Tumbles, Hey there...Is that a picture of you with the goat?
Either way I am sure you are having fun (and working hard) pursuing your passion.
WonderK, sorry about all the certification trouble. I never understood the whole national board but state certification thing. That is how teaching is too. You have to get state certified (which is different for each state) and only then can you get nationally certified.
As for the whole Conan-Leno thing. I never was a huge fan of Leno and i was enjoying occasionally catching Conan before bed. NBC is just jerking him around. I hope he leaves for another channel.
Or if i was him just take a couple of years off and let them pay out his contract.
Wow. A whole daydevoted to ncarb. Yuck. I started IDP before the six month rule took effect, and then got canned. So I guess I'll be paying them the maintenance fee until I can get all that done. May be a while.
Abram is starting school on Tuesday. It's just one day aweek, from 9-2. I'm excited and nervous for him. I know he's going to beterrifiedwhen I just leave him there. Makes me sad.
well, i sure didn't have it as bad as some of you, but the running joke at work is that NCARB is out to get me... blue screen of death is always blamed on NCARB (or barbie dot com overload)
i had to call and call and call and call... always got a "oh...hmm, looks like this person was supposed to review this, call back in a week it should be done"... then NCARB sent all the direct registration stuff to the states which they aren't supposed to, so that delayed the process... and yes it took 8 times longer than it should, but it's over and done with...
they good thing is, they are starting to digitify the process... so hopefully if a few years, the process will be better...
but in the meantime, don't look at as "this process could be so much easier, i mean i just need a few signatures and a couple stamps and all that, and it costs me $800 bajillion dollars too!"... look at it like this is your first ARE exam and it's testing the permit process.... you have to take a set of information (your IDP crap) through the zoning and city (if you've had the pleasure of going through a big city, the metaphor works very well) and the city is unresponsive and have lost your permit app 4 times and they have all these weird fees, it's massively confusing and everyone only gives you half answers, and it's frustrating but you got to do it... so yeah, you're getting your first permit...
That is such an awesome picture of Tumbleweed and Catsup.
I was going to go on a long rant on NCARB and IDP but I changed my mind. I'm just glad I'm through it. Its almost worse that NCARB isn't a malicious group with harsh intent, but instead an ineffectively effective beauracratic organization.
i saw a goat standing on top of a parked car recently. i wish i could have gotten a picture of that.
i lived in boston for 3 years so, yes, i'm familiar with the bac model. it's not perfect and even with the internships the actual b.arch/m.arch degree itself is no different than those awarded by any other school. it's kind of patchwork of what i proposed.
the more i think about it, it just seems odd to me that a professional degree bestows such little professional status. yes, it permits you to sit for the exams but that almost feels like a technicality. hypothetically if you decided to "major" in architecture but your school awarded you BS/BFA/MS/MFA/etc and you then spent 3-5 years doing IDP under an architect before passing the ARE, are you really any less qualified to be a licensed architect than those of us with BArch or MArch? (the difference in academics might be as little as 10 credits worth of structures & pro practice)
combine that with the zeal that the bureaucrats exhibit in chasing down unlicensed architects, and suddenly it seems almost fraudulent for schools to sell a b.arch/m.arch a professional degree.
licensing should be a simple matter, so formulaic that it shouldn't even warrant a discussion amongst architects. as a simple (and probably inapporpriate) analogy: if i have a fishing pole then i'm a fisherman and if i want to go fishing in florida then i by a fishing license from the government of florida. likewise, if you are a professional architect (however that's defined) and you want to practise in florida then you should buy a license from the government of florida. since architecture is more complex than fishing, i'd expect it would be an expensive license (but that should simply be included in the cost of doing business, a relatively minor expense given the cost of construction).
A belated 'Yay!' for Strawberry! Hope it pans out.
And boo on NCARB battles. I must say that's something I'm glad to not have to deal wth. Technically I'm in the system and could take my exams, but... I think I'll skip it. Why put myself through all that for no reason?
I worked 16 hours yesterday to get a presentation out the door... I feel like I'm back in school. Fortunately before my boss left, he told me to not even set an alarm today, just come in whenever I wake up. So I'm posting from the comfort of my bed, though I wish the construction next door would shut up so that I could get a couple more hours sleep.
Hi all...I have about 30 pages of TC to read, but I am glad to see everyone doing relatively well and still pursuing some exciting goals.
Sorry about your NCARB troubles, keep pushing...it's worth it...don't let the beauracratic jackholes get you down. For some reason Texas was pretty straight forward and I got confirmation emails at every step. I was even cc'd on the email between NCARB and the Texas board when they transmitted my record. I guess Texas has donated more money/people at the top than other states.
rationalist, I've never understood that kind of thing -- "just come in whenever you wake up" -- why not "you worked two full days' worth of work yesterday, why don't you take tomorrow off?! God knows you probably don't want to come in and see THIS place again tomorrow! Spend some time, you know, attending to your own business at home!"
