I used Yeang's ecodesign last year - tries very hard to be web2.0 and at time he can be very long winded. I also used Melby's Regenerative Design Techniques that focuses more on the domestic scale. Yeang's Eco-masterplanning has lots of good case studies. The other reason why you might want to choose one of Yeang's books is that he is writing from Malaysia, where the other authors are European or North Am...
There are a limited selection books that deal with sustainable urbanism - Yeang and McHarg are still best. I ahve mixed reviews of Jenks & Dempsey's Future forms and Design for Sustainable Cities - some chapters are brilliant, others are either obtuse or useless.
This summer, I'm wading through the latest crop of sustainable design texts, to try and find a new book for my fall class. I'm leaning more to an engineering approach that includes some of the basic calculations (but trying to avoid calculus).
just finished Mitsch's Ecological engineering and ecosystem Restoration. Up next is Lyle...
I enjoyed "design for ecological democracy" by Hester - it's long, but gives a good overview.
IMO - most of what is in books on this subject seems to be focused on "sexy" single-concept designs and individual buildings/developments, large-scale Utopian, or regional planning strategies rather than giving examples of the slightly more mundane community-focused projects that have made a real impact on a local neighborhood (even if the end result is not architecture) - you know, the stuff most of us can actually get out there and make happen. Not that the other stuff isn't worthwhile discussing, it's that the latter is easier for the average person to relate to.
also - most of the work in sustainable architecture and urbanism is education and policy - not necessarily tangible design. it's a lot of foot work - getting out and talking to people, building alliances, figuring out just how far people are willing to change, etc...
I am going to try and teach the course with emphasis on behavior, economics, social equity, and resource use - with design only as the vehicle for the above. So am looking for a text that covers abstract ideas as well as practical ones. I want students to have tools for critical thinking about the subject more than i want them to have the technical knowledge. i figure the latter stuff will change a lot over time but understanding what is important will stick longer.
I hadn't thought Yeang would be so good, Barry. I will def look into him further. Agree about jencks and dempsey book. it isnt as rigorous as his earlier books in the series, which is i think a reflection of the reality that so few people are doing serious academic work on the topic. or maybe he was just rushed...
will also check out" design for ecological democracy", thanks toaster.
completely by chance my daughter is studying recycling at school now and for homework she had to make a list of items in our home that are made from recycled material. I explained her the cradle to cradle idea and gave her the book (printed on plastic pages) to show her teacher. I am curious if he will see it as undermining his lessons or as an eye-opener. My daughter got the idea right away - recycling is only less bad, not a real solution.
jump - that book is mostly focused on american-specific urban issues, and is very much pimping his own ideas and terms ("glocalizaion?"), but there are some good case studies and a decent overview of thinking about sustainability in terms of community as well as ecologically. probably close to what you are looking for.
donna's bringing the governor's school architecture studio to tour louisville today, but i probably won't get to see them. some ambassador i am! i am sorry to be missing them.
weather is perfect as only MN in the summer can be - 70s with low humidity, sunny and gentle breeze. But a few days like this don't compensate for 6 months of frigid hell.
Coldest experience one can know in Minnesota is driving around in an air cooled VW Beetle vintage late 1960's, when the temperature is like 40 below zero....your scraping the ice off of the inside of the windshield... Minnesota where the Men are Men and the Women are a touch above the Men.
Barry those comments are in so many ways utterly hilarious. Frustrating to mature, intelligent people who want to see others expand their minds and work hard to achieve, but hilarious nonetheless. Poor darlings. Life's a bitch, I guess!
I'm feeling exhausted but good. Marched the students all around downtown Louisville and went through three of my co-teacher's totally wonderful projects. I know so many super smart architects, I'm blessed!
Nam lucky you! They are an incredibly lively band. I however often find myself distracted by David Hinds giant lock (singular) sticking off the side of his head that he's folded, much like a crepe, resting on precariously under a hat. Should be great - who's the opening act?
So I made a archi-rookie mistake today. I had to use a different computer at the office and didn't check the auto-save. Now this happens to be the only computer not connected to a ups. So I was busily drawing away from morning, way through lunch - then the power chipped out.. less than 2 seconds. I lost 4.5 hours work.
If I were a student and my teacher evaluation was posted on a public forum, I wouldn't be offended as long as it was anonymous. After all, who is more vulnerable here, the named professor being evaluated, or the anonymous students doing that evaluation.
