Mamma Mia. Here I go again. . . .

No not the fan mail LB. This was in response to an actuall ad. I saw the posting today sent
y resume and got an interview. It never happens like that.

I call builshit, puddles. Yeah, it's not easy to run an office, and lots of clients are total idiots who screw you over -- but that doesn't mean there aren't idiot bosses out there. Your argument is specious. Just because some clients are dicks doesn't mean all bosses aren't. Bad behavior goes on on both sides of the aisle -- boss and interns alike. And, clearly, clients.

I would, however, be interested in actual methods to help prevent the previous type of story from happening. Clearly some people have figured this one out -- any tips, other stories?

@mantaray, puddles... this is what loss insurance is for.

@ everyone else, happy rosh hashanah!

about getting paid...

we charge clients in stages so we get paid by phase of work. we are very honest about what is possible and when we think there is a gap we sit down and explain our fears. so far no problems. we also put in writing at beginning of project what expected budget is and the schedule - when we will be paid approximately and what percentage of total fee we get for each stage. this is all negotiated at beginning but there is no doubt about where we are and who is to do what and when. we do a bit of work at beginning that might get lost if they walked away but our clients tend to be highly educated and financially savvy. so maybe we are spoiled...

my mentor for more than 10 years did/does things the same way. communication is the first job of the architect. it is maybe even the most important job we do.



oh i don't know manta. there are lots of bad bosses out there, but i think there are more than enough posts on this site made by young architects who don't know what they are talking about (yet) that puddles could make a case. it don't bother me much because i know someday they will get it and, well, it is good to vent. good for puddles as much as for the young guns who think finding work is remotely easy.

anyway isn't the role of The Puddles to say things that are either non sequitur, mildly offensive, or just plumb smart?

hey all. been sorta absent this week because i went almost a full week without a computer at work. now that i have one, it's an intern's recycled one: it's HUGE, takes up my whole desk; it's LOUD, with hums and whistles, and it's slower than my last one. this is what the partners get, young architecture-types, while you get the new machine...

on the good side, had a great dinner at my favorite restaurant on thursday night with michael speaks, his assistant derrick, and sam jacob of FAT. jacob is whip-smart and - despite my concerns about the influence the work of FAT could have - i now count myself among sam's fans. check out his blog, if you haven't: http://www.strangeharvest.com/

we had fun. sam and i even had a beautiful 20yr pappy van winkle in honor of the fact that preston van winkle himself was hanging out in the bar.

prior to dinner, sam gave a talk, did a panel discussion, we took a tour of the museum plaza pre-construction exhibit gallery, and got a little teaser of some things that might be seen at this week's ideafestival.

Ugh, I'm envious, Steven! Looks like I'm missing Idea Fest this yea;, too much going on here to take time off, and I've hardly seen my family in the last few weeks.

Part of this goes to manta's question: we do what jump does more-or-less: mainly we're very, very honest about what is possible and isn't. We make strong recommendations as to how and with whom the client should proceed. We also turn down jobs when we get a bad vibe.

We just had a week of drama with one client: they're insisting on bidding the project, which we feel is a mistake. So we backed out, writing a letter for them to sign releasing us from liability for incomplete drawings, since bid drawings are never complete, and details that contractors work out according to field conditions.

A week and many honest discussions later, we are back to working with them, but with a different understanding of what "bid set" means, and a new contract to be signed before we proceed. I still fear it will be a difficult job, but we'll navigate it as we go.

When we have - one time - had a client refuse to pay us because the budget came in too high, we pointed to meetings where they had added scope and we had explicitly said "You are going way above your budget if we add that.". We don't keep meeting minutes, but an email after the meeting stating what was discussed is a good idea at least. A letter from a lawyer friend of ours led to them paying us half, which we accepted and moved on.

Mainly it comes down to communication and not making promises.

Ugh. I would SO MUCH rather be going to Idea Fest this week than working on construction drawings.

ideafestival will be great but i'm off to the kentucky BOURBON festival in bardstown ky today. much bigger deal, i think.

i hear there are kids activities!

sounds great steven! i'd like to see the anthony bourdain talk but, its 35 bucks and ,well, i'm cheap. isn't every weekend a bourbon festival in kentucky?