One of my old bosses used to do that all the time. "Thanks for pulling an all-nighter to get this out the door and meet my unreasonable deadline that the client didn't even care about. Now, why don't you just go home early today? I'm sure you'd like to shower and maybe catch a nap. Feel free to leave at 4!" ugh.
well, he had to be up at a god-awful hour today to travel and make the presentation, and has promised the whole department a friday off when the travel is done. So I look at my morning off as a bonus, didn't come in til noon and I'm about to take lunch. So maybe I'm a schmuck but I'm not all that worried about it.
BTW I'm suddenly teaching a ProPractice class at Ball State starting Thursday - four days to prepare whoop! But I have the syllabus from last year's professor (on leave of absence) as a starting points.
Question for TC: what was anything valuable or entertaining you got out of YOUR Pro Practice course? Mine sucked, but we did learn programming, which was really valuable.
we had movie snippets featuring architects interwoven with our professor's lectures. this was a nice feature...but it would have been infinitely better if professor had including some scenes from "the towering inferno" which featured paul newman as an architect.
the opening sequence where he shows up to work in a helicopter, then strolls through his office (approving designs & solving problems as he walks) to an apartment in the back already stocked with a lover in bed...well, that scene is just brilliant! perfect example of how professionals should practice,
good news looks like I'm going to get a TA (teaching assistant not tits/ass) The latter would involve me having to explain alot. Not so good news I'll be teaching for two again this semester. Good news I will get overtime pay. Not so good news - it's paid on a semester basis
good news I got a few of my books that have been locked up in Montserrat. Not so good news one of the books has a nibble on the spine from what looks like a mouse/rat. Eww
I thought about that, puddles- that I could show bits of how architects are perceived as professionals, which would be fun if not especially rigorous! I've never seen How I Met Your Mother, though, which I hear has an architect in it.
Wow does The Towering Inferno really start like that? I'll have to watch it.
Thanks all for your input regarding my NCARB mess. I just talked to them earlier, and I think getting my CA license but taking the test in OR will work, as long as CA can locate my record that was transmitted. ***fingers crossed***
Also I learned that - according to them - it's "wise" to keep your NCARB record active, and thus keep paying them the annual fee, just in case you'd like to get licensed in another state later on, because you'll need them for your record. I personally think it's a steep price for them to hold onto my file in a cabinet somewhere, but whatever.
Actually How I Met Your Mother, although a somewhat silly show, totally makes me laugh (although it's more formulaic than, say, your 30rock and other po-mo sitcoms).
The portrayal of Ted as an architect in that show is actually the most genuine I've seen!!! He cracks me up -- I've often wondered if one of the writers is married to an architect, they honestly MUST be, there's no way anyone could get that goofy expression of passion-about-a-subject-that-bores-everyone-else just SO unless they were an architect's significant other. Someday I'll look it up and find out...
As for Pro Practice... my class was a WASTE of time, despite the fact that my professor went on to win an award for the curriculum. We had to "profile" various local firms in groups, and make a group presentation at the end of the semester. The problem was, all we were doing was interviewing principals, so we basically ended up becoming their defacto PR reps in the presentation. We didn't know anything about the biz, so we didn't know what questions to ask or what to follow up on.
When I was studying for my CDs exam last year, I kept thinking "oh wow, this would have been so useful to learn in pro practice!!"
I have OFTEN thought about what I wish I'd learned in Pro Practice, and it's this:
1) what are the different modes of practice out there? (for example : how does design/build actually WORK, like, legally? How do you manage to raise the capital to develop the project? How do you manage the liability aspect?)
2) What are architects typically liable for? How are the contracts generally structured? What are their pitfalls, and how can we avoid them? What should we watch out for when having a client sign a contract?
3) What happens when a project goes wrong? What is your recourse? For example, how do you get clients to pay?
4) How do you talk about money? (This would be insanely useful!) What are key things to think about when interacting with clients? (I learned a lot of client psychology from an early boss that has been INVALUABLE in my career)
5) How do you set up your own firm? If you have a website, and business cards, and you get your first client, what do you need? How do you get insurance? What type do you need? How do you register--what's all this about Schedule S or whatever the hell people keep referring to?
6) WHAT'S THE BUSINESS SIDE OF A FIRM? How do you calculate what your rate should be? How do you estimate overhead? How do you calculate how long a project will take and how many man-hours it will suck up? How do you make a firm profitable -- what are all the things that go into that? How do you know if you're heading in the wrong direction?
7) How do you structure the HR side of a firm to make sure that everyone, including your bottom line, is happy and your employees want to stay with you? (I have a lot of thoughts on this one if you need a guest lecturer!)
Man I would have LOVED all that -- even if it's just lecturing etcetera -- rather than asking some local principal "how many people do you employ? how many projects did you complete last year?" etc.
liberty bell, i enjoyed my propractice course... the only problem was, there was absolutely no work required... just a one page intro paper about ourselves or something...
however, the professor made the class interesting and worthwhile, just an hour of war stories where you could catch up on sleep and decompress the weeks studio stress...
just a terrificly nice and accessible guy and well respected within the community - john hartray - i'm sure you could contact him for advice
Emily, do the math on that one, just in case. The fee to "reinstate" if you've let your record lapse is often less than you'd pay in the aggregate from maintaining all those years. (Depends on the situation of course.) When I figured it, that's what I found for me personally. Plus I'd rather pay a higher fee later when I presumably have more money than continue to pay all this time for something I may never need anyway. It's a gimmick, in my humble opinion.