I would think there are going to be negative comments regardless of how good/bad a teacher is (you just can't please everyone), and some that respond negatively because they didn't get a good grade or something along those lines. I don't know how you wade through that to get to the real constructive criticisms.
Anyway...Hello all. Its been a ridiculously hot June here and is being projected that it will be the hottest June since they started keeping record in 1872. And before I heard that, I was thinking how amazing it is that everyone complains (including myself) about weather every single year as if its never happened before. Well, apparently it hasn't.
Random trivia, did y'all know Nakashima (the furniture maker) was trained as an architect? I forgot about it, and then remembered again while looking up some of his stuff. Something new I found was that he was released from internment camp because he was sponsored by another architect. Lately, I keep running into random architect(urally trained) folk trivia when I'm not looking for them. There is also a small/relatively new park in Philly that is in the honor of a historically prominent African American architect - Julian Abele. There is a plan for a mural and everything (for scale, note the profile of the mural follows the profile of a three story rowhouse and there are windows):
i think you are quite cool to be posting the comments barry. it isn't easy to post the not so nice stuff that others have written about you even if some of it is quite funny/silly. the fish articles are very good/informing. i have to agree with him about the point of the whole exercise. seems they can be useful, as long as not given too much weight...
i am also very happy to see the post about detailing a wooden wall. lots of cool technical links from the community. hurray for the architectural community!
us management-type folks in our office are going through an exercise right now in which we go over each project the office has taken on over the past several years and plot on a matrix where it falls relative to revenue and design-quality/potential. a very humbling exercise as most of the projects end up bunched up in the lower left corner (low revenue/low design merit) of the chart.
the exercise is supposed to allow us to see how to market and what kinds of projects to target - i.e., where are the projects in which we can BOTH work within a potentially good design process AND possibly make some money > those are the ones to which we might prefer to market.
so far we've only charted two years (we average +/-100 projects a year) and already i'm questioning what we can learn from it.
- the big projects that take a lot of time are obviously higher revenue projects and also afford more mucking around in the design trenches > result is better design!
- the smaller projects where design is important > almost universally losers because of the time it takes, despite what the fees allow.
- our cashflow comes from crap design on crap fees. that's why we haven't had to lay off anyone: the money comes in and goes out.
- the number of projects with low revenue low design that we note as still important because they could lead to future work is WAY too high. these loss leaders are eating us up.
note that this is all about revenue (gross), not net (profit). even the bigger projects are in the low/negative profit range, so they can't even carry us.
the moral: we're among the very few firms in our city that have done well lately and not laid off a single person. that might indicate that we're doing something right, right?! but this exercise shows us that the projects that do well - that are both good additions to our community and also allow us to make some money - they are complete accidents of staffing assignments and circumstances. it's not something we're doing wrong or right that we can leverage, it's just dumb luck.
It's good you're going through this exercise, though, so you have a realistic understanding of what your firm is doing. That way if you DO want to change things, you'll know where to start. But if you don't have energy to make changes now, the dumb luck will hopefully keep carrying you until you do!
so, here's the thing of the matter: your life in the last month - at least the one i have been "comfortable" with - get's thrown up in the air, and uncertainty in the early days is abound. yet, the more distance you get from the event, you find, that you are not so bad, the alone-ness you feared, is not a bad thing. you find that you can actually tolerate hanging around you, and find joy in doing things alone, and not worry about life. enjoy living. go to see cool bands play, go to museums, go to movies, go to gallery openings, read a book at a cafe - all things i did by myself, without guilt. not to say of course, that i don't still have moments of trepidation, or anxiety, but there are lessening.
what has helped, in my case, is returning to church - i know, i know, not going to proselytize - and meeting new people, enlightened people, scientists, scholars, architects - sane fucking people, that actually believe in evolution, as well as religion - [like that f-bomb?]. if anything, they reaffirmed my belief in humanity, treating me like a human - and most of them know nothing about my current circumstances, so it's honest feelings, and not pity - and that's okay right? to feel human, when every part of me felt inhuman?