...i like that, thanks jump

architects are actually fortunate in dealing with clients because (as jump & liberty bell allude to) we tend to be dealing with people from the upper classes with some money & success to their names. but anybody who has ever run a business of any kind (arch firm, hair salon, crack dealing, whatever) will run into people who screw them. it's simply part of the risk of hanging out your shingle.

so i don't feel that it's bullshit at all. even bad bosses who do a lot of things wrong are still providing work (and possibly income) for others. in the economic milieu of 2009 with so many looking for work, i would think that those employees with jobs would be more thankful to their bosses for that.

i understand that it's human nature for employees to complain...but you'd think that at least some of these enlightened, genius young archinects would have the perspicacity to offer some gratitude.

no worries puddles. just calling like i see it.

to be fair we have intern with us who is very respectful and i think is happy to be learning something. we have spoken a bit about the attitude on archinect that is expressed in some of the threads here and i think i was actually more against the employers than our intern ;-)

so i think we are lucky.


btw, any of youse mac and windows users have any notion about how to convert keynote to powerpoint? i have keynote original file but of course can't open it without a mac to export it appropriately. if there is a work around (none i could find on google so far) would LOVE to hear about it. cheers.

Steven, that sounds awesome. i am very big fan of FAT. not so much their work, but what they do. it is very intelligent and clearly above the average.

Hi everyone. Long day today. Worked on a Habitat House this morning and attended a green homes tour/information fair this afternoon. Met lots of like minded green-homes type people. Am exhausted.

Tonight and tomorrow, I do nothing. But first I have to vacuum up a spider family in my bathroom. TTYL.

jump, don't know of a workaround unless you have a mac handy; if you like, you can email me the file and I will save it out as PP for you.

That Winkle Bourbon looks delicious. Very exciting getting to speak with Sam Steven.
I personally, love the strangeharvest site, and although i know of FATs work didn't really that it was the same person involved..
HAHA. The graphical look of the site should have set me off.

Jump, digging the Japanese emoticons.

The last two weekend have been relaxing but i haven't managed to accomplish two things i have been meaning to. Catch an exhibition at the university and crack open the GRE prep book i bought over a month ago.,

I think already having a "professional job" is making it harder.

Good luck Sarah.

It's been a lazy rainy Sunday here, although I've done a few things to get ready for another week out of town. Hopefully this one will go better as last week I was just getting back in work travel mode again.

Nam - do you have your test scheduled yet?

Time for dinner.

hi all sorry for the silence. The missus made a surprise visit, and got her mum involved so I've spent all weekend completely in her midst. Interestingly she told me a story of spotting an architect in the airport, she was looking over his shoulder (nosy) and spotted him looking a pictures of buildings and landscapes, with obvious verticals and random pictures of drains and billboards.

Vado I didn't forget about you there, I was only making an starchitect reference. But we both know you were the real star of the show... SW enjoy it without us. But the bourbon festival does sound far more... tasty?

Anyway... Sarah I'm glad that you are pursuing teaching. Have of the talent in it is desire. But that said being a TA at a university is very different that being a HS teacher. The latter I would never do not even if you paid me. As well you'll be spending all your free time preparing for classes and on that note I have a lecture to prepare for Tuesday.

sidenote. I received TK's lectures and was left in awe at the level of detail and the fact that an entire semester of lectures were available at a moment's notice.

hey *m are you travelling alone? (wink wink) Or do you have a co-worker with you (wink wink)

did someone say bourbon festival? me = jealous. Although, I did just get back from an avocado & margarita festival that was pretty cool. I'm stuffed, though I wish they would've gotten more creative with the avocados.

Upon returning home, I found in my email box notification that I'd won not one but two awards from an AIGA competition so I'm pretty pumped about that. Still no steady job though.

No i do not. But understand it is offered pretty much year round now.

