What we need is a real kick ass tv show featuring the goings on in an architect's office. I say we get Brad Pitt to play the lead role as the firm principal. He can spend all day yelling at contractors and getting showered with compliments from his adoring clients. Then he can come home to his supermodel wife or one of his many misteresses. Meanwhile other competing firms can try to undermind Brad Pitt's firm and steal his clients or star employees. Fill it full up on sex, violence and mystery, oh, and show some cad monkeys in the background doing the normal work of an arch office.
Vital pourpose of the show would be to make the architect look good and priceless to the client and make anyone else look bad, especially the greedy contractor. Season cliffhanger can be someone shooting Brad in the back while he works a late night in the office, only to discover next season that it was just another disgruntled contractor upset that Brad caught him trying to cut corners and build an inferior building for the client.
or a documentary: deadliest catch is immensely popular on discovery.
'deadliest CAD', anyone? it might not be as fast-paced or dangerous as crab fishing in AK, but the title might up the sex appeal for the profession.
it's either that or we can be represented by every small business commercial i've ever seen: there's always an obligatory shot of a few people leaning over a basswood model on a desk.
quizzical - i agree up to a point. if the goal is to define 'good' aesthetics, then it becomes very difficult to do. if the goal is to outline more objective, quantifiable aspects of a design that are almost universally acknowledged as 'good' (energy efficient, proper amounts of daylight, etc.), then i think you can make that case to the public. which, i think, is what the aia is focusing on (how effectively that message is being communicated is another story).
maybe we should skip trying to define good and just define bad. if an architect makes any of the retail pollution we see on the side of most 4 lanes these days - SCHWOOP!!! - their license disappears from its black 'float' frame.
"good" aesthetics cannot be defined as the apriori definition that kant wrote of became unravelled with his own ideas regarding the empirical. That is, pure aestetic judements according to kant are subjective yet should be universally valid. ie they must be free of "interest" ie desire; they cannot be based on a determinate concept but arise only in response to stimulus. ie they exhibit purposiveness without a purpose.
of course, as the taste and style of different cultures marinade with one another, the idea of a single "good" aesthetic is ricockulous.
ok guys, i've had to work a little late, the kids are resisting going to bed, and lost comes on in an hour. nevertheless, i'm going to bind up the comments and send them off. i'll let you know what the aia says...
Got my first round of responses from COTEr regarding my rant. here's the transcript for ya'll enjoyment (i'm keeping this semi-anonymous like the wild wild web we're in):
Treekilla, In response to the rant, I do have a question. I agree with you about a well-designed building moving more in the direction of sustainability than the latest and greatest HVAC system. Do you think that most architects have the skills to create these types of buildings. Some do, but from my experience many architects do not have an understanding of the environmental implications of their design decisions and thus don't have the skills to create high-performance buildings. Most of the lay public assume competency in this area is a requirement to be an architect. Thus, they believe when they hire an architect they are getting an energy expert. Again, my experience suggests that's not the case. So I would love to see more work from AIA promoting environmentally responsive design. But I get nervous at the thought the message they might send would be that hiring an architect assures you that you'll get an environmentally responsive building. And I do know home builders who could definitely produce a MUCH more environmentally-responsive, low-energy, residential building than an average LEED-AP. I offer Drew Marin Construction as one example (http://www.drewmaran.com/).
In many ways this is the fault of architecture schools, which for all the talk of sustainability still rarely integrate sustainability into the design studio. So sustainability remains an 'add-on', something you learn if you're an enviro. But it's not just the schools fault. Just look at all those architect designed commercial buildings out there that have poor energy performance. On a positive note, I do see interest in a lot of working architects in acquiring more skills needed for environmentally responsive design. So things are beginning to change.
Having said all that, please keep ranting. Discussion is good and I don't mean to suggest I have an answer to this issue.
-bill
----------
Bill, I believe that you are right on target in regards to the ability of the "average architect" to design a sustainable building. Most have not had the training or have not thought about it in so long that they don't know where to start, or don't want to put forth the effort. It is much easier to stick with business as usual. The Architecture programs must start educating the students about "good all around design" instead of just "good aesthetic design".
-ed
---------
Bill & Ed (and everyone) - I agree that the Schools have a responsibility to make sustainability a core part of their programs. It wasn’t the case at my school 18 years ago but that didn’t dampen my enthusiasm one bit. I had two professors who were generally viewed as flakes but who were very passionate about climate-responsive design, in spite of the overwhelming emphasis on form and aesthetics. They encouraged me to do my M.Arch thesis on sustainable design and advised me all along the way. However, architecture students are not out there right now, designing and building all over the place without much of a clue about energy and environmental issues. I agree with Bill’s comments about the general lack of knowledge across the profession. We have a long way to go, although a lot has changed since I graduated. I’m very encouraged now, but five years ago I was very disheartened about trying to build my career around it. To keep moving forward, AIA has to play a greater role in promoting sustainability.