We had an ethics course in undergrad that was sincerely one of the most interesting courses I've ever taken (although it hasn't been specifically useful to me YET, but just kind of generally useful) and the format of that course I think could work well for a Pro Practice class.
The professor set up a series of topical course studies, subsets of "ethics in architecture" like so :
1) structural failure
2) contractual issues
3) client ethics
...and so on, perhaps 8 sub-headings of 2 weeks each or so (those weren't actual topics, I just made them up.) We met 2x a week so that would be about 4 class periods per segment or so. He gave a broad outline the first day of class, with plenty of pictures on an overhead projector (nothing helps an archi-student's memory like pictures!!!), then brought out some specific examples for the next 2 class periods. During each 2 week segment we had an assignment to track down a specific ethical architectural issue that related to the current topic and write a simple 1 or 1.5 page write-up on the issues, resolution, and lessons learned. Then on the last day of class we, I think, briefly went around the room and gave a quick run-down of our own little independent research topics.
(I'm going from memory here so that might not be exactly right.) Anyway I think this would work really well for pro practice. You need a certain amount of time for older architects to tell war-stories, but you also need those stories to be on-topic and for the larger subject to be neatly organized and broken down in a manageable fashion, or otherwise it just because "storytime with professor x" (as we called our urban studies course). And finally, you need a certain amount of pressure on the student to go out and find something related on her own, so that she's forced to extrapolate and make connections and learn from her own legwork.
I still have every single ethics write-up I wrote, and although I HATE writing with a passion I never seemed to mind those because they were short, manageable, and frankly, interesting. Because we had enough stories to engage us, and enough opportunities for intriguing digression -- and YET enough structure to tie it all together and keep it simplistic -- it was a really memorable class.
I should be clear -- that 4-class session I outlined, including the little write-up, was repeated for every sub-topic. So, we probably did about 8 units or so, writing 8 little papers. It was oddly fun. I know most of us enjoyed that class. The pace was such a nice relief from the pace of studio.
ooh, manta, i like #4. that would have been useful and a good classroom debate. you could simply just have students try and prove their worth... and liberty, you would get the satisfaction of cutting them and their bubbly dreams of how important architecture is down... (ok, full disclaimer: i would be a really mean teacher, for my own personal satisfaction.)
can anyone tell this has been my slowest day at the office in 3 months? i think i have 6 or 7 posts today.
speaking of lecturers - we need to find a history lecturer for September. A 2-3 year contract with housing. We are looking for someone with a focus on 20th century architecture, and interested in anglo-Caribbean research.
definitely agree with manta's comments - especially contracts - i.e. how not to get screwed - or more positively - how to put yourself in a strong position to help the client make better decisions and produce an excellent project while making enough money to support your business.
I've thought a lot about how to teach propractice in a way that would have been useful for me...
for one, i'd use the case study strategy, and have the class run through different tricky scenarios based the subject matter covered in a particular lesson (in groups or individually). I'd do stuff like bring in "potential clients" and have them write proposals for them (from good clients to weaselly clients), or have them work through common problems like when a client was being difficult and refuses to pay, how to deal with problem employees or coworkers effectively - or - what to do if you get sued and the importance of covering your ass.
actually - I'd structure it much like a management/leadership course at a B-school or government school... of course with all the liability, project delivery, contract negotiation, risk management, $$$$ (biggest question on everyone's mind), etc... thrown in...
IMO - pro-practice should be more than just one semester... this is essentially 95% of what we do in an office, and yet it's often only one class... I'd really like to see everyone required to take another propractice course at the end of IDP - you'll get more out of it if you've been working for a while.
I know I've said it before, but the best thing I ever learned in pro-practice was this: "You'll get whatever salary you can ask for with a straight face."
I think the topics that manta brought up are all good, but I would also like to see some stuff in their about the licensure process and what you can expect as an intern, a job captain, and a project manager, before you get to the point of firm ownership that many of those topics are geared towards.
In my pro-practice classes, that was where we learned things like the phases of the design process and what typically goes on in each of them (as well as what % of the fee typically goes to each). I don't know if other people learn that elsewhere, but it's a good basic to start with.
vado, i have no idea what facebook is up to. i am a bad facebook person. lately if i have free time i come here instead of there, and i guess they noticed. sorry. i hope they are not doing that to others as well.
lol steven. you and me both.
those are awesome bits of advice for pro-practice. i wish our course was like that, manta.
We had a very good course on law and another on ethics that covered a good bit of it but pro-practice itself was rather weak. the one interesting thing the teacher did for us was to make a final project where we had to pretend to be a firm and do an RFQ then present to a board (our esteemed instructor and his mates from work who actually in real life run an office with 150 people or so)...the best presenters got an A+, folks who made shortlist got A, and everyone else got crap grades. Pretty real. all or nothing baby. school of hard knocks and all that.
my group got an A+ because we were the only ones to think to make a CV that would qualify us to do the job. our presentations and interview were rubbish. but we got the A+ anyway, just like real life. It was very disconcerting.
most important thing i learned in that class?