Also, yeah thanks for the lectures. Barry!!

a-techno, the semester's worth of lectures will be available by the end of the semester - I first gotta write them all.

If anybody else want's to 'audit' my seminar, drop me a note...

I'm taking suggestions too for interesting subjects in the world of eco-cities and green architecture.

Hey, I'm looking for iconic images of infrastructure - preferably by genius photographers or artist (not just snapshots from flickr). Already got burtynsky, becher, alex maclean, shibata, and chris jordan in my sights. So who am I missing?

TK, does andreas gursky count?


Bahrain.

One could consider the NY Stock Exchange infrastructure of a type, I suppose... or even your local 99cent store, perhaps.

Ooh, this page has some excellent selections!

how about jim wark. he did photos for dolores hayden's last book, a field guide to sprawl. i don't know if it is genius or not but it is certainly interesting....

would love to "audit" seminar, treekiller. your e-mail from here working?


thanks manta! i may take you up on that. my partner is buyin mac tomorrow so i may have found way to make things work. but if not you may get strange mail out of blue. ;-

is funny but i have never had problem with mac and working cross platform before but suddenly i need to use files for 2 lecture course i am starting next tuesday ( ! ) and windows doesn't open the damn format. incredibly frustrating.

on top of that we are trying to co-ordinate structure and get out docs for building approval for a project here in tokyo, AND i have a deadline for an article on sustainable urban planning coming up this weekend. None of these deadlines are of my own making but it sure feels like somebody out there is trying to co-ordinate the stress in my life ;-)

all i can say is thank goodness for my wonderful family. makes things much easier.

Morning. I didn't get the job. I think they wanted someone with more construction experience. It wouldve been a fun gig though. It was the vein as the Detroit house thread but in Dallas and actual peoples houses. I think I psyched myself out by googling the interviewer before hand. He taught at harvard and did stuff in NYC and the venice bianalle. He was a big fancypants architect and it was intimidating. My portfolio is such crap. He seemed cool and laidback in person though. Came to the interview in shorts and flipflops.

So I will continue on the teaching route. Pays more anyway.

An interview on Sunday, not sure what I think about that, but then the interviewer in flip flops makes it make more sense. Sorry about the lack of an offer. You should contact them again in a month and see - if they are getting busier, they may by then be ready for someone of your experience level.

Chica is sick, or depressed. She's definitely not herself.

From Bldgblog, treekiller, I know about David Maisel.

Gotta go be a super producer today. Later all.

minor bit of hurricane trivia: twenty years ago today, hurricane hugo hit south carolina. a tragedy was nearly caused, apparently by someone's efforts to cut corners by not using an architect & re-using existing plans:

"To build Lincoln High School, which lies at an altitude of ten feet, the local school board used the same plans that were drawn up for another school that is west of Highway 17, and that IS at 20 feet elevation. Not only the same plans, the same set of working drawings. Those working drawings showed a surveyed elevation of 20 feet above datum (probably NGVD29). Apparently Lincoln High was constructed either without benefit of elevation survey or the plans were not annotated with its site elevation."

in an area prone to storm surges, that 10 foot error was nearly fatal. more from dr. jeff masters wunderblog

Hahaha, puddles, those passionate weather commenters on that site make us architects look like a bunch of pansies! And they appear to be arguing about something that actually effects peoples' lives: the weather!

Wow, it's been 20 years already? I remember Hugo. We were living in Beaufort, South Carolina at the time, and had been nervously watching the weather updates over the past few days as the storm got closer. That morning, we looked at the forecast, and they said Hugo was expected to make landfall somewhere between Savannah and Charleston... Beaufort is smack in the middle of that zone, so we loaded up the car and got the hell out of there. My dad, a physician's assistant with the Naval Hospital in town, had to stay behind in case there were mass casualties, so it was my mom, myself, my three siblings, some small family heirlooms, luggage, and three angry cats in an '87 Ford Taurus for the next 14 hours or so.

