We have a client who is in the process of completely dumbing down and making awful the design we produced for them. We designed them an elegantly proportioned modern house, with nice spaces and big plate glass windows to take in some outstanding views. We proposed natural materials on the exterior.
They now want sliders instead of the plate glass windows (and they're discussing using vinyl clad windows.) They want to add fake stone to the outside of the house around the base, and they want to use fake clapboard siding on the outside. They're even forcing us to create some disastrously non-functional spaces (an unusable master closet, a kitchen whose sink is stuffed into a corner.) We've argued with them over these items for weeks, but they're insisting.
This is painful to me—I know this is becoming an awful design, but there seems to be no way to prevent what's happening, short of dropping them as a client, which we can't afford to do. It's also their house, and they have a right to get what they want.
Do we just write the project off and design them their bad house? How do I keep my integrity as a designer?
Once out of school, design services become an economic proposition. It sounds as though you've done your best to identify and encourage better design choices for your clients. You cannot force them to accept your preference---all you can do is resign, or accept that sometimes (most times? every time?), the one paying the bills gets the last word.
Part of our work as architects is making the best out of an undesirable situation---often, choosing the lesser of two evils. As long as you're doing your best within the confines placed on the project, your integrity as a designer is intact, in my opinion.
Of course, if you can afford to drop the client, then tell them to take a walk.
Suggest better alternatives to the changes they are proposing, or explain your original design intention better. For instance, by sliders do you mean slider windows? Why didn't you give them operable windows to begin with? It's a house, not an office building....give them their operable windows but suggest a better material than vinyl. If they want fake stone find a reasonably priced "real" alternative and explain to them that "fake" won't last long. I have no idea what fake clapboard looks like so you're on your own there....
Don't write it off as a bad house....good designers use limitations to their advantage, not to their detriment.
citizen while I agree with you to a certain extent, isn't our design "integrity" perhaps not the best thing to hold onto in the current economic climate? If you are an architect, what IS your job, anyway? At the end of the day, we are all responsible for putting a roof over someone's head, right? And if we can't do that for a client - any client - without getting our panties up in a bunch about how said client is "destroying our design intention" without coming up with creative solutions for them, then frankly our profession deserves to tank.
Sorry but I'm a little offended that so many of our friends have lost their jobs in the past two weeks and you're considering taking your toys and going home because your client wants to make some changes to their design. Go ahead, drop the client, I've got lots of people who would take that commission...
I'm not encouraging our colleague to tell the client to take it or leave it. My comments were more to illustrate the fact that this is the real world with real clients paying real invoices, and not a school situation with the luxury to indulge every design whim because there are no fees involved. Farwest's approach (which you elaborate upon) is the professional and best one, I think. Utlimately, however, this is about providing services for a fee... and if a client insists upon choices that an architect finds completely odious, the choices are three:
1) suck it up, make the changes, cash the check, and don't put it in the portfolio
2) attempt to educate and persuade the client of better choices, which may or may not prevail
3) say "I'm sorry" and resign from the project.
Number 3 is an option, but, again, a luxurious one. Farwest's agony over the client's insistence on ugly prompted my reminder that we only control our behavior, not others'.
if you're principles are important than you must not design crap. if you don't make a stand then you will have this experience again and again. eventually you will hold on less and less to what you believe in and just mail it in. do you want to live like that? no? then draw a line in the sand. economy be damned.
that can be tough to deal with. I agree though that we have to use these kinds of limitations as advantages. You're always going to have clients that have their own ideas and thoughts on what the architect is showing them. And while they don't have the design minds that we have, they ultimately sign that check. So sometimes, esp. now with the economic woes we're experiencing, ya got to be willing to set that aside and give them what they want. As painful as it might be! hah
howard hasn't got much to do with it. howard was a social engineer. architects must be flexible. but clients must be flexible and have faith in the architect's they hire. so many clients these days just want a yes man and a stamp. and it's bullshit.
Thank you, Vado. It's not so much that the design is going in a bad, ugly and possibly non-functional direction. It's that these people hired us, and now want us to be the equivalent of house-painters or shoe-shiners: do exactly what they want, no matter what. They've disregarded every piece of advice we've given them.