-Roxanne
--------
I think we all (even in this forum) are missing the point.
Truly sustainable buildings cannot be designed by architects in a vacuum. Regardless of the validity of our education, we need to work to make every project a cooperative endeavor WITH our consultants. This is one of the biggest problems with CEU and with the base education offered by architecture schools - the lack of cross-education and cross-training we all need in order to understand the relationship and economies of systems.
I absolutely agree that AIA is not doing enough to educate. I feel they have given their handshake to 2030 and set the goals for all architects without offering any tools or direction or award for achievement or penalty for lack of achievement. This is a classic move - the organization looks great, but will the goals prove out? I am apprehensive. At this point, I wish AIA would offer no press time and no awards to any project that doesn't meet the goals of 2030. [bold by TK]
At this point, great design MUST be green design, and all design awards should be focused on the entire design team and construction team - not just the architect. (yes - I am an architect)
-jodi
--------
Thanks, Jodi. I completely agree. Designing sustainable buildings is a collaborative effort that requires much education. Everywhere I go lately I keep hearing about the importance of sharing knowledge which makes me hopeful.
One great new way of sharing knowledge about global sustainable building design is the Open Architecture Network. Check it out: http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org
Maureen
-------
Thank you for the link Maureen!
I too have been promoting the notion of collaborative design. Yesterday at a session on liability put on at the [local] AIA, I suggested that going green was a great way to make sure collaboration and coordination were taking place in the design teams especially when the various consultants have individual contracts with the client. I think reducing liability is a great way to encourage other architects and clients to go green.
Perhaps COTE members would like to join with the Housing KC [/][knowledge community for all you non-AIA readers] [i]in our efforts to work with Schools of Architecture on recognizing good Housing Curricula. (Not just one studio) Our KC emphasizes Green as essential. As Chair I got the opportunity to rewrite out call for entries for the Housing Awards to include sustainability, neighborhood context, meeting the needs of the client/end user and more. We doubled the amount of submissions and had an amazing group of over 280 projects to choose from. Every project that we gave an award to had integrated Green Design into their project. So at least OUR award insists on sustainability.
I agree that no awards should be given unless this is a key ingredient of a project. NO MORE PRETTY PICTURES! I only wish the magazines would follow suit!
Kathy
----------
So there you have it, day one's responses to my rant from the good practitioners who pay dues and contribute to COTE. If I haven't put you to sleep already, I just saw that the pres of AIA followed in Al's footsteps up to capital hill and RK made good. But it still isn't enough....
a lot of good points made, including one that i also made in a conference this week - the one you rendered in bold type: not that i think the aia initiative is not still a good idea, but i do think that providing tools to help architects toward the goals are impt...and apparently they're coming. the aia website is supposed to start having more and more resources available over the coming months.
the points about consultants in sustainable design are critical. we work with two major mep consultancies - one very progressive and smart about how they approach their design work and one very much entrenched and resistant to change even when we and the client are pushing for it.
another issue is the client, of course. the 2030 program, in making it an architect's responsibility to achieve certain targets, is ignoring the fact that we don't have full discretion about the design of projects.
-if i design a sophisticated daylighting system with great big openings on the south and sunshades derived from sun angle calculations and the owner value-engineers the sun shades out, i've lost the battle - and will also take the blame when the building gets overheated in the warmer months. (building this project right now.)
so, obviously, i have a problem with this comment: Most of the lay public assume competency in this area is a requirement to be an architect. Thus, they believe when they hire an architect they are getting an energy expert.
first, though they maybe should, the public DOES NOT assume competency in this area. they assume that my sunshades are aesthetic and that is my primary interest. architects' design decisions - even beyond the daylighting issue - that involve saving energy, use of responsibly manufacture or harvested materials, removal/reclamation of waste, etc are continually undermined by the client's and contractor's questioning of the architect's motives and belief that the architect is acting on some sort of whimsy.
this aia challenge will be tough even if all architects were to buy in. we are not, in the words of mr bush, "the deciders".
RQtex are usually not energy experts or structural or lighting or mechanical or anything experts. i worked one office that did any structural calcs. every field of expertise is done by a consultant. why should energy be any different.
If the client wants a green building, we'll do a green building. If the client doesn't want a green building, we can try to convince them that "they will be a better person" or "they'll be doing something positive for the environment" or some other nicely packaged line for doing a green buildilng, but ultimately the choice is up to the client... its their money...