The traffic on I-26 was unreal, like something out of a disaster move. The westbound lanes were a 200-mile-long parking lot all the way past Columbia, while the eastbound lanes were completely deserted except for the occasional convoy of National Guard and Red Cross trucks headed for the coast. It was very erie. Eventually they allowed westbound traffic to cross the highway median and drive the wrong way on the eastbound side.

We drove all the way to Cincinnati, since every hotel east of the mountains was packed with evacuees from the coast. At least we had family to stay with in Cincy, so we kept on driving all day and for pretty late into the night, not sure how long it would be before we could return to Beaufort, nor what we would have left when we got back. We got to my grandmother's house in Mariemont at some ungodly hour of the night, turned on CNN, and saw that Hugo had turned north at the last minute and was ripping Charleston to shreds. Beaufort had a fair amount of damage, but was spared the worst of the storm.

We stayed in Cincy for a couple days before heading back. On the trip back to Beaufort, I remember seeing how the storm damage got progressively worse as we got closer to the coast. Around Columbia, it was mostly downed trees and branches alongside the expressway. Closer to Charleston, overhead highway signs, billboards, and gas station canopies were ripped to shreds. As we drove through mile after mile of pine forests, we saw that every single tree had been snapped in half. North of Charleston, all the trees were snapped toward the west; south of Charleston, all the trees were snapped toward the east. You could tell exactly where the eye of the hurricane had passed because that's where the all fallen trees changed direction.

We were very fortunate... Our house wasn't damaged, and most of the damage in the neighborhood was limited to some downed power lines and fallen trees. We have some relatives in Charleston who had five feet of water in their house and a tree in their living room. The many car windows on their block exploded because the barometric pressure had dropped so fast.

The running joke was that Hugo was actually a good thing for South Carolina, because it finally gave them something to talk about besides the Civil War.

Hey LIG, how is the thesis going?
You been lurking much? Or just busy?

It's still going... I feel like I've made some good progress, but I still have a long ways to go. Right now my main priority is my portfolio for grad school admissions.

I lurk sporadically, but haven't had time to post very often.

OMG, I'm having a sudden freak-out about flooding. That story about the high school, and LiG's story - I remember when Hugo hit, and I remember the people trapped in the school. Good lord. Now that I have a child it's all the more horrifying. We live in a flood zone (we pay FEMA insurance as part of our mortgage because of it) between the White River and a canal. If a flood comes, we'll be underwater. I just spent half an hour looking at the flood maps on FEMA's website figuring out where we could/should evacuate to if we had to leave. Ugh.

yeah, there is some pretty intense stuff in the comments section. the amount of data & the various interpretations of the weather certainly do make architecture seem tame. they'll get hundreds of posted comments (sometimes thousands) when there's an active storm threatening the US. i've learned alot though following that blog the past few years.

but its the meteorologists who really make us look like pansies...it's probably not the best recommendation for a busy monday, but dr masters also has a very good account of his "hurricane hunters" flight mission into hurricane hugo that nearly buried him at sea. he underestimated the strength of hugo and their plane was almost ripped apart. they were literally stuck flying in circles in the eye as they tried to find an escape...like something out of a hollywood thriller. full story is available online here

Angus' book "Magic Schoolbus Inside A Hurricane" is plenty adventurous enough for me, thanks! But actually I love storm porn (that's what Brian calls it when I'm channel surfing and see a sudden tornado or hurricane image.)

sorry to scare you liberty bell. more from wunderground, this is hurricane specific regarding floods & surges...but i suppose it could be helpful regarding any flood. bottom line, don't underestimate the power of water:

surgemisconceptions

know your elevation

LB you can come to my place. i'm on the fourth floor!

Storm porn! That's perfect! I have always referred to myself as a Weather Nerd. Amongst other types of nerds... Science, Building, etc.

Interview #6 tomorrow, plus they are calling my references today (!!!) and I just did a personality test. This one was annoying. I've taken personality tests before, but this one made me pick between two lists of negative descriptors of myself. Not cool. And supposedly "there's no wrong answer". Right. Anyway, I have to find yet another outfit to wear...