one person i've met is pretty damn cool, she is a scientist working on her phd at the U, and here's the cool part, barry: she is working on using algae to create bio-fuels. cool. she even gave me a tour of the church. oh, i forgot, the church is Elilel Saarinen's Christ Church Lutheran, his last known, built work. it's a few blocks from my house, and they have docent led tours on the first sunday of the month. so, me, trying to be a decent person, went to the service first, and then wanted to go the tour. that's when this individual noticed i was there - we attended the same neighborhood organization committee meetings - and we started talking and she gave me a private tour of the facility.
anyhow. the clouds are starting to part, and now that i see "me" i see that i am less sure about what i am doing in this profession, i wear "architecture sucks" shirt everyday to the ywca. the creative individual is grabbing hold, real hard, and pulling me away from pragmatics, into a world i have so longed to be a part of, and it really has nothing to do with solving "sustainability", "housing", or any of the other certainly pressing issues in our profession. i have been trying to figure out if what i am thinking is even "architecture" and what i have realized, it's not, and i am finally okay with that.
Thanks for the comments on the student comments. Does anybody on TC think it was stupid to share all that negativity on the wild wild web?
beta, go become a poet or painter or community arts impresario. You only can have one mid-life crisis.
SW, the firm I used to work for had no interest in self-reflection and kept on making the same bad choices over and over again. If I ever return to working for a firm (and not running my own), they had better have wise management like your office is displaying. I don't know how you can make good design with out good management.
Beta, you really sound happy. At peace, even. That's awesome.
I'm overseeing the move and arrangment of my grandmother's new assisted living apartment today. I really like overseeing things, I tend to find it rewarding.
Steven I think it is great your office takes the opportunity for self reflection and goal orientation. So often organizations and people (particularly myself) just keep plugging away and never take the time to strategize. Although I imagine it must be frustrating to find out the firms good fortune isn't as structured/planned as one might like.
It sounds like beta is doing similar strategizing andprioritizing of what is important re: goals etc.
Poor management and lack of feedback were major things that drove me out of the profession. Steven, I too think your firm is special if they can self-reflect like that.
In the last week, two different parents told me that if we opened up a school, they would send their kids there. Got me thinking, What If? But that is a lot more responsibility and probably not as profitable as what we are doing now.
Yesterday, one of my students looked at me, cocked her head to the side and threw me a huge smile. I asked her what she was thinking and she blurted, "Summer school is so much more fun that regular school!" Then another student, a 12 year old boy, thanked me and told me how much he appreciated what we do for him. Since when do 12 year old boys thank their teachers? I was blown away. Feels so nice to be appreciated. Continuing to believe I have found a wonderful place to work.
I hate this game with submittals where the GC sends over stuff we didn't spec and we reject it - it wastes time. I'd much rather get submittals with an explanation of why they are substituting certain items so that we can actually have a conversation as to what works and what doesn't - so that they aren't trying to put in cheap crap to save a buck and we are actually responding to their professional opinion. The whole submittal process seems to be set up to create animosity between architect and the contractor - and the contractor uses it to complain that we are holding things up.
toaster, the solution to that is to include in the specs a penalty for submitting un-approved products not listed in the spec. that'll get their attention.
one reason i like school work. our department of education makes it clear that post-bid substitutions are simply unacceptable. it's not on us, man! it's the rulez!
i'm glad you guys think our firm's management exercises are worthwhile. it sure feels like belly-button gazing sometimes, especially when my adrenaline's up because i've got deadlines.
hi beta. Glad to hear you are seeing past the dark clouds.
So I went for a walk around the reservoir near school. Huge thing it supplies roughly 500k consumers from a circumference of about 1600m. Anyway I found myself wondering why it wasn't like Silver Lake with tiny houses tucked around it, instead there were a few in the distance on a place called Beverly Hills (sensing a trend here). Anyway it inspired me enough to develop a little project for myself. Call it a warm up for my PhD (whenever we decide where I'm going to do that). So it's for my mockutural thesis and it's called social housing integrated terrain or SHIT for short. So I may present this next month at the inaugural pecha kucha night and see if I have any bites.
Steven love the navel gazing - it should be par for all architectural offices that have somewhat survived the crisis or not
Steven, I was hanging on every word of your project-analysis post above. I love that kind of stuff.
Are you planning to share the data with the rest of your firm? As a junior staff person, it sure does help (me, at least) to know what the firm's objective is for a project. You know, strategy and big picture.
Technically, no reservoir that doesn't have a constant inlet (in supply) water should not have any development.
