that gets to claim design responsibility. Run. Run far away.
Another great example of how uncollaborative the people are in my firm...I consider myself a decent graphic artist and was asked to put a sign together that will go on the construction fence on my current project. I did a very simple sign with a rendered perceptive and a clean layout...well, of course the proj principal couldn't just say , hey, looks good...he goes ahead and wastes a half hour cutting and pasting his own together and hands it back to me to create in photoshop...I almost tossing my computer across the studio
Redesigning a construction sign sounds like the pinnacle of micromanagement... I think the ideal situation is one where individual team members are invested enough in the project (or office) to develop solutions independently, but have the freedom and opportunity to discuss them with the larger team.... everyone sitting around the trace paper can get a little tedious it times, but the freedom to contribute to broader design dicussions is ideal in my opinion.
Yeah, the sad thing was I knew that would happen based on many many past experiences with this a-hole. In any other economy, I'd be outta here so fast.
Hi Jefferson, I feel like I am seeing my future in you if not worse. As a junior (2.5yrs exp), I have been pushed around and pigeonholed at renderings/presentation works. If there is a slight window of opportunity to do some CD work, my boss usually pulls me out of it to do more image productions. My jerk and older co-workers referred me as a 'renderer' when a student visited the office, but they are kind to me when they have questions on Revit. My ideas usually get tossed away and I just don't even get any chance to explore design options. Though my boss believe and says that our firm is a collaborative design firm, he doesn't believe in we spending billable hours on exploring designs. He instead told me to come into office on weekends to play with it in my free time.
Wow, that sounds all too familiar. On the outside most of these people claim a very collaborative culture, but actions speak louder than words. Just hearing your older co-workers calling you a renderer pisses me off. I have a lot more experience than you but am equally frustrated. The problem is right now firms are so tight in their finances (and mine's in the red every month) that they need to be as efficient as possible and so have less "play" for younger architects to explore and make mistakes while going through the design process....more efficient to give all decisions to older senior leadership. The problem is now none of the younger architects have any ownership in what they're doing, so they feel they are CAD/Revit monkeys...
ahh.. my boss holds another design presentation to showcase how other firms present their designs. These 'design' presentationsare heavily misleadning as we never talked about 'design' itself... i'm about to go postal whenever he mentions design, collaboration, or new direction in design field....
I find whenever we do anything that resembles a design peer review, the principals talk over everyone else, and after trying to get a word in, I give up and sit there pissed off...now if that's not collaboration, I don't know what is.
I also love when my boss is on the phone with a client or consultant, and says "we'll draw that right up" or "we'll modify the revit model and will be able to look at that"
Is your firm "collaborative"?
Many firms tout it, but many (at least in my experience) don't really deliver, especially from the POV of a late 30s architect. Mine in particular loves to talk about it but the reality is it's top heavy with 10 principals and 8 lower staff. This results in a very unbalanced environment IMO. I have been here 5 years and have pretty much given up on trying to contribute much to designs b/c I'm always talked over, or not listened to, ever. It's the just way the leaders are here, which sucks. The environment doesn't spawn collaborative creativity at all.
For you who work at collaborative firms, what is it that makes it so? Ie. in the Pritker thread someone mentioned Snohetta is a firm of talented individuals working together in concert...is this a result of being lucky - having people that can work well together or is it something special that the firm can do to encourage this result?
Just like that person who talks about being honest all the time is anything but, so is a collaborative environment the oposite. At best it's marketing double-speak, at worst it's wishful thinking.
You do need some hierarchy in a design studio. How well the pieces collaborate comes down to individual personalities. If your higher up is a control frak, you will never achieve the balance you are aiming for.
From my experience, offices that were super busy and would throw their young into sink-or-swim situations out of necessity were also the most collaborative ones.
too much collaboration results in something that looks like it was designed by committee. Not many great ideas are born in committee meetings.
I think what Jefferson is talking about is very different - a heavy management structure in general leads to a very constrained workplace. Its a recipe for disaster really, speaking from experience.
