This has been a household topic for a while, usually accompanied with double fisting beers after 12 hours of painful CA.
There seems to be a shift in how architects feel and are perceived in the professional world. At least in my locale, there is a pretty general malaise that has got people thinking about where we should be heading.
So does anyone else feel like the profession is on the edge of being obsolete as it currently stands? In contracting, contract documents, and relationship with the builder?
How should things change in order for the field of architecture to progress? Thoughts on fundamental problems?
I think its a slow deterioration thats been in the works for quite awhile.
I wish I could find this letter I happened upon by RM Schindler (to the AIA c 1945) where he lambastes the profession for losing control over construction and how the contractor not only holds the expertise but makes the all of the profit.
construction is booming across the world. architect's are designing pure fantasy in places like dubai and getting it built (for better, for worse). nearly everyone is getting a piece of the pie that wants it. (though i pity the sole practitioner cooped up at his drafting table.) quite frankly i don't think times have ever been better for architects.
the profession has certainly changed from what it was in schindler's era, but that is only to be expected, and not something to be mourned. if anything architects need to step up to the plate and design better buildings, because the opportunity is there.
whats so great about design build unless you are the builder. we have worked on several d/b projects and everything is done on the hurry up and all the design is sacrificed.
frankly (and quite sadly) i think its architecture in the US thats facing a a sucky situation. in most other places (as jafidler mentioned) architecture and design are really booming.
i'll put this out there....
1. in many countries construction documents are seen as a negotiation between the contractor and the architect. in this process both need to sign off in order for the project to move onto construction. this places tolerances and execution into a discursive negotiated process. if a location has held onto craft traditions this allows these traditions to be utilized during the construciton detailing negotiations.
2. in the US construction documents are legal documents created by the architect (with minimal contractor input) describing an intent towards the design that are then interpreted by the contractor. this places the detailing into a litigious process. in this, craft is undercut in service of the minimal standards and tolerances as stipulated by national boards and organizations.
3. design build attempts to bridge this gap in the us but is only as powerful as the area within the office that manages the movement of money. this will typically lie in the build department as that is where markups are integrated into materials costs (constant revenue stream).
maybe this is just my cynical view...but i do think there are some things to think about here.
yeah, design-build seems to be a good direction, both in design quality and in compensation. I wonder how sucessful that could be in a small 8 or 9 person firm model.
I could do a quick google on design build architecture firms, but instead I will be lazy and ask if archinect knows of anyt examples off hand.
i tend to think, in matters of this nature, that you can't be a victim without your own permission and participation.
we don't get no respect because we tend to not really understand what our client's are trying to accomplish ... we want them to see our world, and our work, through our own filters instead of through THEIR filters ... that's a fatal mistake.
we judge a doctor based on whether his/her services make us well; we judge a lawyer based on whether his/her services win the lawsuit or keep us out of jail. we judge an accountant based on whether the IRS audits our tax return or not. yet, we expect our clients to judge our services on whether we think it's a great building - not whether it's in budget, whether it's on schedule and whether the roof keeps the rain out.
when we start defining our services to address our clients' real concerns; when we start standing up for ourselves (objectively and politely) and insist that we be treated with respect; when we start walking away from work, and clients, where we don't stand a snowball's chance of delivering a good project; and when we start delivering true value (as the client defines value) on a consistent and sustained basis - then we won't need to have many threads like this one.
but, based on the personality types that dominate in this profession, i'm not holding my breath
Yes, so aside from some tweeking of character and self-esteem, is there something else making things harder than they need to be?
I guess for the most part, in thinking that design build is a less viable solution for a small firm, what are some things within the contract and contract documents that are setting us up for failure?
Too much info?
Not enough?
Are detail keys the devil?
Are 24x36 pages too constricting? Should we move to a scroll??
What parameters are we imposing on the profession that may be holding us back?