Other professions have a sense of responsibility to their own profession and to society as a whole. Shouldn't architects too? The reason the American landscape is littered with crappy, horrible buildings is because too many architects adopt an attitude of "whatever pays the bills."
I have standards. We all should. Those of us who don't have professional standards and integrity should not be architects. This goes beyond just making buildings that don't fall down. We are design professionals. We design better spaces that our clients can imagine on their own—when we let our clients control us, they (and the world) get bad spaces.
Part of the hard work of providing architectural services is that friendly persuasion of clients... educating them without the appearing to be condescending... urging, coaxing them into choosing the better option. Not easy, but very important.
I don't think that design "integrity" is compromised if ultimately you can't persuade the client to see things your way. Really, if you make every effort to inform the client and not be arrogant about it, then i think you've maintained that integrity.
In the end, the client has to live with those choices they make and hopefully they're happy with it.
I have standards too, I'm just so upset that we find ourselves in these positions so often. I really TRULY think that the general public is woefully undereducated about their built environment. I would say that to the extent possible, use this as a teaching opportunity if you can ... treat them like kindergartners if you need to, that's about how much they understand when it comes to buildings, right?
Make some of their changes but not all and see how they react.
is there a way to SHOW them the results of bad decisions vs results of good ones? maybe using images of other good/bad projects or maybe through renderings?
it's hard to deal with clients who simply aren't listening but, if they are, and you give sincere as-non-judgmental and reasoned arguments as you can for your suggestions then they may just hear you.
i'm with wk, though. plate glass is pretty but i'd also rather have something operable.
is there a way to meet them in the middle? i.e., are you hearing the reason for what they're requesting or just reacting to the request? maybe there is a way to answer their concerns in a way that feels better - but you're just hearing their own solutions to the problem you're not solving for them.
If you have 3D capabilities, show them the model with the sliding glass doors and the sink (preferably with scalies) and use the ugliest, chunkiest mullions for those sliders, use a crappy sink - especially one with faucets you know they hate. SHOW THEM why you, in your professional judgment, think this is a bad move.
Stop talking about why your design is good and show them. If you don't have it modeled, get out your thick marker or watercolors and sketch the damn thing.
forget about educating the clients. i am tired of hearing it. clients don't want to be educated.
we are the ones as architects who need to be educated on how to tell people what we do and how we do it. we have been neglected building value for our design but we have concentrated building value on our other services mainly technical.
it is only natural for clients to take over after the technical and structural framework is done and either call the finishes themselves or hire a decorator who is placed over you when it comes to things about taste.
but also there is a whole class of different clients, who choose their architects based on architecture and with them you do your best work. because they appreciate you for who you are, and what you do for them.
take the check and move on. even if you salvage the kitchen sink, you know fake stone is going to be... sounds like they are educating you on how it works. they see it like, 'their dough their show..,' at this point.
sorry to hear that. write it off and spend your efforts on people who deserve them...
happens a lot.
question, are they picking these things out of a magazine or have they seen these options on other homes? is it possible to mock-up or model for them their choices/decisions so that they may view the full impact of their decision on their new home?
i agree with orhan most people who have money to hire an architect have the ego to go with it. they have already designed their dream projects. their wives have already picked out the towels. if you look at the websites of most firms the rap is service giving the client what they blah blah blah. its never about the beliefs of the firm the design principles that should constitute the reason a firm should exist. however we are caught up in the making payroll or just getting some jobs(especially now) to keep us going.
fitzgerald said life was a compromise but i have compromised to the point where i have been desensitized. having to pretend to think what you are doing is good just so the bosses don't think you have a bad attitude. taking on work that you know just sucks so you can pay the rent. having to listen to the check signer utter inanities like firmness commodity and delight and then ask you who was it that said that anyway...well we all have done it but its a soul crusher and my soul can only take so much weight.
farwest, I have ran into this situation a number of times. I wonder if we as a profession have finally lost all of our "powers" of standing. Maybe we are just painters and shoe shiners, my question would be two fold. How did allow this to happen? and What can be done to change this perception within the public? In short, how do we as a profession regain our class and influence? We can see what happens to our surroundings when we give in to so many client wishes and desiires. Is it possible to "stand up" as a profession?