... so maybe the AIA could help by giving us seminars on how to SELL green design to our clients. Of course, that would require architects to have a certain level of competency in the subject.... as was mentioned somewhere above, designing sustainable buildings requires education, and likewise a willingness to learn on our behalf... but all the knowledge in the world will do you no good unless you can convince a client to integrate these ideas into their project..
I couldn't agree more with regard to recognizing a significant
portion of AIA dues going toward painting the architect as the
professional with the white hat is the wrong approach the AIA public
relations machine should be making. However, claiming, "architects
have the only set of skills to design sustainable buildings, period,"
is in my opinion sounding a bit sententious. There is nothing magic
in designing and building sustainable structures. Building with
environmental consciousness is not string theory or understanding 11
dimensions of physics. It's common sense stuff that most of the
planet has been doing for most of its history.
Yes, even in the United States, ordinary builders with a high school
education and a lot of hammer-swinging experience completely
understand and practice perfectly decent green building standards,
while I dare say the majority of licensed architects produce the most
wasteful and unconscious structures imaginable. I personally know
men and women in both categories.
If there is education to be done, it must be done among ourselves.
Architects of all stripes MUST realize that when they draw an
electronic line or type a specification in the middle of the night,
he or she has to hear in the distance the crack of a falling tree and
the sloshing of crude oil in the belly of a tanker.[bold by tk]
Unless we are building with mud and straw, producing all the power we
need on site, and capturing all the water we need from the rain, we
are not really at the pinnacle of sustainability; we are all (myself
included) practicing various levels of sinning. The last thing we
should be doing is assuming architects, even COTE-card carrying
architects, have the keys to the kingdom. There's a lot to be done
from all involved in the building trade, and maybe not a whole lot of
time to do it. Let's recognize and encourage environmentally-
appropriate practice wherever we can find it. The trick is to
demonstrate that the way buildings are currently made in our country
is flat out wrong, and the right way (environmentally-appropriate
way) to make a building is also monetarily advantageous for the folks
who pay for having it built.
Everything else is commentary.
Okay, that's my rant for the evening.
Hope to meet some of you folks in San Antonio next month!
We'll have some fun.
-stephen
----------
well, that was the only thing worth reposting, the discussion digressed to contemplating the odor of compost and it's impact on Yosemite... we
TK - That bold portion goes far beyond architects. Any person in power is usually far removed from the consequences of their decisions. Politicians come to mind as a prime example.
As a matter of fact most of us in the "developed" world are very far removed from the consequences of our daily decisions. Do you think a Wal-Mart shopper thinks about the plastic trinkets they load their cart with? Where it came from? What it's cost to the environment? Society?
All the time we hear about third world sweatshops, or bulldozing of the rainforests. Still, that's a world away and easily forgotten. Sorry for being pessimistic, but I don't see how architects, or the public in general, will ever change their habits without some first hand experience.
there was a reason that I choose to highlight that passage - my idealist tendencies are starting to scare me. I've stopped buying my favorite gum because it comes in a cute metal tin (that I know won't really be recycled cause it ain't an aluminum can).
for today's installment, we finally have a reply from Phil (the most vocal and opinionated, in a good way, member of cote):
I'd agree that much of design for sustainability is not 'rocket science' and you don't need to be an architect to understand or build with it. A large part of what sustainability is responding to, though, is major historic errors of design by well meaning people in building civilization. I think architects are perhaps in a better position than anyone to understand what 'big change order' means. Just because we're more aware of the serious consequences of designing a world with the wrong model in mind doesn't mean we're not also prone to the error ourselves, of course,... Still, we're starting to pay more serious attention with the combined caring and self-critical mindset that seems to be needed. That's not something you hear much about elsewhere it seems to me.
Phil
Hmm, that got me thinking that I should share a classic bit of Phil's wisdom (frommarch 26th) titled 'leave it to the future...':
Of course, we can also look at ourselves as being the future, and dealing with a huge pile of problems other folks left to us. They perhaps thought, surely the people of the future will be so smart they'll solve it all in a gif! Unfortunately the change orders in the design of civilization are getting bigger and bigger at an alarming rate, well, at least for anyone who doesn't live in denial. I think what's actually failing is the 'big boss' model of nature and society, not the bosses per se, but the model. Lets see if I can make the case.
Everything we do and value is actually wholly dependent on leaderless natural systems. People can get up on some soap box and lay claim to the magic of vast organization that just amazingly takes care of itself. That doesn't change any part of where such systems come from or how they work, but for centuries now it has been part of what diverted our attention from them. We let the soap box guy take credit, and then didn't do the careful study to figure out how nature can possibly work by itself.