Someone will always be needed to concieve and draw the building. What and who that person is has always changed with the times and has always been reffered to as the architect.
in canada we had to put into the dwgs something to the effect that construction workers are expected to not be lazy assholes. it was prettified but that was the meaning.
in london we didn't have to do that, but there were other issues, none of them really onerous. however, finding a builder who could handle our work was a bit hard compared to...
tokyo, where it is pretty much as futureboy says. we do construction docs, decide on contractor and then negotiate details, materials, construction method/schedule/order, etc...so we get a good building and the contractor is happy too. litigation pertty much never happens and we work together to get nice project done. AND the construction workers, while similar to constrution workers in Canada and UK in terms of character-type (macho cowboy comes to mind) are, in general, also ready to go that extra bit to see their work done right. they have pride in what they do. That helps a lot. That it takes 10 years minimum to learn the trade of a carpenter also is part of that (for houses anyway...timber frame construction is not for highschool kids without brains)...
which is to say that in many ways good architecture requires a culture ready to build it. America just has lower lows than other first-world nations.
on other hand, quizzical is also correct to point out that architects take on a lot of crap work they shouldn't....only downside to that is builders will be ready to take up the slack and better architecture will not necessarily result if such work is turned down...
we are in many ways trapped by our culture and trying to lead it is a hard job. it is def worth trying though.
in canada we had to put into the dwgs something to the effect that construction workers are expected to not be lazy assholes. it was prettified but that was the meaning.
in london we didn't have to do that, but there were other issues, none of them really onerous. however, finding a builder who could handle our work was a bit hard compared to...
tokyo, where it is pretty much as futureboy says. we do construction docs, decide on contractor and then negotiate details, materials, construction method/schedule/order, etc...so we get a good building and the contractor is happy too. litigation pertty much never happens and we work together to get nice project done. AND the construction workers, while similar to constrution workers in Canada and UK in terms of character-type (macho cowboy comes to mind) are, in general, also ready to go that extra bit to see their work done right. they have pride in what they do. That helps a lot. That it takes 10 years minimum to learn the trade of a carpenter also is part of that (for houses anyway...timber frame construction is not for highschool kids without brains)...
which is to say that in many ways good architecture requires a culture ready to build it. America just has lower lows than other first-world nations.
on other hand, quizzical is also correct to point out that architects take on a lot of crap work they shouldn't....only downside to that is builders will be ready to take up the slack and better architecture will not necessarily result if such work is turned down...
we are in many ways trapped by our culture and trying to lead it is a hard job. it is def worth trying though.
a thought occured to me the other day...and in some ways this deals with quizzical's statement. that this profession is caught in an odd predicament. on one hand we need to be seen as a luxury good which means promoting brand or "art" instead of performance...which leads to a internal dialogue as design process (singular artist as genius and generator), yet as a profession we need to function at the level of performance and service in order to efficiently utilize resources (coordinating, collaborating) which requires the design process to exist as an external dialogue. a fundamental question then needs to be asked how to create an artistic process via an externalized dialogue. how has this successfully been employed elsewhere? can we apply it within architecture? i think the answers to this are a resounding yes, but it will require a shift in thinking in terms of education and practice.
this then leads to the culture ready to inhabit it or build it....at which point one asks how much can we lead this externalized dialogue and how much are we lead by it.....this will determine our level of artistry within it.
it's a great point, futureboy, and one that i've been thinking a lot about since graduating. more and more, though, i am feeling that there is a strong divide between artistry and performance. i'm skeptical that pure performance can be accomplished artistically. unfortunately, performance is the driver because it is quantifiable (i.e. $$$); artistry is simply aesthetic (i.e. easily value engineered out). i would love to hear ideas on how to merge the two, but from almost all of my professional experience i have never seen it applied well in practice.
I'm just glad to see other people admitting they want to go Design/Build. Sometimes I feel like a lone construction worker in a room full of artists. I admit that's a fairly large and extreme generalization.
Personally I have a love of construction, not just admiring it, or understanding it, but doing it, and supervising it. I also feel like D/B can help approach customer satisfaction from two angles, both the idea AND the finished product. When I can control both of those aspects, and have have a construction perspective, I become a better (more realistic) designer, and the client is happier.
oh, and I think we need to start some kind of initiative to re-emphasize good design. Too many contractors "design" ugly buildings without any background in design, history, et. al.