Yeah, I'm talking about the leadership being extremely heavy handed, so much so that they never give the younger architects a change to explore ideas, or even layout a friggin bathroom. I guess that is does come down to individuals, but I wonder if there's a way a firm can evolve into an environment that inspires more creativity and ownership from all.
10 of 18 are principals in your firm. That's ownership from most. No?
Your firm reached saturation point. You would have to look elsewhere to find opportunities you seek.
If they won't even let you do some toileteering work, what DO they have you work on?
"Snohetta is a firm of talented individuals working together in concert...is this a result of being lucky - having people that can work well together or is it something special that the firm can do to encourage this result?"
Snohetta, if the lore is correct, was formed in a bar. In fact, after they became successful... they bought out the office above their favorite bar. To go even further, the bar is named after the local mountains there near Oslo. Snohetta is the tallest peak of those mountains.
The basis of their firm was to incorporate architecture and landscape architecture (and I'm assuming planning, too) into one single design process. More or less, it would be hard to have a strict top-down hierarchy in their office. Not to mention, it seems most of their principles are outgoing social types.
right now, Revit Revit Revit, given that there are only 5 people who actually do the work...but god forbid I actually take the initiative and do something unconventional with, say, a furniture plan, then all hell breaks loose...
Love the lore on Snohetta..
When I began working at my current firm the management structure was a lot like you've described: very top-heavy, with principals basically handing down sketches for the younger designers to draft.
In tough times with fewer and finicky clients, many firms will reduce the amount of input from junior designers just to play it safe.
Eventually as more projects come in and the designers get more experience (especially in the principals' own design ideas and flaws), there's simply too much design work for upper management to handle. But it has to start with the younger designers taking initiative, calling out things that might not be right and proposing alternatives.
Now that I'm a senior and more involved in the design process, it's actually a struggle to get the new juniors to respond with some design initiative instead of just drafting up sketches...
"ownership from all"
I mean being encouraged or allowed to take ownership in the building design or part of it, instead of being micromanaged to the nth degree...
i think this is a tricky one for medium sized firms. larger firms with many projects allow for their employees to move up the ladder into a design positon.. and very small firms with a principal and only one or two employees may see this simply because the principal needs you to be a "jack of all trades" however the medium sized firm finds itself in a bind. there is not enough work to create design teams but there is enough work that the principals need their staff constantly producing construction documents.
imo its just the nature of the business structure. and this nature is ever more evident in this type of economy
i think this is a tricky one for medium sized firms. larger firms with many projects allow for their employees to move up the ladder into a design positon.. and very small firms with a principal and only one or two employees may see this simply because the principal needs you to be a "jack of all trades" however the medium sized firm finds itself in a bind. there is not enough work to create design teams but there is enough work that the principals need their staff constantly producing construction documents.
imo its just the nature of the business structure. and this nature is ever more evident in this type of economy
Jefferson,
Maybe you should start referring to your firm as "cognitive collaboration".
You know... like "mental masturbation".
often, though, i have found that the people making decisions lack perspective on certain things --- it may be a specific code issue, it may be a detailing issue that requires fresh research, it may be a CAD or rendering issue, it may be a sustainability issue --- leadership has their strengths and weaknesses, too, and there is too much change with these more mundane technical aspects of the process for anyone in a leadership role to keep up on all of them --- in a collaborative environment these issues tend to surface and get dealt with quickly --- the alternative is someone taking a best guess or getting into something just a little and not fully understanding it and making an educated guess which can lead to over-promising or false assurances --- there is no shame in not knowing; recognizing a need for open collaboration is not an indictment of anyone's skill or knowledge and it is not a superfluous luxury layer added to the design process --- in my experience, it makes the design of large projects flow more smoothly and reduces risk by lowering social barriers to knowledge transfer
The firm I work for keeps adding principals and project managers, making it very top-heavy, while the production staff is on the brink of mutiny.
