I know of these interior designers who charge a bundle to give their clients these amazing renderings... which are all done by some poor guys in Thailand i think at a prety crappy rate...

i know it's economics, but something just doesn't feel right about it.

el jeffe, if you have to do a wal-mart site plan, make the most of it and try to turn it into something half-way decent. Put the building up to the street, encourage them to break up the facade and provide a couple different pedestrian-friendly entrances, put the parking in the back, split up the rows with lush native trees and get them to put skylights in the roof. And at the same time support the group opposing it so you can leverage your ideas as the solution.

Oh, and my current ethical dilemma is coming up with justifications for the preservation of the brutalist buildings at the National Zoo while they're trying to become more environmentally-conscious.

Hide lots of pro-local-community messages in the Walmart finishes...

ACFA,

I worked with a guy from Thailand here in Atlanta, and his goal was to set up ties here with firms who needed these types of renderings, then go back to Thailand and use cheap labor to do them.

what you consider a cheap rate for a rendering might be a livable wage to the guy in thailand.

The Department of Standardization thanks you for your post.
We at the department are pleased to provide all Standardizers with up to the minute codifications. After many years of late night joint conferencing at high chair and foot chair levels, the Department of Standardization, in all it’s self selected, fore standard bearer, archivalized research, does hereby proclaim the Ethical Dilemma in the realm of the non-compliant. As the Standard is spread throughout the world with strict, swift, and total compliance, the Ethical Dilemma will vanish from the pages of history as it should, by right.
It is indeed a tremendous victory we have achieved here today at the Department of Standardization. We ask all standardizers to celebrate with us by providing your nearest AIA president with standardized, archival documents of self congratulation in full joint committee. This by the Light Standard of Total and Absolute Compliance, Hail!!!!

bryan4arch-

i mean i'm sure we wouldn't be happy if you or i were paid just a living wage, right? i believe in fair trade. globalization and information sharing should develop developing nations, not let us, the devleoped nations, take advantage of them and stunt their growth.

momentum, ACFA etc, i understand your sentiment but it is not all black-and-white as you guys are suggesting. A friend of mine has a architectural rendering studio in Shanghai and he gets done pretty good quality renderings done at 1/10th the rate we'd do them here in the states.
But the fact is that the cost of living in india is also almost 1/10th of the states (except, say buying a car). For a direct comparision, if you pay $300 for a rendering in India, it translates to about 13,000 rupees, which can mostly buy the same amount of stuff you can buy for 300$ in the states (say sharing the rent for a apartment etc). The comparisions are not that direct, but you get the idea.....

My ethical problem is that we are designing these animal habitats when i am totally against animals in captivity.

ACFA:

I agree with what you're saying. I make a distinction between a living wage and a livable wage and I had referred to a livable wage in the previous post. I would define a livable wage as the type of wage the average middle class worker makes and a living wage as well below that.

My point is that a wage that would be completely unlivable to most Americans could be seen as a phenomenal wage in some developing nations. We shouldn't base our perception of what's fair on how far a dollar goes in the US but instead on how far it goes in the host country. If you start paying your employees $25 an hour in efforts to be "fair" in an economy where people can live filthy rich on $5 an hour, you're just going to be fueling inflation and class disputes in that country.

Yeah, I don't think they're necessarily screwing the guy in India or Thailand or wherever. The people they're screwing are the people in the US that are not getting that job because some guy who doesn't have the same expenses is undercutting the American market.

I find outsourcing to be a big ethical dillema.

my dilemma:

i'm probably going to new orleans in august to help rebuild a community center even though i'm fundamentally against the idea of rebuilding the city at all.

we rented our dvd from netflix instead of the neighborhood video store.
i'm a hypocrite and i'm going to hell.
where do you draw the line?

I'm not sure there's a line.... more of a zonal gradient, perhaps?

I cut the line at outhouses!

i just finished a drawing set for a 18000 square foot "vacation home" on a golf course in the middle of the desert, and went to a usgbc meeting the next day. what a hypocrite.

working on a hospital / can't stand our nation's healthcare system

working on a bishop's house / can't stand most popular metaphysical religions

working on a bitch's house / can't stand the bitch

My ethical delima:

I want to sleep with my bosses wife.

that's boss', though if it were bosses, my life would be that much sweeter.

buying indonesian coffee and enjoying it then complaining about the high cost of gas

and enjoying it

i bought this swiss cake role thing the other day and i wanted to save it for later but i also wanted to eat it.




i ate it then i wished i had saved it.


It was really big and only 100Yen and probably from China


I want to go buy another swiss cake roll......mmmm swiss cake roll

i design condominiums for yuppies and then i get upset that yuppies are driving out people from their communities and driving up housing costs.