The water withdrawals in L.A. are getting too severe and the water is not being allowed to stagnate long enough in order to pretreat it-- for instance, bird poop is biologically and chemically hazardous (fungus, bacteria, phosphorous).
That's the reason why they've filled Silver Lake up with what... a half a million of black plastic balls?
In either event, the reservoir (Stone Canyon) is getting a shiny metal aluminum cover and is then getting a layer of dirt over it. They're going to put some dumpy development on the north reservoir and they're going to turn the south one into a park.
Steven, I might have to steal your project matrix idea for my office... being in the research group, my immediate boss loves matrices in a big way, and it sounds like a really useful exercise!
@ barry, no i don't think was bad idea. you were very upfront about why you put it out there.
@ steven, very cool. at least you know what you are doing and what makes money for you and what doesn't. like they say it is the prepared who are able to take advantage of luck, so maybe now you are prepared more you will get to take advantage of opportunities better....
just why - i don't think we know what we're doing with this information yet. we're first trying to get a picture of what we're doing.
the larger goal is to try to define who we are - and how that should be projected out to others. a challenge we have is that - despite being one of the busiest firms in the city - very few people who haven't sought us out know who we are. this perpetuates the cycle of down-n-dirty low revenue/low design projects. those who want a fuller design effort tend to go to names they've heard associated with design...
we have a name recognition problem because a lot of our BEST work is outside louisville. there happen to be two other architects with similar names to ours here in the city, firms with whom we're often confused - and they've done a better job at pr than we have, so people think of them first! we also have no website - something we're actively trying to address right now.
our office has been so casual in its growth. we are 13 people now, but we still act like we did when we were 4. the office is a mess, with no space really suitable to bring someone - it's all *work* space and all a disorganized disaster. we've grown, but are now trying to grow up!
we need to define who we are, what our vision for the company is, and then get it out there. that's what we working toward.
SW, I pictured your firm much bigger and well established because I understood your main project type is schools! They don't hire just anyone, and being pillars of the community in buildings that are supposed to be built to last, schools are often interested in both design and dee-zine much more than most clients. Way to go! In a time when many firms are going under, many are falsely blaming the economy when they should be looking at themselves, the recession is merely the catalyst bringing the problems to the forefront. The fact that you are growing in a recession is a fabulous thing, and about as good of feedback as you can get! There are still building projects going on, and there is money out there, and he who positions himself best will have the most LUCK!
In the news this morning, police are looking for a man matching the description of "a leprechaun" who is jumping out from behind cars and flipping people the bird. Too funny.
Good afternoon all! Working my super-part-time retail gig today but haven't seen a single customer in HOURS and am about to go crazy with loneliness and boredom! I might find the end of the internet this afternoon... sigh.
...but the most important thing you SHOULD be doing is getting yourself to Lexington for the BobbyQ...good luck with your meetings, we can't wait to see you!
so was in the office and apparently there's a firm who is doing some mixed housing just opposite of the site for SHIT - this could be a Huge pile of Shit when it's done. @Unicorn I'm not talking about Stone Canyon ridge but thanks for the links, it's actually this one
unicorn I'm glad you got the humour in it - should be good to get the brain working on far out projects (well far out for the stuffed shirts that live in that area)
Thread Central
actually, i was thinking of thermally active surfaces in architecture
Jump,
I used Yeang's ecodesign last year - tries very hard to be web2.0 and at time he can be very long winded. I also used Melby's Regenerative Design Techniques that focuses more on the domestic scale. Yeang's Eco-masterplanning has lots of good case studies. The other reason why you might want to choose one of Yeang's books is that he is writing from Malaysia, where the other authors are European or North Am...
There are a limited selection books that deal with sustainable urbanism - Yeang and McHarg are still best. I ahve mixed reviews of Jenks & Dempsey's Future forms and Design for Sustainable Cities - some chapters are brilliant, others are either obtuse or useless.
This summer, I'm wading through the latest crop of sustainable design texts, to try and find a new book for my fall class. I'm leaning more to an engineering approach that includes some of the basic calculations (but trying to avoid calculus).
just finished Mitsch's Ecological engineering and ecosystem Restoration. Up next is Lyle...
I enjoyed "design for ecological democracy" by Hester - it's long, but gives a good overview.