Our historic accumulation of methods, markets and techniques, what some refer to as 'the economy', exists only as a natural system that no one designed, no one understands very well and no one can record. The unstudied worlds of influential contributions that compose it are utterly vast. It's measurably of the same order of complexity as a human body since they both have made as many doublings. It works by everyone making their own way to fit in, creating new niches and connections that are successive alterations of the ones that were there before. It's an accumulative creative design of all those who ever were engaged in it. What a mechanistic model will seem to explain is any given instantaneous diagram of the network of exchanges. It will just never tell you where its structures came from or where the new ones will break out. So, having a soap box guy, saying it should redesign itself ever more rapidly forever, can seem like a logical plan, and feels good until the changes in the system become forced and unhealthy. Of course, because we haven't learned much about that, it's hard to see one way or another.
One seemingly sure sign that our growth is not healthy is the explosion of symptoms of limits and our discombobulated belief that the solution its to outgrow them. We even have the whole sustainability movement promoting the use of the diminishing resource of efficiency for the antithesis of sustainability, multiplying development and consumption! This kind of train wreck just does not look like something any 'big boss' thought through and decided to have happen.
Our 'economy', our system of life, is the repository of all of mankind's accumulated creativity, and we're taking extreme risks with it. It's not just the biological and climatic systems of the earth that are at risk. It's the coherence of our own evolution that could be pushed over the edge too, and be harder to rebuild from than Katrina. It's the explosion of complex decision making that I think could push us into system-wide disarray. Global warming is just the tip of the iceberg. This little problem with money that no one can talk about, how we use it to endlessly multiply complexity and change without any apparent increase in effort for those feeding it... comes from the magic of the natural system we've been negligent in trying to understand. Since almost everyone seems seduced into wanting it to multiply forever, few have checked to see if we could turn it off. The way our institutions are structured, we can't.
Nature just makes mistakes sometimes... big ones, like letting us carry on with the 'big boss' idea that everything was under someone's control. You could call us 'drunk-o sapiens' really. It would be perfectly appropriate to characterize how we get so completely carried away with our crazy fantasies, like endless multiplying change without any increased effort..or the idea that forcefully rearranging someone else's culture would be 'glorious'. Nearly all our gifts and all our problems come through natural systems in which we are creative participants. As long as we didn't notice... it seemed fine to do whatever some pundit said did the trick before, and the living things we were part of creatively adapted.
So, what's anyone supposed to do? I've described a royal mess. We find ourselves profoundly ignorant at a time when we desperately need a great widely distributed intelligence. Sure we still need to learn how to live in a world that works. But we also need to defuse the time bomb. Think of how the Soviet Union suddenly and peacefully failed, or how the crack epidemic abruptly dissolved away as it did to end 30 years of ghetto violence. There were documentable waves of truth in both of those events, people pressed to their absolute limits, collectively choosing a different way. For us it's more of a problem, because what we're in danger of is failing dramatically at the peak of our success. We're not oppressed and suffering. We're in much worse trouble. Considering what seems at the center of what's failing, though,... that could be especially good news! :,)
a couple from the Virginia AIA.... these look pretty good... they seem like they would be informative...
~CC
-----------
I. Communicating Your Value to Any Audience: The Foundation of New Business
* Friday, April 13, 8:15 am – noon (3 CES LUs)
Register by 5 pm Tuesday, April 10
* Friday, April 27, 8:15 am – noon (REPEAT - 3 CES LUs)
Register by 5 pm Tuesday, April 24
Learn to communicate more effectively with current and prospective clients by recognizing the personality preferences that guide thinking and decision making. This three-hour seminar (one session) will focus on:
* The rules of personality preference and how they affect decision making;
* What a prospective client is interested in learning about your practice by how they talk; and
* How to present your concepts to prospects in the most compelling manner.
----
II. Striking Oil: Uncover Opportunities and Build Your Business Pipeline
* Friday, April 27, 12:45 – 4 pm, and Saturday, April 28, 8:15 am – 4 pm (9 CES LUs)
Register by 5 pm Tuesday, April 24
Stop wasting time with cold calling! “Striking oil” is about obtaining productive meetings with appropriate prospective clients on a regular basis. In this nine-hour seminar (three sessions over two days), learn proven strategies to win new business by:
* Standing out from your competition;
* Building relationships with prospective clients; and
* Overcoming the four obstacles to winning a new contract.
What the AIA should be doing...