1. ALWAYS dress slightly better than your clients; and
2. Make sure to join different churches, political parties, community groups than your office partners and DON'T spend too much time socialising with other architects
my pro practice class was "taught" by one of the crusty old faculty who talked a lot about being sued. the class was supposed to be a seminar but seemed to have half the architecture department in it. at the time i thought this guy was so jaded so over it so old. and over time i'm sure that if i went back in time and sat in on his class, i'd be nodding my head in agreement with every thing he said. i don't know how i would teach a course like that. first, because my professional career is a trainwreck but, secondly i am thinking beyond the artifact. we must go from posters and toasters to social activism.
[primal scream] i just got the happy news from our boss that our insurance premiums are going to DOUBLE from what we were paying last year. [/primal scream]
LB, congrats on the teaching gig! I'm emailing a bunch of stuff from my pro-practice hero - peter priven's course at penn.
make sure to teach how to estimate rates/billing multiples, skip the AIA contracts, make em do a career path essay & resume, teach about rfq's, rfi's, change orders, & skip liens (they can learn that when they study for the ARE).
Thanks for the props, guys. I guess I've been thinking about this one a lot -- pure happenstance! I love all these ideas from everyone. Man, we totally should have had to make up our own firm / RFQ / etc -- role playing is such a great idea! You could have all the crusty old unemployed cynical architects come in as guests and role-play as "clients", and make the students figure out how to respond... ha ha ha. "You said I could build an addition for $100/sf and the project is pricing out at $200/sf! I'm not paying you for any of your design work because you lied to me!"*
So many good ideas... it would have been useful to learn the different project phases, yeah!
And it took me forever to learn how to figure out an appropriate salary to ask for. That's always a question that comes up in this forum, rationalist's right.
This is fun. Guys we should just write up the curriculum right here and then all LB has to do is flash up archinect on the 'ole powerpoint and go have a drink!
*true story, and no, we most certainly did NOT ever tell him that, and he didn't have any proof either.
Techno, if you want a thoroughly engaging and knowledgeable history guy, contact The Captian. I can't. Oh wait I just did. Terry Kirk. He was awesome as a proff, and wrotetwo long books on Italian architecture beginning after the renaisance. He left Rome to find out what happened to the Bauhaus last I heard. I think he was from Boston or something. Whatever state Kerry was from - it was the 04 elections.
We learned phases and multipliers in pro-practice. We got two semesters of the class. I do have to say that after putting in five years and having your most gruelng studio projects ever, none of us took those classes seriously. Good luck LB.
You guys so rock. This is awesome to get so much help!
manta, I love all those questions and scenarios you offered. (And yes, I too dealt with the "We're not paying you because the price came in too high" issue once. They kept adding scope, we kept telling them they were going way above their projected budget, and they still blamed us when the quote came back almost double. A threatening letter from our lawyer netted us 3/4 payment and we were fine with that. Several years later they still haven't done a project.)
Barry, resume and career path are going to be day 1, I think - I need tog et a sense of how much these guys know already, as most of them (I've been told) have at least some internship experience.
I'm going to disappear now and write a syllabus, OK, 1/4 of a syllabus to start...
Oh and forgot to add, techno, two years in the Carribean talking about contemporary architecture sounds awesome! But I'm committed to fourteen weeks in glamorous, um, Muncie. Sorry ;-)
Mantary the best one always seems to be the client and contractor have made a design change, the final sum comes out 30% higher as a result and the architect gets blamed in the feedback meeting/analysis. Under misguidance. Ahhh the stories to tell.
LB it would be cool if they did their own version of a start up, and present to a business planner, a contractor, a loans officer
Add that you can have coffee with me everyday? I'll even come for dinner. If anyone even knows PhD candidates nearing completion let them know. When I get the official notice I'll spread the word wider.
Hmm, techno, I might have someone interested in the history prof position. He's not a historian though but a VERY knowledgeable and interesting guy. He's spent some time studying the african diaspora and its effect on the urban environment... might be interested in expanding his view to the caribbean, who knows. Send me an email with more info, would you?
Thread Central
that pic is awesome!
good luck emily! it all sounds appalling.
based on the 4 year degree thread things used to be different. no chance of a return to the good old days i supppose?
sorry, had to post, but couldn't bring myself to start a thread about it...
http://www.barbie.com/vote/
Vote for Barbie's next career! We're on the ballot!
(disclaimer: heard it on the news. I do not visit Barbie.com frequently)
Tumbles, Hey there...Is that a picture of you with the goat?
Either way I am sure you are having fun (and working hard) pursuing your passion.
WonderK, sorry about all the certification trouble. I never understood the whole national board but state certification thing. That is how teaching is too. You have to get state certified (which is different for each state) and only then can you get nationally certified.
As for the whole Conan-Leno thing. I never was a huge fan of Leno and i was enjoying occasionally catching Conan before bed. NBC is just jerking him around. I hope he leaves for another channel.