IMO - most of what is in books on this subject seems to be focused on "sexy" single-concept designs and individual buildings/developments, large-scale Utopian, or regional planning strategies rather than giving examples of the slightly more mundane community-focused projects that have made a real impact on a local neighborhood (even if the end result is not architecture) - you know, the stuff most of us can actually get out there and make happen. Not that the other stuff isn't worthwhile discussing, it's that the latter is easier for the average person to relate to.
also - most of the work in sustainable architecture and urbanism is education and policy - not necessarily tangible design. it's a lot of foot work - getting out and talking to people, building alliances, figuring out just how far people are willing to change, etc...
awesome responses! thanks!
i have all your books on the list philip, cheers.
I am going to try and teach the course with emphasis on behavior, economics, social equity, and resource use - with design only as the vehicle for the above. So am looking for a text that covers abstract ideas as well as practical ones. I want students to have tools for critical thinking about the subject more than i want them to have the technical knowledge. i figure the latter stuff will change a lot over time but understanding what is important will stick longer.
I hadn't thought Yeang would be so good, Barry. I will def look into him further. Agree about jencks and dempsey book. it isnt as rigorous as his earlier books in the series, which is i think a reflection of the reality that so few people are doing serious academic work on the topic. or maybe he was just rushed...
will also check out" design for ecological democracy", thanks toaster.
completely by chance my daughter is studying recycling at school now and for homework she had to make a list of items in our home that are made from recycled material. I explained her the cradle to cradle idea and gave her the book (printed on plastic pages) to show her teacher. I am curious if he will see it as undermining his lessons or as an eye-opener. My daughter got the idea right away - recycling is only less bad, not a real solution.
jump - that book is mostly focused on american-specific urban issues, and is very much pimping his own ideas and terms ("glocalizaion?"), but there are some good case studies and a decent overview of thinking about sustainability in terms of community as well as ecologically. probably close to what you are looking for.
here's the table of contents
donna's bringing the governor's school architecture studio to tour louisville today, but i probably won't get to see them. some ambassador i am! i am sorry to be missing them.
hi donna!
Hope I'm not asking for trouble...
weather is perfect as only MN in the summer can be - 70s with low humidity, sunny and gentle breeze. But a few days like this don't compensate for 6 months of frigid hell.
congrats on the nice day! oh, but the endurance test!: that's why i left mn, barry. cue up prince's "sometimes it snows in april.)
Coldest experience one can know in Minnesota is driving around in an air cooled VW Beetle vintage late 1960's, when the temperature is like 40 below zero....your scraping the ice off of the inside of the windshield... Minnesota where the Men are Men and the Women are a touch above the Men.
hi all. super busy this week. Trying to get ahead for the long weekend. First time i could visit Archinect all day.
Besides that getting lots of rain this week and preparing to go see Steel Pulse this weekend.
How is everyone else doing?
barry that was not regarding the studio, correct?
Barry those comments are in so many ways utterly hilarious. Frustrating to mature, intelligent people who want to see others expand their minds and work hard to achieve, but hilarious nonetheless. Poor darlings. Life's a bitch, I guess!
I'm feeling exhausted but good. Marched the students all around downtown Louisville and went through three of my co-teacher's totally wonderful projects. I know so many super smart architects, I'm blessed!
Nam lucky you! They are an incredibly lively band. I however often find myself distracted by David Hinds giant lock (singular) sticking off the side of his head that he's folded, much like a crepe, resting on precariously under a hat. Should be great - who's the opening act?
So I made a archi-rookie mistake today. I had to use a different computer at the office and didn't check the auto-save. Now this happens to be the only computer not connected to a ups. So I was busily drawing away from morning, way through lunch - then the power chipped out.. less than 2 seconds. I lost 4.5 hours work.
If I were a student and my teacher evaluation was posted on a public forum, I wouldn't be offended as long as it was anonymous. After all, who is more vulnerable here, the named professor being evaluated, or the anonymous students doing that evaluation.
I would think there are going to be negative comments regardless of how good/bad a teacher is (you just can't please everyone), and some that respond negatively because they didn't get a good grade or something along those lines. I don't know how you wade through that to get to the real constructive criticisms.
Anyway...Hello all. Its been a ridiculously hot June here and is being projected that it will be the hottest June since they started keeping record in 1872. And before I heard that, I was thinking how amazing it is that everyone complains (including myself) about weather every single year as if its never happened before. Well, apparently it hasn't.