What we need is a real kick ass tv show featuring the goings on in an architect's office. I say we get Brad Pitt to play the lead role as the firm principal. He can spend all day yelling at contractors and getting showered with compliments from his adoring clients. Then he can come home to his supermodel wife or one of his many misteresses. Meanwhile other competing firms can try to undermind Brad Pitt's firm and steal his clients or star employees. Fill it full up on sex, violence and mystery, oh, and show some cad monkeys in the background doing the normal work of an arch office.
Vital pourpose of the show would be to make the architect look good and priceless to the client and make anyone else look bad, especially the greedy contractor. Season cliffhanger can be someone shooting Brad in the back while he works a late night in the office, only to discover next season that it was just another disgruntled contractor upset that Brad caught him trying to cut corners and build an inferior building for the client.
or a documentary: deadliest catch is immensely popular on discovery.
'deadliest CAD', anyone? it might not be as fast-paced or dangerous as crab fishing in AK, but the title might up the sex appeal for the profession.
it's either that or we can be represented by every small business commercial i've ever seen: there's always an obligatory shot of a few people leaning over a basswood model on a desk.
excuse my lame pun above...yuck.
I'd love the AIA to follow the regulations of the CAA and join camp
that's just my take on it
then we can officially take over the world [insert dr. evil laugh]
/ Free Ramos and Compean - check this out:
Good Architecture
Illustrates the futility of trying to define "good design"
quizzical - i agree up to a point. if the goal is to define 'good' aesthetics, then it becomes very difficult to do. if the goal is to outline more objective, quantifiable aspects of a design that are almost universally acknowledged as 'good' (energy efficient, proper amounts of daylight, etc.), then i think you can make that case to the public. which, i think, is what the aia is focusing on (how effectively that message is being communicated is another story).
maybe we should skip trying to define good and just define bad. if an architect makes any of the retail pollution we see on the side of most 4 lanes these days - SCHWOOP!!! - their license disappears from its black 'float' frame.
"good" aesthetics cannot be defined as the apriori definition that kant wrote of became unravelled with his own ideas regarding the empirical. That is, pure aestetic judements according to kant are subjective yet should be universally valid. ie they must be free of "interest" ie desire; they cannot be based on a determinate concept but arise only in response to stimulus. ie they exhibit purposiveness without a purpose.
of course, as the taste and style of different cultures marinade with one another, the idea of a single "good" aesthetic is ricockulous.
ok guys, i've had to work a little late, the kids are resisting going to bed, and lost comes on in an hour. nevertheless, i'm going to bind up the comments and send them off. i'll let you know what the aia says...
Got my first round of responses from COTEr regarding my rant. here's the transcript for ya'll enjoyment (i'm keeping this semi-anonymous like the wild wild web we're in):
Treekilla, In response to the rant, I do have a question. I agree with you about a well-designed building moving more in the direction of sustainability than the latest and greatest HVAC system. Do you think that most architects have the skills to create these types of buildings. Some do, but from my experience many architects do not have an understanding of the environmental implications of their design decisions and thus don't have the skills to create high-performance buildings. Most of the lay public assume competency in this area is a requirement to be an architect. Thus, they believe when they hire an architect they are getting an energy expert. Again, my experience suggests that's not the case. So I would love to see more work from AIA promoting environmentally responsive design. But I get nervous at the thought the message they might send would be that hiring an architect assures you that you'll get an environmentally responsive building. And I do know home builders who could definitely produce a MUCH more environmentally-responsive, low-energy, residential building than an average LEED-AP. I offer Drew Marin Construction as one example (http://www.drewmaran.com/).
In many ways this is the fault of architecture schools, which for all the talk of sustainability still rarely integrate sustainability into the design studio. So sustainability remains an 'add-on', something you learn if you're an enviro. But it's not just the schools fault. Just look at all those architect designed commercial buildings out there that have poor energy performance. On a positive note, I do see interest in a lot of working architects in acquiring more skills needed for environmentally responsive design. So things are beginning to change.
Having said all that, please keep ranting. Discussion is good and I don't mean to suggest I have an answer to this issue.
-bill
----------
Bill, I believe that you are right on target in regards to the ability of the "average architect" to design a sustainable building. Most have not had the training or have not thought about it in so long that they don't know where to start, or don't want to put forth the effort. It is much easier to stick with business as usual. The Architecture programs must start educating the students about "good all around design" instead of just "good aesthetic design".
-ed
---------
Bill & Ed (and everyone) - I agree that the Schools have a responsibility to make sustainability a core part of their programs. It wasn’t the case at my school 18 years ago but that didn’t dampen my enthusiasm one bit. I had two professors who were generally viewed as flakes but who were very passionate about climate-responsive design, in spite of the overwhelming emphasis on form and aesthetics. They encouraged me to do my M.Arch thesis on sustainable design and advised me all along the way. However, architecture students are not out there right now, designing and building all over the place without much of a clue about energy and environmental issues. I agree with Bill’s comments about the general lack of knowledge across the profession. We have a long way to go, although a lot has changed since I graduated. I’m very encouraged now, but five years ago I was very disheartened about trying to build my career around it. To keep moving forward, AIA has to play a greater role in promoting sustainability.