Or if i was him just take a couple of years off and let them pay out his contract.
And beta,
I heard NC just did it too.
Sure, postal, sure you don't hang out on barbie dot com.....We don't see you often enough here on TC and now we know why.....
jump, facebook keeps telling me to reconnect with you. hi jump what up?
Wow. A whole daydevoted to ncarb. Yuck. I started IDP before the six month rule took effect, and then got canned. So I guess I'll be paying them the maintenance fee until I can get all that done. May be a while.
Abram is starting school on Tuesday. It's just one day aweek, from 9-2. I'm excited and nervous for him. I know he's going to beterrifiedwhen I just leave him there. Makes me sad.
Why doesn't the apacebar work on my iPhone!
Also WonderK check out this video of Conan from last night via NYMagazine
well, i sure didn't have it as bad as some of you, but the running joke at work is that NCARB is out to get me... blue screen of death is always blamed on NCARB (or barbie dot com overload)
i had to call and call and call and call... always got a "oh...hmm, looks like this person was supposed to review this, call back in a week it should be done"... then NCARB sent all the direct registration stuff to the states which they aren't supposed to, so that delayed the process... and yes it took 8 times longer than it should, but it's over and done with...
they good thing is, they are starting to digitify the process... so hopefully if a few years, the process will be better...
but in the meantime, don't look at as "this process could be so much easier, i mean i just need a few signatures and a couple stamps and all that, and it costs me $800 bajillion dollars too!"... look at it like this is your first ARE exam and it's testing the permit process.... you have to take a set of information (your IDP crap) through the zoning and city (if you've had the pleasure of going through a big city, the metaphor works very well) and the city is unresponsive and have lost your permit app 4 times and they have all these weird fees, it's massively confusing and everyone only gives you half answers, and it's frustrating but you got to do it... so yeah, you're getting your first permit...
hurry up and pass those exams. great architecture careers await!
That is such an awesome picture of Tumbleweed and Catsup.
I was going to go on a long rant on NCARB and IDP but I changed my mind. I'm just glad I'm through it. Its almost worse that NCARB isn't a malicious group with harsh intent, but instead an ineffectively effective beauracratic organization.
i saw a goat standing on top of a parked car recently. i wish i could have gotten a picture of that.
i lived in boston for 3 years so, yes, i'm familiar with the bac model. it's not perfect and even with the internships the actual b.arch/m.arch degree itself is no different than those awarded by any other school. it's kind of patchwork of what i proposed.
the more i think about it, it just seems odd to me that a professional degree bestows such little professional status. yes, it permits you to sit for the exams but that almost feels like a technicality. hypothetically if you decided to "major" in architecture but your school awarded you BS/BFA/MS/MFA/etc and you then spent 3-5 years doing IDP under an architect before passing the ARE, are you really any less qualified to be a licensed architect than those of us with BArch or MArch? (the difference in academics might be as little as 10 credits worth of structures & pro practice)
combine that with the zeal that the bureaucrats exhibit in chasing down unlicensed architects, and suddenly it seems almost fraudulent for schools to sell a b.arch/m.arch a professional degree.
licensing should be a simple matter, so formulaic that it shouldn't even warrant a discussion amongst architects. as a simple (and probably inapporpriate) analogy: if i have a fishing pole then i'm a fisherman and if i want to go fishing in florida then i by a fishing license from the government of florida. likewise, if you are a professional architect (however that's defined) and you want to practise in florida then you should buy a license from the government of florida. since architecture is more complex than fishing, i'd expect it would be an expensive license (but that should simply be included in the cost of doing business, a relatively minor expense given the cost of construction).
A belated 'Yay!' for Strawberry! Hope it pans out.
And boo on NCARB battles. I must say that's something I'm glad to not have to deal wth. Technically I'm in the system and could take my exams, but... I think I'll skip it. Why put myself through all that for no reason?
I worked 16 hours yesterday to get a presentation out the door... I feel like I'm back in school. Fortunately before my boss left, he told me to not even set an alarm today, just come in whenever I wake up. So I'm posting from the comfort of my bed, though I wish the construction next door would shut up so that I could get a couple more hours sleep.
Hi all...I have about 30 pages of TC to read, but I am glad to see everyone doing relatively well and still pursuing some exciting goals.
Sorry about your NCARB troubles, keep pushing...it's worth it...don't let the beauracratic jackholes get you down. For some reason Texas was pretty straight forward and I got confirmation emails at every step. I was even cc'd on the email between NCARB and the Texas board when they transmitted my record. I guess Texas has donated more money/people at the top than other states.
Back to lurking and reading...
rationalist, I've never understood that kind of thing -- "just come in whenever you wake up" -- why not "you worked two full days' worth of work yesterday, why don't you take tomorrow off?! God knows you probably don't want to come in and see THIS place again tomorrow! Spend some time, you know, attending to your own business at home!"
One of my old bosses used to do that all the time. "Thanks for pulling an all-nighter to get this out the door and meet my unreasonable deadline that the client didn't even care about. Now, why don't you just go home early today? I'm sure you'd like to shower and maybe catch a nap. Feel free to leave at 4!" ugh.