Random trivia, did y'all know Nakashima (the furniture maker) was trained as an architect? I forgot about it, and then remembered again while looking up some of his stuff. Something new I found was that he was released from internment camp because he was sponsored by another architect. Lately, I keep running into random architect(urally trained) folk trivia when I'm not looking for them. There is also a small/relatively new park in Philly that is in the honor of a historically prominent African American architect - Julian Abele. There is a plan for a mural and everything (for scale, note the profile of the mural follows the profile of a three story rowhouse and there are windows):
i think you are quite cool to be posting the comments barry. it isn't easy to post the not so nice stuff that others have written about you even if some of it is quite funny/silly. the fish articles are very good/informing. i have to agree with him about the point of the whole exercise. seems they can be useful, as long as not given too much weight...
i am also very happy to see the post about detailing a wooden wall. lots of cool technical links from the community. hurray for the architectural community!
us management-type folks in our office are going through an exercise right now in which we go over each project the office has taken on over the past several years and plot on a matrix where it falls relative to revenue and design-quality/potential. a very humbling exercise as most of the projects end up bunched up in the lower left corner (low revenue/low design merit) of the chart.
the exercise is supposed to allow us to see how to market and what kinds of projects to target - i.e., where are the projects in which we can BOTH work within a potentially good design process AND possibly make some money > those are the ones to which we might prefer to market.
so far we've only charted two years (we average +/-100 projects a year) and already i'm questioning what we can learn from it.
- the big projects that take a lot of time are obviously higher revenue projects and also afford more mucking around in the design trenches > result is better design!
- the smaller projects where design is important > almost universally losers because of the time it takes, despite what the fees allow.
- our cashflow comes from crap design on crap fees. that's why we haven't had to lay off anyone: the money comes in and goes out.
- the number of projects with low revenue low design that we note as still important because they could lead to future work is WAY too high. these loss leaders are eating us up.
note that this is all about revenue (gross), not net (profit). even the bigger projects are in the low/negative profit range, so they can't even carry us.
the moral: we're among the very few firms in our city that have done well lately and not laid off a single person. that might indicate that we're doing something right, right?! but this exercise shows us that the projects that do well - that are both good additions to our community and also allow us to make some money - they are complete accidents of staffing assignments and circumstances. it's not something we're doing wrong or right that we can leverage, it's just dumb luck.
[sigh.]
Steve, so much of life is dumb luck.
It's good you're going through this exercise, though, so you have a realistic understanding of what your firm is doing. That way if you DO want to change things, you'll know where to start. But if you don't have energy to make changes now, the dumb luck will hopefully keep carrying you until you do!
so, here's the thing of the matter: your life in the last month - at least the one i have been "comfortable" with - get's thrown up in the air, and uncertainty in the early days is abound. yet, the more distance you get from the event, you find, that you are not so bad, the alone-ness you feared, is not a bad thing. you find that you can actually tolerate hanging around you, and find joy in doing things alone, and not worry about life. enjoy living. go to see cool bands play, go to museums, go to movies, go to gallery openings, read a book at a cafe - all things i did by myself, without guilt. not to say of course, that i don't still have moments of trepidation, or anxiety, but there are lessening.
what has helped, in my case, is returning to church - i know, i know, not going to proselytize - and meeting new people, enlightened people, scientists, scholars, architects - sane fucking people, that actually believe in evolution, as well as religion - [like that f-bomb?]. if anything, they reaffirmed my belief in humanity, treating me like a human - and most of them know nothing about my current circumstances, so it's honest feelings, and not pity - and that's okay right? to feel human, when every part of me felt inhuman?
one person i've met is pretty damn cool, she is a scientist working on her phd at the U, and here's the cool part, barry: she is working on using algae to create bio-fuels. cool. she even gave me a tour of the church. oh, i forgot, the church is Elilel Saarinen's Christ Church Lutheran, his last known, built work. it's a few blocks from my house, and they have docent led tours on the first sunday of the month. so, me, trying to be a decent person, went to the service first, and then wanted to go the tour. that's when this individual noticed i was there - we attended the same neighborhood organization committee meetings - and we started talking and she gave me a private tour of the facility.
anyhow. the clouds are starting to part, and now that i see "me" i see that i am less sure about what i am doing in this profession, i wear "architecture sucks" shirt everyday to the ywca. the creative individual is grabbing hold, real hard, and pulling me away from pragmatics, into a world i have so longed to be a part of, and it really has nothing to do with solving "sustainability", "housing", or any of the other certainly pressing issues in our profession. i have been trying to figure out if what i am thinking is even "architecture" and what i have realized, it's not, and i am finally okay with that.
cool.