-Roxanne
--------
I think we all (even in this forum) are missing the point.
Truly sustainable buildings cannot be designed by architects in a vacuum. Regardless of the validity of our education, we need to work to make every project a cooperative endeavor WITH our consultants. This is one of the biggest problems with CEU and with the base education offered by architecture schools - the lack of cross-education and cross-training we all need in order to understand the relationship and economies of systems.
I absolutely agree that AIA is not doing enough to educate. I feel they have given their handshake to 2030 and set the goals for all architects without offering any tools or direction or award for achievement or penalty for lack of achievement. This is a classic move - the organization looks great, but will the goals prove out? I am apprehensive. At this point, I wish AIA would offer no press time and no awards to any project that doesn't meet the goals of 2030. [bold by TK]
At this point, great design MUST be green design, and all design awards should be focused on the entire design team and construction team - not just the architect. (yes - I am an architect)
-jodi
--------
Thanks, Jodi. I completely agree. Designing sustainable buildings is a collaborative effort that requires much education. Everywhere I go lately I keep hearing about the importance of sharing knowledge which makes me hopeful.
One great new way of sharing knowledge about global sustainable building design is the Open Architecture Network. Check it out: http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org
Maureen
-------
Thank you for the link Maureen!
I too have been promoting the notion of collaborative design. Yesterday at a session on liability put on at the [local] AIA, I suggested that going green was a great way to make sure collaboration and coordination were taking place in the design teams especially when the various consultants have individual contracts with the client. I think reducing liability is a great way to encourage other architects and clients to go green.
Perhaps COTE members would like to join with the Housing KC [/][knowledge community for all you non-AIA readers] [i]in our efforts to work with Schools of Architecture on recognizing good Housing Curricula. (Not just one studio) Our KC emphasizes Green as essential. As Chair I got the opportunity to rewrite out call for entries for the Housing Awards to include sustainability, neighborhood context, meeting the needs of the client/end user and more. We doubled the amount of submissions and had an amazing group of over 280 projects to choose from. Every project that we gave an award to had integrated Green Design into their project. So at least OUR award insists on sustainability.
I agree that no awards should be given unless this is a key ingredient of a project. NO MORE PRETTY PICTURES! I only wish the magazines would follow suit!
Kathy
----------
So there you have it, day one's responses to my rant from the good practitioners who pay dues and contribute to COTE. If I haven't put you to sleep already, I just saw that the pres of AIA followed in Al's footsteps up to capital hill and RK made good. But it still isn't enough....
They shuld Kill The Brick and then Kill The Tower !
great discussion you triggered there, tk.
a lot of good points made, including one that i also made in a conference this week - the one you rendered in bold type: not that i think the aia initiative is not still a good idea, but i do think that providing tools to help architects toward the goals are impt...and apparently they're coming. the aia website is supposed to start having more and more resources available over the coming months.
the points about consultants in sustainable design are critical. we work with two major mep consultancies - one very progressive and smart about how they approach their design work and one very much entrenched and resistant to change even when we and the client are pushing for it.
another issue is the client, of course. the 2030 program, in making it an architect's responsibility to achieve certain targets, is ignoring the fact that we don't have full discretion about the design of projects.
-if i design a sophisticated daylighting system with great big openings on the south and sunshades derived from sun angle calculations and the owner value-engineers the sun shades out, i've lost the battle - and will also take the blame when the building gets overheated in the warmer months. (building this project right now.)
so, obviously, i have a problem with this comment:
Most of the lay public assume competency in this area is a requirement to be an architect. Thus, they believe when they hire an architect they are getting an energy expert.
first, though they maybe should, the public DOES NOT assume competency in this area. they assume that my sunshades are aesthetic and that is my primary interest. architects' design decisions - even beyond the daylighting issue - that involve saving energy, use of responsibly manufacture or harvested materials, removal/reclamation of waste, etc are continually undermined by the client's and contractor's questioning of the architect's motives and belief that the architect is acting on some sort of whimsy.
this aia challenge will be tough even if all architects were to buy in. we are not, in the words of mr bush, "the deciders".
RQtex are usually not energy experts or structural or lighting or mechanical or anything experts. i worked one office that did any structural calcs. every field of expertise is done by a consultant. why should energy be any different.