"just come in whenever you wake up." what an asshole...i'll have to remember to use that one.
well, he had to be up at a god-awful hour today to travel and make the presentation, and has promised the whole department a friday off when the travel is done. So I look at my morning off as a bonus, didn't come in til noon and I'm about to take lunch. So maybe I'm a schmuck but I'm not all that worried about it.
Hi Dapper!
BTW I'm suddenly teaching a ProPractice class at Ball State starting Thursday - four days to prepare whoop! But I have the syllabus from last year's professor (on leave of absence) as a starting points.
Question for TC: what was anything valuable or entertaining you got out of YOUR Pro Practice course? Mine sucked, but we did learn programming, which was really valuable.
we had movie snippets featuring architects interwoven with our professor's lectures. this was a nice feature...but it would have been infinitely better if professor had including some scenes from "the towering inferno" which featured paul newman as an architect.
the opening sequence where he shows up to work in a helicopter, then strolls through his office (approving designs & solving problems as he walks) to an apartment in the back already stocked with a lover in bed...well, that scene is just brilliant! perfect example of how professionals should practice,
that was supposed to end with a period, not a coma. i hate you, coma!
good news looks like I'm going to get a TA (teaching assistant not tits/ass) The latter would involve me having to explain alot. Not so good news I'll be teaching for two again this semester. Good news I will get overtime pay. Not so good news - it's paid on a semester basis
good news I got a few of my books that have been locked up in Montserrat. Not so good news one of the books has a nibble on the spine from what looks like a mouse/rat. Eww
I thought about that, puddles- that I could show bits of how architects are perceived as professionals, which would be fun if not especially rigorous! I've never seen How I Met Your Mother, though, which I hear has an architect in it.
I hate comas, too. Commas, OTOH, are my friends.
Wow does The Towering Inferno really start like that? I'll have to watch it.
Thanks all for your input regarding my NCARB mess. I just talked to them earlier, and I think getting my CA license but taking the test in OR will work, as long as CA can locate my record that was transmitted. ***fingers crossed***
Also I learned that - according to them - it's "wise" to keep your NCARB record active, and thus keep paying them the annual fee, just in case you'd like to get licensed in another state later on, because you'll need them for your record. I personally think it's a steep price for them to hold onto my file in a cabinet somewhere, but whatever.
Actually How I Met Your Mother, although a somewhat silly show, totally makes me laugh (although it's more formulaic than, say, your 30rock and other po-mo sitcoms).
The portrayal of Ted as an architect in that show is actually the most genuine I've seen!!! He cracks me up -- I've often wondered if one of the writers is married to an architect, they honestly MUST be, there's no way anyone could get that goofy expression of passion-about-a-subject-that-bores-everyone-else just SO unless they were an architect's significant other. Someday I'll look it up and find out...
As for Pro Practice... my class was a WASTE of time, despite the fact that my professor went on to win an award for the curriculum. We had to "profile" various local firms in groups, and make a group presentation at the end of the semester. The problem was, all we were doing was interviewing principals, so we basically ended up becoming their defacto PR reps in the presentation. We didn't know anything about the biz, so we didn't know what questions to ask or what to follow up on.
When I was studying for my CDs exam last year, I kept thinking "oh wow, this would have been so useful to learn in pro practice!!"
I have OFTEN thought about what I wish I'd learned in Pro Practice, and it's this:
1) what are the different modes of practice out there? (for example : how does design/build actually WORK, like, legally? How do you manage to raise the capital to develop the project? How do you manage the liability aspect?)
2) What are architects typically liable for? How are the contracts generally structured? What are their pitfalls, and how can we avoid them? What should we watch out for when having a client sign a contract?
3) What happens when a project goes wrong? What is your recourse? For example, how do you get clients to pay?
4) How do you talk about money? (This would be insanely useful!) What are key things to think about when interacting with clients? (I learned a lot of client psychology from an early boss that has been INVALUABLE in my career)
5) How do you set up your own firm? If you have a website, and business cards, and you get your first client, what do you need? How do you get insurance? What type do you need? How do you register--what's all this about Schedule S or whatever the hell people keep referring to?
6) WHAT'S THE BUSINESS SIDE OF A FIRM? How do you calculate what your rate should be? How do you estimate overhead? How do you calculate how long a project will take and how many man-hours it will suck up? How do you make a firm profitable -- what are all the things that go into that? How do you know if you're heading in the wrong direction?
7) How do you structure the HR side of a firm to make sure that everyone, including your bottom line, is happy and your employees want to stay with you? (I have a lot of thoughts on this one if you need a guest lecturer!)
Man I would have LOVED all that -- even if it's just lecturing etcetera -- rather than asking some local principal "how many people do you employ? how many projects did you complete last year?" etc.
liberty bell, i enjoyed my propractice course... the only problem was, there was absolutely no work required... just a one page intro paper about ourselves or something...
however, the professor made the class interesting and worthwhile, just an hour of war stories where you could catch up on sleep and decompress the weeks studio stress...
just a terrificly nice and accessible guy and well respected within the community - john hartray - i'm sure you could contact him for advice
Emily, do the math on that one, just in case. The fee to "reinstate" if you've let your record lapse is often less than you'd pay in the aggregate from maintaining all those years. (Depends on the situation of course.) When I figured it, that's what I found for me personally. Plus I'd rather pay a higher fee later when I presumably have more money than continue to pay all this time for something I may never need anyway. It's a gimmick, in my humble opinion.