Thanks for the comments on the student comments. Does anybody on TC think it was stupid to share all that negativity on the wild wild web?
beta, go become a poet or painter or community arts impresario. You only can have one mid-life crisis.
SW, the firm I used to work for had no interest in self-reflection and kept on making the same bad choices over and over again. If I ever return to working for a firm (and not running my own), they had better have wise management like your office is displaying. I don't know how you can make good design with out good management.
Beta, you really sound happy. At peace, even. That's awesome.
I'm overseeing the move and arrangment of my grandmother's new assisted living apartment today. I really like overseeing things, I tend to find it rewarding.
Morning all,
Steven I think it is great your office takes the opportunity for self reflection and goal orientation. So often organizations and people (particularly myself) just keep plugging away and never take the time to strategize. Although I imagine it must be frustrating to find out the firms good fortune isn't as structured/planned as one might like.
It sounds like beta is doing similar strategizing andprioritizing of what is important re: goals etc.
I love introspection! But boy is it hard...
Poor management and lack of feedback were major things that drove me out of the profession. Steven, I too think your firm is special if they can self-reflect like that.
In the last week, two different parents told me that if we opened up a school, they would send their kids there. Got me thinking, What If? But that is a lot more responsibility and probably not as profitable as what we are doing now.
Yesterday, one of my students looked at me, cocked her head to the side and threw me a huge smile. I asked her what she was thinking and she blurted, "Summer school is so much more fun that regular school!" Then another student, a 12 year old boy, thanked me and told me how much he appreciated what we do for him. Since when do 12 year old boys thank their teachers? I was blown away. Feels so nice to be appreciated. Continuing to believe I have found a wonderful place to work.
I hate this game with submittals where the GC sends over stuff we didn't spec and we reject it - it wastes time. I'd much rather get submittals with an explanation of why they are substituting certain items so that we can actually have a conversation as to what works and what doesn't - so that they aren't trying to put in cheap crap to save a buck and we are actually responding to their professional opinion. The whole submittal process seems to be set up to create animosity between architect and the contractor - and the contractor uses it to complain that we are holding things up.
toaster, the solution to that is to include in the specs a penalty for submitting un-approved products not listed in the spec. that'll get their attention.
beta - huh... I wonder why no one I've worked for has done that - makes too much sense, I guess.
one reason i like school work. our department of education makes it clear that post-bid substitutions are simply unacceptable. it's not on us, man! it's the rulez!
i'm glad you guys think our firm's management exercises are worthwhile. it sure feels like belly-button gazing sometimes, especially when my adrenaline's up because i've got deadlines.
"give a contractor an inch, they'll steal your mother." - beta
hi beta. Glad to hear you are seeing past the dark clouds.
So I went for a walk around the reservoir near school. Huge thing it supplies roughly 500k consumers from a circumference of about 1600m. Anyway I found myself wondering why it wasn't like Silver Lake with tiny houses tucked around it, instead there were a few in the distance on a place called Beverly Hills (sensing a trend here). Anyway it inspired me enough to develop a little project for myself. Call it a warm up for my PhD (whenever we decide where I'm going to do that). So it's for my mockutural thesis and it's called social housing integrated terrain or SHIT for short. So I may present this next month at the inaugural pecha kucha night and see if I have any bites.
Steven love the navel gazing - it should be par for all architectural offices that have somewhat survived the crisis or not
techno your SHIT will rock.
beta I agree with Sarah: you do sound good. You will weather this. And things will be different, yes, but better too.
Steven, I was hanging on every word of your project-analysis post above. I love that kind of stuff.
Are you planning to share the data with the rest of your firm? As a junior staff person, it sure does help (me, at least) to know what the firm's objective is for a project. You know, strategy and big picture.
A-techno... are you referring to Stone Canyon Reservoir?
Technically, no reservoir that doesn't have a constant inlet (in supply) water should not have any development.
The water withdrawals in L.A. are getting too severe and the water is not being allowed to stagnate long enough in order to pretreat it-- for instance, bird poop is biologically and chemically hazardous (fungus, bacteria, phosphorous).