It's time we showed the public what kind of crap they have been settling for, to save a few dollars.
design-build is a bit illusory imo. at least in school, when design-build came up, it involved the architect going out there with a hammer and building it him/herself. great if you're doing interiors and residential, but this is a fairly small part of the market.
i have seen very few good things come from firms where the contractor and the architect live together under the same roof. usually the contractor in this situation dominates the architect. why design-build is all the rage is beyond me. i'd love to hear why people think it's so great.
rfuller, if played correctly this is what sustainable design could engender....but architects need to explain and quantify what design means....and in the end that will mean more criteria and bureacracy in the designing/permiting process...and oversight...
the question is how is this best undertaken
design build sucks. i think it appeals to the part of our instincts that wants hands-on control (and the freedom from interference from others) and that's probably why its popular. from my perspective, architecture is negotiation and the more people to deal with then probably the better. delegation is important to maintain personal sanity. best to craft to a good team and then trust them.
having worked for a family design build contractor off and on for the last 13 years in between architecture jobs, I feel somewhat qualified to respond:
Its all the rage because the builder can almost always answer the most critical question: How much?
And even if they're wrong, they can stear the project towards that number, with design input.
Like architects, there are good and bad contractors. In any given market there will be some stellar contractors who know their market prices and building types and can really free up the architect to concentrate on design more while letting the contractor work out the details, and both make money. But if your a purist, its going to be a painful experiance.
there are a lot of positive aspecs (potential?) to design build...it all comes down to the relationship you have with your contractor/partner, and your ability to respect him/her (and vice versa)...in other words, collaboration and mutual respect are key...(see comments on CD process in other countries)
seeing how our profession in the US works nowadays, "collaboration and mutual respect" are hard to come by, so I can see why design-build so often falls way short of its potential...
CKP, i think the client/developer/architect relationship, and the ever-present willingness for architecture to undercut itself is also part of the FUNdamental problem...
as you said evilp, there are good contractors and bad ones. i suppose by going design-build you're at least guaranteed of knowing your contractor's abilities while working through the design, but having said that, with a little experience, most firms that are doing design-bid-build know their contractors pretty well. (maybe this is only true of well established offices.) personally, i would not want a contractor looking over my shoulder as i work through a design always waving the pocketbook in front of my eyes. design purely by economics leads to bad design. i like the distance, but to each, his own.
I was attending a lecture where the keynote speaker was Enrique Norten of Ten Arquitectos, and one of the follow-up questions from the audience was relating architecture to art. Mr. Norten strongly disagreed, his comments were along the lines of "architecture has a duty to the public, not purely aesthetics, there should be no correlation taken."
How can design by economics be the highest form of design? This is not sarcastice Thursday, is it? Isn't the best design the best combination of carefully weighted issues each addressed appropriately to contribute to a whole, economics being just one of those issues in any given design project?
if you're an theoretically-oriented economist the potential value of aesthetic choices and longevity are all part of the picture. i.e., some economists believe in a unified field theory of economics where EVERYTHING can be analyzed economically. is that attitude the source of your sentiment, evilplatypus?
The buildings that will touch the most people will through their service to society will do so because they are rational and profitable and there is an asthetic to this ideology ( please do not post smart ass pix of strip mall) that is being ignored by the schools and profesionals who rather than embrace the attitude of our age, they choose to ignore or disdain it, thus throwing away amazing oppurtunities to advance the profesion and the building arts. True there will always be that building as sculpture or overlayed with historical meaning or cultural affection, but that has more to do with circumstance. Economic reductionism as an asthetic is prob the best way to the most honest structure.
sw/futureboy/evilp, can any of you think of a project where this sort of economic lens really produced great capital A Architecture? i want to be made a believer, but in practice, i have serious doubts.
jafidler,
every really great architect does this. it's not always talked about in that manner...but in many ways it was what the bauhaus was built on. we lost it, though, along the way. even colin rowe, slutsky, and hejduk (the texas rangers) were involved in continuing to push it beyond the specifics of the pragmatic espoused by gropius and mies....but somewhere it went wrong, very wrong. the divorce they created between tectonics and architecture as a language...instead of freeing architectural education to incorporate other forms of economy (beyond industrialized material economies) devolved into stylized mannerisms of surface articulations. the dutch offices, and now some younger american offices are trying to pick up from where the texas rangers left off...but the culture has changed so much since then and the aia has embraced the concepts or (mis)concepts of architecture as surface articulation that one has to be particularly opportunistic in order to advance this economic logic.