I'm going to go read the WunderBlog now though, thanks puddles...

good luck Wonder K, I was wondering when you'd of mentioned the outfits. It must be challenging remembering what you wore the last time, and still look "oh so wonderful." Just thought I'd throw some more wonders in there!

I'm knackered, it's been overcast all day and had to pick up the my sis' kids from school, not to mention the early airport run - so I'm going to take another nap.

I've been through a hurricane and countless tropical storms - interestingly enough both are excellent opportunities to sleep

companies are retarded. why would you want a person to highlight their weaknesses rather than promote thier strengths. in my view that is an business culture weakness and they should be told as much.

agreed vado

so I've just been killing myself preparing a lecture tomorrow on the basics of structuralism and it's ode to enlightenment. And just when I was about to start the conclusion I realised that tomorrow is a tutorial day not a lecture. Sigh... I think I should be able to blame the fact that I got hyped after seeing treekiller's lectures... yeah that's what I'll do.

a-techno, Hope you're getting into the post-structuralists and not dwelling on the pre-cursors.

I got called into the office today to help mobilize on our newest project - a building for the ACE in kandihar - now how/why did I agree to this? So I'm a bit behind on writing my lecture about policy - at least I get to expound on this diagram (okay, so it would make tufte blush):





my infrastructure porn downloads tonight: jeff wall, walter de maria, james turrell, micheal heizer, and other earth artists...

and Hubert Blanz on polar inertia:

hurray, found a person with mac and am off to the races.

i am giving 4 lectures a week starting next week and still working on filling out the slideshows. next week is almost ready but there are all those weeks to follow just hangin there like ghosts in an endless corridor.........

i would like to have one of those tutorial days archi. or maybe i can just deliver your lecture instead. or better yet you could come here and do it yourself and i can just sit in corner and nod sagely...


sorry to hear you didn't get job sarah, but very glad to hear you made it to interview. that at least signals something doesn't it? next time you are in...!

good luck wonder K. that exam sounds stupid stupid stupid. did i mention stupid? f*ck i hate that shit. it is a kind of moronic measuring without looking attitude that just pishes me off. sorry, i am not a big fan of places that try to put people into ready made peg-holes. Don't think is right way to do anything except alienate the most important resource company has...


hurricanes are common in japan. floods not so much lately, but one out of two is more than enough. scary buggers sometimes.

floods?!?

we're looking @ near 90 degree temps tomorrow... hotter than la and nearly as hot as phoenix. wtf?

so, like its holidays here and friends from countryside are here using our flat as a base while they head out to disneyland and cetera....and it is apparently insane. disney was sold out this morning, and wouldn't let them in til evening. when they got in there was an announcement that if everyone decided to stay until last call and fireworks there was a good chance they would not be able to get home by morning because there would be so many cars on the road.

!

so they cut their losses and are heading home now. 200 bucks for two hours and a wee short trip on the pirates of the caribbean ride.

i can't imagine the crowds. been there when it was crowded enough to make me scream but never busy enough that they actually closed the doors. my goodness but someone must be making a LOT of cash today.


my young brother tells me he is making a killing on the streets of osaka too (he is professional street performer).

now the question is, is this a sign the economy is good or bad?



just wondering, you know...

Hey morning everyone. I feel nice and refreshed after getting to bed before midnight last night.

Jump, your younger brother lives in Japan too?

Who cares if he lives there, he's q street performer?! What kind? I guess there are many differnt kinds but I always think of those 'living statue' people in Italy and jugglers dressed as jesters. Think I always placed them with gypsies in my mind and you're telling me the make good money? They aren't just drunks and homeless people? It's amazing how often I get to shift things in my mind. Glad I'm open enough to do so.

Budapesshht.

Otto Vahgner.

KaraTAY.

And totally unrelated, where's beta?

Lb. Have you been drinking? You sound like the cat in that comic strip.

hehehe

Working on pronunciation and enunciation today are we LB?

holz, what you talking about, hotter than la? LA's slated to get 103 degrees tomorow...

ah, my better half's sister said the high was only supposed to be like 78 today.

but it's still shaping up to be absurdly warm today. yech.

...relatively speaking, of course