That's the reason why they've filled Silver Lake up with what... a half a million of black plastic balls?
In either event, the reservoir (Stone Canyon) is getting a shiny metal aluminum cover and is then getting a layer of dirt over it. They're going to put some dumpy development on the north reservoir and they're going to turn the south one into a park.
Steven, I might have to steal your project matrix idea for my office... being in the research group, my immediate boss loves matrices in a big way, and it sounds like a really useful exercise!
@ barry, no i don't think was bad idea. you were very upfront about why you put it out there.
@ steven, very cool. at least you know what you are doing and what makes money for you and what doesn't. like they say it is the prepared who are able to take advantage of luck, so maybe now you are prepared more you will get to take advantage of opportunities better....
just why - i don't think we know what we're doing with this information yet. we're first trying to get a picture of what we're doing.
the larger goal is to try to define who we are - and how that should be projected out to others. a challenge we have is that - despite being one of the busiest firms in the city - very few people who haven't sought us out know who we are. this perpetuates the cycle of down-n-dirty low revenue/low design projects. those who want a fuller design effort tend to go to names they've heard associated with design...
we have a name recognition problem because a lot of our BEST work is outside louisville. there happen to be two other architects with similar names to ours here in the city, firms with whom we're often confused - and they've done a better job at pr than we have, so people think of them first! we also have no website - something we're actively trying to address right now.
our office has been so casual in its growth. we are 13 people now, but we still act like we did when we were 4. the office is a mess, with no space really suitable to bring someone - it's all *work* space and all a disorganized disaster. we've grown, but are now trying to grow up!
we need to define who we are, what our vision for the company is, and then get it out there. that's what we working toward.
Why did I think the firm you were working for was a lot bigger SW?
Atechno - that SHIT sounds interesting.
Morning all!!
SW, I pictured your firm much bigger and well established because I understood your main project type is schools! They don't hire just anyone, and being pillars of the community in buildings that are supposed to be built to last, schools are often interested in both design and dee-zine much more than most clients. Way to go! In a time when many firms are going under, many are falsely blaming the economy when they should be looking at themselves, the recession is merely the catalyst bringing the problems to the forefront. The fact that you are growing in a recession is a fabulous thing, and about as good of feedback as you can get! There are still building projects going on, and there is money out there, and he who positions himself best will have the most LUCK!
In the news this morning, police are looking for a man matching the description of "a leprechaun" who is jumping out from behind cars and flipping people the bird. Too funny.
Morning all!
Steven, what Straw and melt just said. I thought your office must be much larger or at least recognized (in your city as well).
I assume you won't be going for a mostly Flash website?
Good afternoon all! Working my super-part-time retail gig today but haven't seen a single customer in HOURS and am about to go crazy with loneliness and boredom! I might find the end of the internet this afternoon... sigh.
Very cool, Steven. Strategic visioning is always a good thing. Good luck on your continued success.
NO flash, nam.
More meetings today, so thanks for the encouragement. Ugh, I've got a lot I shood be doing...
...but the most important thing you SHOULD be doing is getting yourself to Lexington for the BobbyQ...good luck with your meetings, we can't wait to see you!
Abrac, this is truly a thread about nothing, but it sure is something. The Seinfeld effect.
so was in the office and apparently there's a firm who is doing some mixed housing just opposite of the site for SHIT - this could be a Huge pile of Shit when it's done. @Unicorn I'm not talking about Stone Canyon ridge but thanks for the links, it's actually this one
BWahahahahahahahhaah.
IM RETARDED.
I thought perhaps you were L.A. for some reason-- you know talking about Silver Lake, being near a campus and Beverly Hills.
I was like-- Hmm, I only know of two reservoirs in Beverly Hills and one of them is technically in Bel-Air.
That project looks like it could be infinitely more interesting now. Just use lots of berms and catchments to offset runoff and contamination!
unicorn I'm glad you got the humour in it - should be good to get the brain working on far out projects (well far out for the stuffed shirts that live in that area)
Nothing like working on drawings with a cat sleeping in your home office in-box
...and the tour de france on TV!
it would be better watching a cat in the tour de france
i'd pay good money to see a cat doing the tour the france. good morning all! haven't been here for so long, just thought i'd drop by and say hi!
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