We had an ethics course in undergrad that was sincerely one of the most interesting courses I've ever taken (although it hasn't been specifically useful to me YET, but just kind of generally useful) and the format of that course I think could work well for a Pro Practice class.
The professor set up a series of topical course studies, subsets of "ethics in architecture" like so :
1) structural failure
2) contractual issues
3) client ethics
...and so on, perhaps 8 sub-headings of 2 weeks each or so (those weren't actual topics, I just made them up.) We met 2x a week so that would be about 4 class periods per segment or so. He gave a broad outline the first day of class, with plenty of pictures on an overhead projector (nothing helps an archi-student's memory like pictures!!!), then brought out some specific examples for the next 2 class periods. During each 2 week segment we had an assignment to track down a specific ethical architectural issue that related to the current topic and write a simple 1 or 1.5 page write-up on the issues, resolution, and lessons learned. Then on the last day of class we, I think, briefly went around the room and gave a quick run-down of our own little independent research topics.
(I'm going from memory here so that might not be exactly right.) Anyway I think this would work really well for pro practice. You need a certain amount of time for older architects to tell war-stories, but you also need those stories to be on-topic and for the larger subject to be neatly organized and broken down in a manageable fashion, or otherwise it just because "storytime with professor x" (as we called our urban studies course). And finally, you need a certain amount of pressure on the student to go out and find something related on her own, so that she's forced to extrapolate and make connections and learn from her own legwork.
I still have every single ethics write-up I wrote, and although I HATE writing with a passion I never seemed to mind those because they were short, manageable, and frankly, interesting. Because we had enough stories to engage us, and enough opportunities for intriguing digression -- and YET enough structure to tie it all together and keep it simplistic -- it was a really memorable class.
I should be clear -- that 4-class session I outlined, including the little write-up, was repeated for every sub-topic. So, we probably did about 8 units or so, writing 8 little papers. It was oddly fun. I know most of us enjoyed that class. The pace was such a nice relief from the pace of studio.
ooh, manta, i like #4. that would have been useful and a good classroom debate. you could simply just have students try and prove their worth... and liberty, you would get the satisfaction of cutting them and their bubbly dreams of how important architecture is down... (ok, full disclaimer: i would be a really mean teacher, for my own personal satisfaction.)
can anyone tell this has been my slowest day at the office in 3 months? i think i have 6 or 7 posts today.
speaking of lecturers - we need to find a history lecturer for September. A 2-3 year contract with housing. We are looking for someone with a focus on 20th century architecture, and interested in anglo-Caribbean research.
hmm... propractice...
definitely agree with manta's comments - especially contracts - i.e. how not to get screwed - or more positively - how to put yourself in a strong position to help the client make better decisions and produce an excellent project while making enough money to support your business.
I've thought a lot about how to teach propractice in a way that would have been useful for me...
for one, i'd use the case study strategy, and have the class run through different tricky scenarios based the subject matter covered in a particular lesson (in groups or individually). I'd do stuff like bring in "potential clients" and have them write proposals for them (from good clients to weaselly clients), or have them work through common problems like when a client was being difficult and refuses to pay, how to deal with problem employees or coworkers effectively - or - what to do if you get sued and the importance of covering your ass.
actually - I'd structure it much like a management/leadership course at a B-school or government school... of course with all the liability, project delivery, contract negotiation, risk management, $$$$ (biggest question on everyone's mind), etc... thrown in...
IMO - pro-practice should be more than just one semester... this is essentially 95% of what we do in an office, and yet it's often only one class... I'd really like to see everyone required to take another propractice course at the end of IDP - you'll get more out of it if you've been working for a while.
I know I've said it before, but the best thing I ever learned in pro-practice was this: "You'll get whatever salary you can ask for with a straight face."
I think the topics that manta brought up are all good, but I would also like to see some stuff in their about the licensure process and what you can expect as an intern, a job captain, and a project manager, before you get to the point of firm ownership that many of those topics are geared towards.
In my pro-practice classes, that was where we learned things like the phases of the design process and what typically goes on in each of them (as well as what % of the fee typically goes to each). I don't know if other people learn that elsewhere, but it's a good basic to start with.
I'm still working really hard NOT to learn all that professional practice stuff. Mostly failing because I'm being forced to absorb it.
vado, i have no idea what facebook is up to. i am a bad facebook person. lately if i have free time i come here instead of there, and i guess they noticed. sorry. i hope they are not doing that to others as well.
lol steven. you and me both.
those are awesome bits of advice for pro-practice. i wish our course was like that, manta.