or to put it simpler....smart people understand how to take advantage of opportunities, no matter where they come from.....
to me this whole argument sounds very dutch - mid-90s koolhaas, and while i like the argument, i've never seen it fulfilled in practice and in fact, i don't think even koolhaas intended to apply it in practice. cctv or any other of his projects is far from being driven by economy.
on a very dangerous level, though, this type of thinking has infiltrated all levels of professional practice. (aia is about surface articulation? are you kidding me?) now instead of pursuing projects that actually contribute to the world whether through beauty or function, architecture is driven by the bottom line. all hail the free market economy.
it's definitely a serious issue. i recently had a conversation with a project manager from one of the biggest CM in the world, and he poised the same question to me. it was kind of a scary conversation to have with someone who's been in the business for 20years and i've just been around for 1 year (is this profession going to be obsolete in my prime?). my position was that hopefully BMI technology will help the whole building industry coordinate and get projects built better and faster.
the FUN in FUNdamental
This has been a household topic for a while, usually accompanied with double fisting beers after 12 hours of painful CA.
There seems to be a shift in how architects feel and are perceived in the professional world. At least in my locale, there is a pretty general malaise that has got people thinking about where we should be heading.
So does anyone else feel like the profession is on the edge of being obsolete as it currently stands? In contracting, contract documents, and relationship with the builder?
How should things change in order for the field of architecture to progress? Thoughts on fundamental problems?
yes.
i don't know. maybe design build.
yes.
yes.
this is a big question. whoever figures this one out will seriously cash in.
value. both perceived (by the public) and added (by the profession).
we come up seriously short on both ends.
I think its a slow deterioration thats been in the works for quite awhile.
I wish I could find this letter I happened upon by RM Schindler (to the AIA c 1945) where he lambastes the profession for losing control over construction and how the contractor not only holds the expertise but makes the all of the profit.
He was design build...
have you seen Joshua Prince-Ramus lecture? we're all screwed in 5 years.
maybe there are just too many "designers" out there.
construction is booming across the world. architect's are designing pure fantasy in places like dubai and getting it built (for better, for worse). nearly everyone is getting a piece of the pie that wants it. (though i pity the sole practitioner cooped up at his drafting table.) quite frankly i don't think times have ever been better for architects.
the profession has certainly changed from what it was in schindler's era, but that is only to be expected, and not something to be mourned. if anything architects need to step up to the plate and design better buildings, because the opportunity is there.
its really time to suck it up and show some pride you shoegazers!
jafidler, nice optimism.
Things aren't always so cheery hear at the bottom of the food chain doing mostly single family residential...
Its still a battleground between contractors who provide 'design services' and architects who want control of construction.
I'm a sole-practioner, no pity is necessary though.
I hear a typo - *here
sorry, silverlake. no offense. i aspire to starting my own firm and am sympathetic to the problems of starting a small practice.
whats so great about design build unless you are the builder. we have worked on several d/b projects and everything is done on the hurry up and all the design is sacrificed.
we are a service profession...like the guy flipping hamburgers at McDonalds
We charge by the hour
i work at micky d's and it was my favorite job ever. arby's was cool too.
frankly (and quite sadly) i think its architecture in the US thats facing a a sucky situation. in most other places (as jafidler mentioned) architecture and design are really booming.
no worries jafidler...
In N Out pays really well, and its nearly 100% customer satisfaction...
i'll put this out there....
1. in many countries construction documents are seen as a negotiation between the contractor and the architect. in this process both need to sign off in order for the project to move onto construction. this places tolerances and execution into a discursive negotiated process. if a location has held onto craft traditions this allows these traditions to be utilized during the construciton detailing negotiations.
2. in the US construction documents are legal documents created by the architect (with minimal contractor input) describing an intent towards the design that are then interpreted by the contractor. this places the detailing into a litigious process. in this, craft is undercut in service of the minimal standards and tolerances as stipulated by national boards and organizations.