On the plate glass issue, they're actually big plate glass windows at eye level, with low and high awning windows for air. But they want to remove this whole arrangement and replace it with one sliding window. Rather than a nicely arranged set of windows, one dumb punched opening in the middle of the wall.
It's what they know. In discussing this, as with all of the decisions on this house, they revert to "their last apartment" as the source of all architectural goodness. Punched openings, fake stone, a kitchen that sounds like it didn't work.
Even more frustrating is that the husband actually seems to (almost0 want good design. But then he goes home and talks to his wife at night, and the next morning we get an email erasing all the gains we made the previous day.
The other weird part about this is that they've seen other work of ours. They've seen that it's modern and clean and elegant. They hired us on this basis—got us really excited about working with them.
But as we're moving into specifics, the project is going through the uglification machine.
I've done renderings. I've shown examples of good work—they like it, but then don't make the connection that what they want is nothing like the good work they've been shown.
It's a difficult situation. And the tragedy of it for me is that I know this is a majority of the projects out there.
You have to deal with the client making these bad decisions if you do residential work. You don't need a stamp or a degree to make a house. Either get used to really botched up client input or elect not to do residential. Outside of single family residential you get to call the shots. If you didn't do modern residential then none of these issues like fake stone would be a problem. Fortunately in non-residentail work there is no 'gingerbread' office or 'mediteranian villa', it is modern because that is what it is. In the end it is you against the house wife that wants faux stone and that is what you are going to draw for her.
Providing services to people who don't necessarily share every aspect of our particular vision is part of our profession. It just is. They pay us.
This is nothing new. For every PJ or FLW who managed to hornswaggle (sorry, my Mom's from Missouri) his ideal project out of a reluctant patron, there were thousands of architects who had to wrestle over plans and elevations, details and materials with uncooperative clients.
We can try to educate, cajole, lecture and beg. Sometimes we'll prevail, but sometimes not. It is their project, too.
Maybe try art as metier with less interference? My hunch is that artists don't have all these problems.
i don't see what's "crap" about vinyl clad windows, fake clapboard siding, etc. they sound are just materials or components...pieces of a puzzle.
architects like to joke about being whores...but real prostitutes never complain about their work being crap (and sometimes their work literally is crap). they just do it.
As architects we are facilitators. Now I may only be a student but Im also not an idiot and have always approached it as so....
There is way more to an architect than just what he design's. We are the people that are turned to as a source of information and we are the people that are turned to when there are problems to be solved. I understand having "integrity" and "morals" about your design, but you are ignoring the whole other side of the "real" world. Your job is to facilitate a dream, yes the client may be a dick, most of them are. Yes the client is an idiot if he thinks seeing a set of blueprints once makes him qualified to design his own house. But.....ITS HIS HOUSE!!!! Who the hell cares if YOUR design sucks, this is NOT about pleasing you it is about pleasing the CLIENT. If the client is happy your design is NOT shit. Your job is to make the client happy, not to stroke your ego.
It is your job to sell the design. Regular folks rarely have a consistent and good design ideal. They may like Falling Water, but then also like wainscot with crown molding.
The idea is to educate your client on why one is good, the other bad and how they cannot work together.
The design is about their home, but it is also part of your career. They hired you/your firm to provide talent and skills, not to simply do their bidding.
End of day, you'll have to decide how far to push. At some point they'll either agree, respect your opinions more and you'll get a better house, or they'll insist on their ideas.
If it is the latter, then I'd just toss the towel in and let them design everything, path of least resistance. If it is crap, let it all be their crap and take the paycheck.
I'll strongly disagree with abc. There is much more to architecture than just doing what the client asks. Him being happy does not make for good design, nor does it necessarily help business (I'd argue it hurts business, if you use it in your portfolio).
i don't think you're an idiot, abc, but i also think there is a lot to which you haven't had exposure yet. we are NOT just facilitators - and those architects who have acted as if we are are those that have given away much of the discretion and responsibility that we used to have as a profession.
we are responsible to a much larger population than just our client. we must be responsive to ourselves, our profession at large, individual user-groups, and the general public. true, for a house these responsibilities are less onerous than with public buildings, but there is a certain amount of integrity that we must maintain and project. we all exercise a certain amount of judgment with every project - but the amount varies from architect to architect. where your line is has a lot to do with who you are as a designer and a professional.