If the client wants a green building, we'll do a green building. If the client doesn't want a green building, we can try to convince them that "they will be a better person" or "they'll be doing something positive for the environment" or some other nicely packaged line for doing a green buildilng, but ultimately the choice is up to the client... its their money...
... so maybe the AIA could help by giving us seminars on how to SELL green design to our clients. Of course, that would require architects to have a certain level of competency in the subject.... as was mentioned somewhere above, designing sustainable buildings requires education, and likewise a willingness to learn on our behalf... but all the knowledge in the world will do you no good unless you can convince a client to integrate these ideas into their project..
more fun from COTE:
I couldn't agree more with regard to recognizing a significant
portion of AIA dues going toward painting the architect as the
professional with the white hat is the wrong approach the AIA public
relations machine should be making. However, claiming, "architects
have the only set of skills to design sustainable buildings, period,"
is in my opinion sounding a bit sententious. There is nothing magic
in designing and building sustainable structures. Building with
environmental consciousness is not string theory or understanding 11
dimensions of physics. It's common sense stuff that most of the
planet has been doing for most of its history.
Yes, even in the United States, ordinary builders with a high school
education and a lot of hammer-swinging experience completely
understand and practice perfectly decent green building standards,
while I dare say the majority of licensed architects produce the most
wasteful and unconscious structures imaginable. I personally know
men and women in both categories.
If there is education to be done, it must be done among ourselves.
Architects of all stripes MUST realize that when they draw an
electronic line or type a specification in the middle of the night,
he or she has to hear in the distance the crack of a falling tree and
the sloshing of crude oil in the belly of a tanker. [bold by tk]
Unless we are building with mud and straw, producing all the power we
need on site, and capturing all the water we need from the rain, we
are not really at the pinnacle of sustainability; we are all (myself
included) practicing various levels of sinning. The last thing we
should be doing is assuming architects, even COTE-card carrying
architects, have the keys to the kingdom. There's a lot to be done
from all involved in the building trade, and maybe not a whole lot of
time to do it. Let's recognize and encourage environmentally-
appropriate practice wherever we can find it. The trick is to
demonstrate that the way buildings are currently made in our country
is flat out wrong, and the right way (environmentally-appropriate
way) to make a building is also monetarily advantageous for the folks
who pay for having it built.
Everything else is commentary.
Okay, that's my rant for the evening.
Hope to meet some of you folks in San Antonio next month!
We'll have some fun.
-stephen
----------
well, that was the only thing worth reposting, the discussion digressed to contemplating the odor of compost and it's impact on Yosemite... we
TK - That bold portion goes far beyond architects. Any person in power is usually far removed from the consequences of their decisions. Politicians come to mind as a prime example.
As a matter of fact most of us in the "developed" world are very far removed from the consequences of our daily decisions. Do you think a Wal-Mart shopper thinks about the plastic trinkets they load their cart with? Where it came from? What it's cost to the environment? Society?
All the time we hear about third world sweatshops, or bulldozing of the rainforests. Still, that's a world away and easily forgotten. Sorry for being pessimistic, but I don't see how architects, or the public in general, will ever change their habits without some first hand experience.
there was a reason that I choose to highlight that passage - my idealist tendencies are starting to scare me. I've stopped buying my favorite gum because it comes in a cute metal tin (that I know won't really be recycled cause it ain't an aluminum can).
for today's installment, we finally have a reply from Phil (the most vocal and opinionated, in a good way, member of cote):
I'd agree that much of design for sustainability is not 'rocket science' and you don't need to be an architect to understand or build with it. A large part of what sustainability is responding to, though, is major historic errors of design by well meaning people in building civilization. I think architects are perhaps in a better position than anyone to understand what 'big change order' means. Just because we're more aware of the serious consequences of designing a world with the wrong model in mind doesn't mean we're not also prone to the error ourselves, of course,... Still, we're starting to pay more serious attention with the combined caring and self-critical mindset that seems to be needed. That's not something you hear much about elsewhere it seems to me.
Phil
Hmm, that got me thinking that I should share a classic bit of Phil's wisdom (frommarch 26th) titled 'leave it to the future...':
Of course, we can also look at ourselves as being the future, and dealing with a huge pile of problems other folks left to us. They perhaps thought, surely the people of the future will be so smart they'll solve it all in a gif! Unfortunately the change orders in the design of civilization are getting bigger and bigger at an alarming rate, well, at least for anyone who doesn't live in denial. I think what's actually failing is the 'big boss' model of nature and society, not the bosses per se, but the model. Lets see if I can make the case.