3. design build attempts to bridge this gap in the us but is only as powerful as the area within the office that manages the movement of money. this will typically lie in the build department as that is where markups are integrated into materials costs (constant revenue stream).
maybe this is just my cynical view...but i do think there are some things to think about here.
yeah, design-build seems to be a good direction, both in design quality and in compensation. I wonder how sucessful that could be in a small 8 or 9 person firm model.
I could do a quick google on design build architecture firms, but instead I will be lazy and ask if archinect knows of anyt examples off hand.
i tend to think, in matters of this nature, that you can't be a victim without your own permission and participation.
we don't get no respect because we tend to not really understand what our client's are trying to accomplish ... we want them to see our world, and our work, through our own filters instead of through THEIR filters ... that's a fatal mistake.
we judge a doctor based on whether his/her services make us well; we judge a lawyer based on whether his/her services win the lawsuit or keep us out of jail. we judge an accountant based on whether the IRS audits our tax return or not. yet, we expect our clients to judge our services on whether we think it's a great building - not whether it's in budget, whether it's on schedule and whether the roof keeps the rain out.
when we start defining our services to address our clients' real concerns; when we start standing up for ourselves (objectively and politely) and insist that we be treated with respect; when we start walking away from work, and clients, where we don't stand a snowball's chance of delivering a good project; and when we start delivering true value (as the client defines value) on a consistent and sustained basis - then we won't need to have many threads like this one.
but, based on the personality types that dominate in this profession, i'm not holding my breath
Yes, so aside from some tweeking of character and self-esteem, is there something else making things harder than they need to be?
I guess for the most part, in thinking that design build is a less viable solution for a small firm, what are some things within the contract and contract documents that are setting us up for failure?
Too much info?
Not enough?
Are detail keys the devil?
Are 24x36 pages too constricting? Should we move to a scroll??
What parameters are we imposing on the profession that may be holding us back?
Someone will always be needed to concieve and draw the building. What and who that person is has always changed with the times and has always been reffered to as the architect.
in canada we had to put into the dwgs something to the effect that construction workers are expected to not be lazy assholes. it was prettified but that was the meaning.
in london we didn't have to do that, but there were other issues, none of them really onerous. however, finding a builder who could handle our work was a bit hard compared to...
tokyo, where it is pretty much as futureboy says. we do construction docs, decide on contractor and then negotiate details, materials, construction method/schedule/order, etc...so we get a good building and the contractor is happy too. litigation pertty much never happens and we work together to get nice project done. AND the construction workers, while similar to constrution workers in Canada and UK in terms of character-type (macho cowboy comes to mind) are, in general, also ready to go that extra bit to see their work done right. they have pride in what they do. That helps a lot. That it takes 10 years minimum to learn the trade of a carpenter also is part of that (for houses anyway...timber frame construction is not for highschool kids without brains)...
which is to say that in many ways good architecture requires a culture ready to build it. America just has lower lows than other first-world nations.
on other hand, quizzical is also correct to point out that architects take on a lot of crap work they shouldn't....only downside to that is builders will be ready to take up the slack and better architecture will not necessarily result if such work is turned down...
we are in many ways trapped by our culture and trying to lead it is a hard job. it is def worth trying though.
in canada we had to put into the dwgs something to the effect that construction workers are expected to not be lazy assholes. it was prettified but that was the meaning.
in london we didn't have to do that, but there were other issues, none of them really onerous. however, finding a builder who could handle our work was a bit hard compared to...
tokyo, where it is pretty much as futureboy says. we do construction docs, decide on contractor and then negotiate details, materials, construction method/schedule/order, etc...so we get a good building and the contractor is happy too. litigation pertty much never happens and we work together to get nice project done. AND the construction workers, while similar to constrution workers in Canada and UK in terms of character-type (macho cowboy comes to mind) are, in general, also ready to go that extra bit to see their work done right. they have pride in what they do. That helps a lot. That it takes 10 years minimum to learn the trade of a carpenter also is part of that (for houses anyway...timber frame construction is not for highschool kids without brains)...
which is to say that in many ways good architecture requires a culture ready to build it. America just has lower lows than other first-world nations.
on other hand, quizzical is also correct to point out that architects take on a lot of crap work they shouldn't....only downside to that is builders will be ready to take up the slack and better architecture will not necessarily result if such work is turned down...