for example, you would not likely honor your client's desire to build a house out of toxic materials or endangered wood species. you MAY think it's ok to use pvc, despite the things you know about how pvc is produced, but others' threshold of responsibility may not allow them to think use of pvc is ok. if you as an architect are committed to certain ways of thinking about daylighting for lesser use of artificial lighting or eschewing use of materials masquerading as others, you've got an ethical dilemma to wrestle through. how you address it establishes who you are and where your priorities lie as an architect. each time you make a decision, you're learning and repositioning for the next time you have to make a similar one.
i encourage everyone to check out 'the ethical architect' - tom spector. great explication of architects professional responsibilities and the implications of the paths we choose. no moralizing, no 'right' answers, just a framework for how to think about things.
my clients so far are pretty cool. we have never had to cajole anyone to do interesting design. can't quite imagine the point of that, really.
the bad planning would bug me, but the aesthetic stuff is not a concern for me personally so can't quite relate. still i feel for you farwest1. it can't be fun to spend time on something and then see it corrupted and turned into poor work (actually that sounds a bit like my years as intern)...but what can you do?....orhan seems to have the best idea - just get your koin and move on.
abc91686, the job of an architect is not quite that black and white...and anyway, i don't think farwest1 is suggesting his ego is being bruised...
actually farwest, now i think of it, just once we had a project go bad in the middle. we finished the job and were paid for it but asked the company in question (ie, our client) to refrain from putting our name on the project. we felt that it did not reflect our standards and we suggested in any case it had become a project designed by us but interpreted by them. the client agreed though they did not understand. i think that was the right decision. it is hard to get future quality work when your name is attached to something that does not cut the mustard. it was not about ego, but about business. lowering our standards would not have been sustainable as a business plan.
the problem is not the architect/client relationship, it's the husband/wife relationship. we as professionals cannot be psychiatrists to the patient if we are not dealing with the right patient. i would find out as much about the issues, and talk with the person making the real decisions, if the husband can't figure out how to talk to his better half, then perhaps you should.
i say this, and i have only ever had one potential client, and they both agreed with me. i know that won't always happen, but i listened well and addressed concerns early and often.
he knows what he be talkin about, though it is hard to really understand unless you've faced the problem in real life. but when you DO face such things (and you will) just ask yourself, what would Steven Ward do?
Steven, brilliant! Thank you for talking about an architect's responsibility to the larger world. This is SO important, and I often consider the larger context when clients are asking us to do things that are, say, environmentally unsound.
Incidentally, the fake clapboard they've found is PVC based, and the fake stone is cultured out of concrete, neither of which is great for the environment. I suppose I'll search around for some sustainable products that might satisfy them.
I don't have a bruised ego, by the way. The real disappointment here is not that our clients have bad taste. It's that they turned out to have bad taste after four months of designing something that really seemed like it would be in good taste. In other words, we spent four months designing something that we thought would be fantastic. Then the client stepped up their involvement a notch, and also started demanding changes.
My feeling is that they had a long domestic dispute where the wife basically said "But I want a traditional house like all the ones I've seen in the neighborhood! None of this modern junk!" And the problem is that the overall massing is decidedly modern—flat roofs, etc. And now with a fake stone base, and fake clapboard. Probably in some shade of beige. A horrorshow of decontextualized components.
Architects are the only professionals whom I can think of off the top of my head who are frequently told how to do their jobs. People don't go to the doctor and tell them how to treat them and they don't go to their lawyers and tell them how to handle their legal issues. I seriously am beginning to think that if it wasn't for the fact that our stamp is required on so many projects our profession, as we know it, wouldn't exist at all and it would still be done as a kind of hobby.
i have no problem with wainscot or crown mouldings. i have no problem with traditional residential design if it is good. i have worked for people who did it and did it right. their work was principled. design principles have nothing to do with style.
We had a client that wanted to use cultured stone on their house. Take a look at the installation details. If it is the same product that we looked at, it requires that the cultured stone is held up above grade with a flashing detail at the bottom so that you see a strip of parge coat below the stone. I believe that its because the cultured stone is pourous and would discolor if it was at/below grade.