Everything we do and value is actually wholly dependent on leaderless natural systems. People can get up on some soap box and lay claim to the magic of vast organization that just amazingly takes care of itself. That doesn't change any part of where such systems come from or how they work, but for centuries now it has been part of what diverted our attention from them. We let the soap box guy take credit, and then didn't do the careful study to figure out how nature can possibly work by itself.
Our historic accumulation of methods, markets and techniques, what some refer to as 'the economy', exists only as a natural system that no one designed, no one understands very well and no one can record. The unstudied worlds of influential contributions that compose it are utterly vast. It's measurably of the same order of complexity as a human body since they both have made as many doublings. It works by everyone making their own way to fit in, creating new niches and connections that are successive alterations of the ones that were there before. It's an accumulative creative design of all those who ever were engaged in it. What a mechanistic model will seem to explain is any given instantaneous diagram of the network of exchanges. It will just never tell you where its structures came from or where the new ones will break out. So, having a soap box guy, saying it should redesign itself ever more rapidly forever, can seem like a logical plan, and feels good until the changes in the system become forced and unhealthy. Of course, because we haven't learned much about that, it's hard to see one way or another.
One seemingly sure sign that our growth is not healthy is the explosion of symptoms of limits and our discombobulated belief that the solution its to outgrow them. We even have the whole sustainability movement promoting the use of the diminishing resource of efficiency for the antithesis of sustainability, multiplying development and consumption! This kind of train wreck just does not look like something any 'big boss' thought through and decided to have happen.
Our 'economy', our system of life, is the repository of all of mankind's accumulated creativity, and we're taking extreme risks with it. It's not just the biological and climatic systems of the earth that are at risk. It's the coherence of our own evolution that could be pushed over the edge too, and be harder to rebuild from than Katrina. It's the explosion of complex decision making that I think could push us into system-wide disarray. Global warming is just the tip of the iceberg. This little problem with money that no one can talk about, how we use it to endlessly multiply complexity and change without any apparent increase in effort for those feeding it... comes from the magic of the natural system we've been negligent in trying to understand. Since almost everyone seems seduced into wanting it to multiply forever, few have checked to see if we could turn it off. The way our institutions are structured, we can't.
Nature just makes mistakes sometimes... big ones, like letting us carry on with the 'big boss' idea that everything was under someone's control. You could call us 'drunk-o sapiens' really. It would be perfectly appropriate to characterize how we get so completely carried away with our crazy fantasies, like endless multiplying change without any increased effort..or the idea that forcefully rearranging someone else's culture would be 'glorious'. Nearly all our gifts and all our problems come through natural systems in which we are creative participants. As long as we didn't notice... it seemed fine to do whatever some pundit said did the trick before, and the living things we were part of creatively adapted.
So, what's anyone supposed to do? I've described a royal mess. We find ourselves profoundly ignorant at a time when we desperately need a great widely distributed intelligence. Sure we still need to learn how to live in a world that works. But we also need to defuse the time bomb. Think of how the Soviet Union suddenly and peacefully failed, or how the crack epidemic abruptly dissolved away as it did to end 30 years of ghetto violence. There were documentable waves of truth in both of those events, people pressed to their absolute limits, collectively choosing a different way. For us it's more of a problem, because what we're in danger of is failing dramatically at the peak of our success. We're not oppressed and suffering. We're in much worse trouble. Considering what seems at the center of what's failing, though,... that could be especially good news! :,)
Phil
nobody responded - what was left to say?
a couple from the Virginia AIA.... these look pretty good... they seem like they would be informative...
~CC
-----------
I. Communicating Your Value to Any Audience: The Foundation of New Business
* Friday, April 13, 8:15 am – noon (3 CES LUs)
Register by 5 pm Tuesday, April 10
* Friday, April 27, 8:15 am – noon (REPEAT - 3 CES LUs)
Register by 5 pm Tuesday, April 24
Learn to communicate more effectively with current and prospective clients by recognizing the personality preferences that guide thinking and decision making. This three-hour seminar (one session) will focus on:
* The rules of personality preference and how they affect decision making;
* What a prospective client is interested in learning about your practice by how they talk; and
* How to present your concepts to prospects in the most compelling manner.
----
II. Striking Oil: Uncover Opportunities and Build Your Business Pipeline
* Friday, April 27, 12:45 – 4 pm, and Saturday, April 28, 8:15 am – 4 pm (9 CES LUs)
Register by 5 pm Tuesday, April 24
Stop wasting time with cold calling! “Striking oil” is about obtaining productive meetings with appropriate prospective clients on a regular basis. In this nine-hour seminar (three sessions over two days), learn proven strategies to win new business by:
* Standing out from your competition;
* Building relationships with prospective clients; and
* Overcoming the four obstacles to winning a new contract.
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