we are in many ways trapped by our culture and trying to lead it is a hard job. it is def worth trying though.
apologies.
we used to dream about writing a spec that said 'do a good job and send me a picture.'
section 012400
quote of the day:
"which is to say that in many ways good architecture requires a culture ready to build it"
jump
to which I would add, a culture ready to inhabit it
a thought occured to me the other day...and in some ways this deals with quizzical's statement. that this profession is caught in an odd predicament. on one hand we need to be seen as a luxury good which means promoting brand or "art" instead of performance...which leads to a internal dialogue as design process (singular artist as genius and generator), yet as a profession we need to function at the level of performance and service in order to efficiently utilize resources (coordinating, collaborating) which requires the design process to exist as an external dialogue. a fundamental question then needs to be asked how to create an artistic process via an externalized dialogue. how has this successfully been employed elsewhere? can we apply it within architecture? i think the answers to this are a resounding yes, but it will require a shift in thinking in terms of education and practice.
this then leads to the culture ready to inhabit it or build it....at which point one asks how much can we lead this externalized dialogue and how much are we lead by it.....this will determine our level of artistry within it.
it's a great point, futureboy, and one that i've been thinking a lot about since graduating. more and more, though, i am feeling that there is a strong divide between artistry and performance. i'm skeptical that pure performance can be accomplished artistically. unfortunately, performance is the driver because it is quantifiable (i.e. $$$); artistry is simply aesthetic (i.e. easily value engineered out). i would love to hear ideas on how to merge the two, but from almost all of my professional experience i have never seen it applied well in practice.
and i put the SEX in ESSEX
I'm just glad to see other people admitting they want to go Design/Build. Sometimes I feel like a lone construction worker in a room full of artists. I admit that's a fairly large and extreme generalization.
Personally I have a love of construction, not just admiring it, or understanding it, but doing it, and supervising it. I also feel like D/B can help approach customer satisfaction from two angles, both the idea AND the finished product. When I can control both of those aspects, and have have a construction perspective, I become a better (more realistic) designer, and the client is happier.
oh, and I think we need to start some kind of initiative to re-emphasize good design. Too many contractors "design" ugly buildings without any background in design, history, et. al.
It's time we showed the public what kind of crap they have been settling for, to save a few dollars.
Just my two cents.
design-build is a bit illusory imo. at least in school, when design-build came up, it involved the architect going out there with a hammer and building it him/herself. great if you're doing interiors and residential, but this is a fairly small part of the market.
i have seen very few good things come from firms where the contractor and the architect live together under the same roof. usually the contractor in this situation dominates the architect. why design-build is all the rage is beyond me. i'd love to hear why people think it's so great.
rfuller, if played correctly this is what sustainable design could engender....but architects need to explain and quantify what design means....and in the end that will mean more criteria and bureacracy in the designing/permiting process...and oversight...
the question is how is this best undertaken
design build sucks. i think it appeals to the part of our instincts that wants hands-on control (and the freedom from interference from others) and that's probably why its popular. from my perspective, architecture is negotiation and the more people to deal with then probably the better. delegation is important to maintain personal sanity. best to craft to a good team and then trust them.
jafidler -
having worked for a family design build contractor off and on for the last 13 years in between architecture jobs, I feel somewhat qualified to respond:
Its all the rage because the builder can almost always answer the most critical question: How much?
And even if they're wrong, they can stear the project towards that number, with design input.
Like architects, there are good and bad contractors. In any given market there will be some stellar contractors who know their market prices and building types and can really free up the architect to concentrate on design more while letting the contractor work out the details, and both make money. But if your a purist, its going to be a painful experiance.
there are a lot of positive aspecs (potential?) to design build...it all comes down to the relationship you have with your contractor/partner, and your ability to respect him/her (and vice versa)...in other words, collaboration and mutual respect are key...(see comments on CD process in other countries)
seeing how our profession in the US works nowadays, "collaboration and mutual respect" are hard to come by, so I can see why design-build so often falls way short of its potential...