Show your client how their stone will look fake since it will be basically floating above grade as opposed to a 6" stone veneer base and see if they will pay up for the better material. Worked for us.
I once worked for an architect who told me that if a couple are having problems in their relationship they'll do two things: have a baby, or embark on some big building project.
just be thankful that you aren't fielding calls from both spouses telling you to ignore the other.
farwest - is it your stamp on the drawings? if not, you can express your concern to your boss, but your boss has final say and you have to go along with it (if it really bothers you, quit working for the guy). if it's your stamp on the drawings, you have every right to tell the client why you aren't going to use unsustainable materials, or do anything else you think is unethical. the good clients respect people who stick to their guns.
Yes Vado you could find an extreme example to counter the point. For the majority of examples it still stands that farwest1 is in this unfortunate circumstance dealing with a residential project. Apurimac brings up a very good point, "People don't go to the doctor and tell them how to treat them and they don't go to their lawyers and tell them how to handle their legal issues." Lawyers have it written clearly and can point to it in print that the client can not micromanage the project. I really think architects need a clause in the contract or something in print stating the client can not botch things up with their sophomoric bungling . If architects had that written somewhere this would not be a common cause of hair pulling, angst & OMFG what have they done to the design now.
I think the best thing an architect can do, really, is simply try to court a client base that has a vision that, as closely as possible, matches your vision of what architecture should be. Doing that however is kind of hard from my experience. Like any relationship, you don't want to get involved with people you have no common ground with. If there is one thing I want to be able to do with my career, is get it to a point that when I'm approached to do a building that I simply do not want to do I can say "no" to the commission and point them to another architect down the road who would more closely match their vision. The trick to all that is of course, I don't want to starve in the process!
See my earlier posts about the economic nature of our work, dependent upon a supply of money coming from said clients in exchange for services provided by us.
We are free to educate, persuade and cajole. We are also free to resign.
atom, i'm with vado. commercial and institutional work is just as fraught with after-hours re-designers.
i'm reworking a brand-new $31m high school right now because ONE person on a public/admin/faculty design input committee said 'we're a traditional community' and the superintendent thought the one comment warranted having us prepare 3-4 rendered options for what the building could look like, i.e., 2 weeks of work making alternate revit models we hadn't planned to do.
How Not To Design Crap (Advice)
We have a client who is in the process of completely dumbing down and making awful the design we produced for them. We designed them an elegantly proportioned modern house, with nice spaces and big plate glass windows to take in some outstanding views. We proposed natural materials on the exterior.
They now want sliders instead of the plate glass windows (and they're discussing using vinyl clad windows.) They want to add fake stone to the outside of the house around the base, and they want to use fake clapboard siding on the outside. They're even forcing us to create some disastrously non-functional spaces (an unusable master closet, a kitchen whose sink is stuffed into a corner.) We've argued with them over these items for weeks, but they're insisting.
This is painful to me—I know this is becoming an awful design, but there seems to be no way to prevent what's happening, short of dropping them as a client, which we can't afford to do. It's also their house, and they have a right to get what they want.
Do we just write the project off and design them their bad house? How do I keep my integrity as a designer?
Once out of school, design services become an economic proposition. It sounds as though you've done your best to identify and encourage better design choices for your clients. You cannot force them to accept your preference---all you can do is resign, or accept that sometimes (most times? every time?), the one paying the bills gets the last word.
Part of our work as architects is making the best out of an undesirable situation---often, choosing the lesser of two evils. As long as you're doing your best within the confines placed on the project, your integrity as a designer is intact, in my opinion.
Of course, if you can afford to drop the client, then tell them to take a walk.
Suggest better alternatives to the changes they are proposing, or explain your original design intention better. For instance, by sliders do you mean slider windows? Why didn't you give them operable windows to begin with? It's a house, not an office building....give them their operable windows but suggest a better material than vinyl. If they want fake stone find a reasonably priced "real" alternative and explain to them that "fake" won't last long. I have no idea what fake clapboard looks like so you're on your own there....