We had a very good course on law and another on ethics that covered a good bit of it but pro-practice itself was rather weak. the one interesting thing the teacher did for us was to make a final project where we had to pretend to be a firm and do an RFQ then present to a board (our esteemed instructor and his mates from work who actually in real life run an office with 150 people or so)...the best presenters got an A+, folks who made shortlist got A, and everyone else got crap grades. Pretty real. all or nothing baby. school of hard knocks and all that.
my group got an A+ because we were the only ones to think to make a CV that would qualify us to do the job. our presentations and interview were rubbish. but we got the A+ anyway, just like real life. It was very disconcerting.
most important thing i learned in that class?
1. ALWAYS dress slightly better than your clients; and
2. Make sure to join different churches, political parties, community groups than your office partners and DON'T spend too much time socialising with other architects
I think i learned to be a cynic in that class.
my pro practice class was "taught" by one of the crusty old faculty who talked a lot about being sued. the class was supposed to be a seminar but seemed to have half the architecture department in it. at the time i thought this guy was so jaded so over it so old. and over time i'm sure that if i went back in time and sat in on his class, i'd be nodding my head in agreement with every thing he said. i don't know how i would teach a course like that. first, because my professional career is a trainwreck but, secondly i am thinking beyond the artifact. we must go from posters and toasters to social activism.
[primal scream] i just got the happy news from our boss that our insurance premiums are going to DOUBLE from what we were paying last year. [/primal scream]
LB, congrats on the teaching gig! I'm emailing a bunch of stuff from my pro-practice hero - peter priven's course at penn.
make sure to teach how to estimate rates/billing multiples, skip the AIA contracts, make em do a career path essay & resume, teach about rfq's, rfi's, change orders, & skip liens (they can learn that when they study for the ARE).
oh vado, i want to have coffee with you again. lots to talk about! when are you coming back here?
Thanks for the props, guys. I guess I've been thinking about this one a lot -- pure happenstance! I love all these ideas from everyone. Man, we totally should have had to make up our own firm / RFQ / etc -- role playing is such a great idea! You could have all the crusty old unemployed cynical architects come in as guests and role-play as "clients", and make the students figure out how to respond... ha ha ha. "You said I could build an addition for $100/sf and the project is pricing out at $200/sf! I'm not paying you for any of your design work because you lied to me!"*
So many good ideas... it would have been useful to learn the different project phases, yeah!
And it took me forever to learn how to figure out an appropriate salary to ask for. That's always a question that comes up in this forum, rationalist's right.
This is fun. Guys we should just write up the curriculum right here and then all LB has to do is flash up archinect on the 'ole powerpoint and go have a drink!
*true story, and no, we most certainly did NOT ever tell him that, and he didn't have any proof either.
Techno, if you want a thoroughly engaging and knowledgeable history guy, contact The Captian. I can't. Oh wait I just did. Terry Kirk. He was awesome as a proff, and wrotetwo long books on Italian architecture beginning after the renaisance. He left Rome to find out what happened to the Bauhaus last I heard. I think he was from Boston or something. Whatever state Kerry was from - it was the 04 elections.
We learned phases and multipliers in pro-practice. We got two semesters of the class. I do have to say that after putting in five years and having your most gruelng studio projects ever, none of us took those classes seriously. Good luck LB.
manta i was just thinking about how its been almost a year since you bought me birthday crepes and we talked about julia child and citroens!
thanks strawbeary
I got the lighting, diamond and almost got the platinum right.
Now a high-res test! Here's to the room warming up 7 degrees!
You guys so rock. This is awesome to get so much help!
manta, I love all those questions and scenarios you offered. (And yes, I too dealt with the "We're not paying you because the price came in too high" issue once. They kept adding scope, we kept telling them they were going way above their projected budget, and they still blamed us when the quote came back almost double. A threatening letter from our lawyer netted us 3/4 payment and we were fine with that. Several years later they still haven't done a project.)
Barry, resume and career path are going to be day 1, I think - I need tog et a sense of how much these guys know already, as most of them (I've been told) have at least some internship experience.
I'm going to disappear now and write a syllabus, OK, 1/4 of a syllabus to start...
Oh and forgot to add, techno, two years in the Carribean talking about contemporary architecture sounds awesome! But I'm committed to fourteen weeks in glamorous, um, Muncie. Sorry ;-)
Mantary the best one always seems to be the client and contractor have made a design change, the final sum comes out 30% higher as a result and the architect gets blamed in the feedback meeting/analysis. Under misguidance. Ahhh the stories to tell.
LB it would be cool if they did their own version of a start up, and present to a business planner, a contractor, a loans officer
Add that you can have coffee with me everyday? I'll even come for dinner. If anyone even knows PhD candidates nearing completion let them know. When I get the official notice I'll spread the word wider.
hrmm.. I just happened to notice that it's Sarah Hamilton's 3-year anniversary on Archinect!
(I checked her member profile after she commented on her son starting school, and I said to myself, "Wan't her son born like 3 months ago???")
Congratulations, Sarah!
Hmm, techno, I might have someone interested in the history prof position. He's not a historian though but a VERY knowledgeable and interesting guy. He's spent some time studying the african diaspora and its effect on the urban environment... might be interested in expanding his view to the caribbean, who knows. Send me an email with more info, would you?
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