11 principals
7 project managers
8 production staff
The last place I worked for had PM's helping out with production every now and then, but these guys don't even know autocad, much less revit, which is what we use most of the time. When I first started here, we had about 4x the production staff and it was ideal for collaboration in each project, but now each production staff member is in charge of about 2 or 3 fast-track military projects. We used to work on a variety of stuff, but the economy has forced us to pursue military projects now. Mine may be an extreme case, but it seems pretty common nowadays in just about every industry the increase in workload throughout the ranks.
Collaborative practice can mean many things - and it's often just a buzz word (like how many firms jumped on "sustainabilty" without really knowing what it meant).
For some firms it actually means 'inter-discipliniary' of allied fields, while in others it takes a more applied role of approaching design as a team, with several members of the office earning credit for/contributing openly to the project design.
Then you also have the firms that use this word, but it's only a gimmick (smaller firms) where the principals may utilize input from design staff but when it comes to promotion it's only the top row that gets to claim design responsibility. Run. Run far away.
Another great example of how uncollaborative the people are in my firm...I consider myself a decent graphic artist and was asked to put a sign together that will go on the construction fence on my current project. I did a very simple sign with a rendered perceptive and a clean layout...well, of course the proj principal couldn't just say , hey, looks good...he goes ahead and wastes a half hour cutting and pasting his own together and hands it back to me to create in photoshop...I almost tossing my computer across the studio
Redesigning a construction sign sounds like the pinnacle of micromanagement... I think the ideal situation is one where individual team members are invested enough in the project (or office) to develop solutions independently, but have the freedom and opportunity to discuss them with the larger team.... everyone sitting around the trace paper can get a little tedious it times, but the freedom to contribute to broader design dicussions is ideal in my opinion.
Yeah, the sad thing was I knew that would happen based on many many past experiences with this a-hole. In any other economy, I'd be outta here so fast.
Hi Jefferson, I feel like I am seeing my future in you if not worse. As a junior (2.5yrs exp), I have been pushed around and pigeonholed at renderings/presentation works. If there is a slight window of opportunity to do some CD work, my boss usually pulls me out of it to do more image productions. My jerk and older co-workers referred me as a 'renderer' when a student visited the office, but they are kind to me when they have questions on Revit. My ideas usually get tossed away and I just don't even get any chance to explore design options. Though my boss believe and says that our firm is a collaborative design firm, he doesn't believe in we spending billable hours on exploring designs. He instead told me to come into office on weekends to play with it in my free time.
Wow, that sounds all too familiar. On the outside most of these people claim a very collaborative culture, but actions speak louder than words. Just hearing your older co-workers calling you a renderer pisses me off. I have a lot more experience than you but am equally frustrated. The problem is right now firms are so tight in their finances (and mine's in the red every month) that they need to be as efficient as possible and so have less "play" for younger architects to explore and make mistakes while going through the design process....more efficient to give all decisions to older senior leadership. The problem is now none of the younger architects have any ownership in what they're doing, so they feel they are CAD/Revit monkeys...
gee, still getting critique on the construction sign, 2 days later. I am ready to go postal.
ahh.. my boss holds another design presentation to showcase how other firms present their designs. These 'design' presentationsare heavily misleadning as we never talked about 'design' itself... i'm about to go postal whenever he mentions design, collaboration, or new direction in design field....
I find whenever we do anything that resembles a design peer review, the principals talk over everyone else, and after trying to get a word in, I give up and sit there pissed off...now if that's not collaboration, I don't know what is.
jefferson et al,
I imagine your workplace is a bit like this
^^^^^ couldn't be more right on....
I also love when my boss is on the phone with a client or consultant, and says "we'll draw that right up" or "we'll modify the revit model and will be able to look at that"
No, you won't be doing that, I will be jackoff
oh... no Jefferson...
My boss does that too, little indirectly. He walks over to my co-worker and tells him that I had to complete those tasks...
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