CKP, i think the client/developer/architect relationship, and the ever-present willingness for architecture to undercut itself is also part of the FUNdamental problem...
as you said evilp, there are good contractors and bad ones. i suppose by going design-build you're at least guaranteed of knowing your contractor's abilities while working through the design, but having said that, with a little experience, most firms that are doing design-bid-build know their contractors pretty well. (maybe this is only true of well established offices.) personally, i would not want a contractor looking over my shoulder as i work through a design always waving the pocketbook in front of my eyes. design purely by economics leads to bad design. i like the distance, but to each, his own.
I was attending a lecture where the keynote speaker was Enrique Norten of Ten Arquitectos, and one of the follow-up questions from the audience was relating architecture to art. Mr. Norten strongly disagreed, his comments were along the lines of "architecture has a duty to the public, not purely aesthetics, there should be no correlation taken."
jafid-
"design purely by economics leads to bad design"
Purely subjective statement. Design by economics is the highest form of design.
"Design by economics is the highest form of design."
Equally subjective and imo, flat-out wrong. But again, to each, his own.
How can design by economics be the highest form of design? This is not sarcastice Thursday, is it? Isn't the best design the best combination of carefully weighted issues each addressed appropriately to contribute to a whole, economics being just one of those issues in any given design project?
if you're an theoretically-oriented economist the potential value of aesthetic choices and longevity are all part of the picture. i.e., some economists believe in a unified field theory of economics where EVERYTHING can be analyzed economically. is that attitude the source of your sentiment, evilplatypus?
SW, that's what i'm talkin about...and that is the way to advance our profession's goals...and check some of our assumptions.
The buildings that will touch the most people will through their service to society will do so because they are rational and profitable and there is an asthetic to this ideology ( please do not post smart ass pix of strip mall) that is being ignored by the schools and profesionals who rather than embrace the attitude of our age, they choose to ignore or disdain it, thus throwing away amazing oppurtunities to advance the profesion and the building arts. True there will always be that building as sculpture or overlayed with historical meaning or cultural affection, but that has more to do with circumstance. Economic reductionism as an asthetic is prob the best way to the most honest structure.
sw/futureboy/evilp, can any of you think of a project where this sort of economic lens really produced great capital A Architecture? i want to be made a believer, but in practice, i have serious doubts.
the only great architect that i can think of that may have approached this sort of merger of beauty and economy was mies.
exactly: But it will never be capital A architecture. Mies made it to capital A because the academics loved him at the time. Theyve moved on.
Most capital A architecture is more fashion/ style than anything else;
i need to get back to economic reduction
jafidler,
every really great architect does this. it's not always talked about in that manner...but in many ways it was what the bauhaus was built on. we lost it, though, along the way. even colin rowe, slutsky, and hejduk (the texas rangers) were involved in continuing to push it beyond the specifics of the pragmatic espoused by gropius and mies....but somewhere it went wrong, very wrong. the divorce they created between tectonics and architecture as a language...instead of freeing architectural education to incorporate other forms of economy (beyond industrialized material economies) devolved into stylized mannerisms of surface articulations. the dutch offices, and now some younger american offices are trying to pick up from where the texas rangers left off...but the culture has changed so much since then and the aia has embraced the concepts or (mis)concepts of architecture as surface articulation that one has to be particularly opportunistic in order to advance this economic logic.
or to put it simpler....smart people understand how to take advantage of opportunities, no matter where they come from.....
to me this whole argument sounds very dutch - mid-90s koolhaas, and while i like the argument, i've never seen it fulfilled in practice and in fact, i don't think even koolhaas intended to apply it in practice. cctv or any other of his projects is far from being driven by economy.
on a very dangerous level, though, this type of thinking has infiltrated all levels of professional practice. (aia is about surface articulation? are you kidding me?) now instead of pursuing projects that actually contribute to the world whether through beauty or function, architecture is driven by the bottom line. all hail the free market economy.
ckp---
it's definitely a serious issue. i recently had a conversation with a project manager from one of the biggest CM in the world, and he poised the same question to me. it was kind of a scary conversation to have with someone who's been in the business for 20years and i've just been around for 1 year (is this profession going to be obsolete in my prime?). my position was that hopefully BMI technology will help the whole building industry coordinate and get projects built better and faster.
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