Don't write it off as a bad house....good designers use limitations to their advantage, not to their detriment.
citizen while I agree with you to a certain extent, isn't our design "integrity" perhaps not the best thing to hold onto in the current economic climate? If you are an architect, what IS your job, anyway? At the end of the day, we are all responsible for putting a roof over someone's head, right? And if we can't do that for a client - any client - without getting our panties up in a bunch about how said client is "destroying our design intention" without coming up with creative solutions for them, then frankly our profession deserves to tank.
Sorry but I'm a little offended that so many of our friends have lost their jobs in the past two weeks and you're considering taking your toys and going home because your client wants to make some changes to their design. Go ahead, drop the client, I've got lots of people who would take that commission...
We're in agreement, WonderK.
I'm not encouraging our colleague to tell the client to take it or leave it. My comments were more to illustrate the fact that this is the real world with real clients paying real invoices, and not a school situation with the luxury to indulge every design whim because there are no fees involved. Farwest's approach (which you elaborate upon) is the professional and best one, I think. Utlimately, however, this is about providing services for a fee... and if a client insists upon choices that an architect finds completely odious, the choices are three:
1) suck it up, make the changes, cash the check, and don't put it in the portfolio
2) attempt to educate and persuade the client of better choices, which may or may not prevail
3) say "I'm sorry" and resign from the project.
Number 3 is an option, but, again, a luxurious one. Farwest's agony over the client's insistence on ugly prompted my reminder that we only control our behavior, not others'.
if you're principles are important than you must not design crap. if you don't make a stand then you will have this experience again and again. eventually you will hold on less and less to what you believe in and just mail it in. do you want to live like that? no? then draw a line in the sand. economy be damned.
ok howard.
But in all seriousness, being able to say "no" to people is one of the biggest things I am striving for in my career.
that can be tough to deal with. I agree though that we have to use these kinds of limitations as advantages. You're always going to have clients that have their own ideas and thoughts on what the architect is showing them. And while they don't have the design minds that we have, they ultimately sign that check. So sometimes, esp. now with the economic woes we're experiencing, ya got to be willing to set that aside and give them what they want. As painful as it might be! hah
howard hasn't got much to do with it. howard was a social engineer. architects must be flexible. but clients must be flexible and have faith in the architect's they hire. so many clients these days just want a yes man and a stamp. and it's bullshit.
^ agreed, 110%
Thank you, Vado. It's not so much that the design is going in a bad, ugly and possibly non-functional direction. It's that these people hired us, and now want us to be the equivalent of house-painters or shoe-shiners: do exactly what they want, no matter what. They've disregarded every piece of advice we've given them.
Other professions have a sense of responsibility to their own profession and to society as a whole. Shouldn't architects too? The reason the American landscape is littered with crappy, horrible buildings is because too many architects adopt an attitude of "whatever pays the bills."
I have standards. We all should. Those of us who don't have professional standards and integrity should not be architects. This goes beyond just making buildings that don't fall down. We are design professionals. We design better spaces that our clients can imagine on their own—when we let our clients control us, they (and the world) get bad spaces.
Part of the hard work of providing architectural services is that friendly persuasion of clients... educating them without the appearing to be condescending... urging, coaxing them into choosing the better option. Not easy, but very important.
Not only not easy, but sometimes impossible.
I don't think that design "integrity" is compromised if ultimately you can't persuade the client to see things your way. Really, if you make every effort to inform the client and not be arrogant about it, then i think you've maintained that integrity.
In the end, the client has to live with those choices they make and hopefully they're happy with it.
I have standards too, I'm just so upset that we find ourselves in these positions so often. I really TRULY think that the general public is woefully undereducated about their built environment. I would say that to the extent possible, use this as a teaching opportunity if you can ... treat them like kindergartners if you need to, that's about how much they understand when it comes to buildings, right?
Make some of their changes but not all and see how they react.
is there a way to SHOW them the results of bad decisions vs results of good ones? maybe using images of other good/bad projects or maybe through renderings?
it's hard to deal with clients who simply aren't listening but, if they are, and you give sincere as-non-judgmental and reasoned arguments as you can for your suggestions then they may just hear you.
i'm with wk, though. plate glass is pretty but i'd also rather have something operable.
is there a way to meet them in the middle? i.e., are you hearing the reason for what they're requesting or just reacting to the request? maybe there is a way to answer their concerns in a way that feels better - but you're just hearing their own solutions to the problem you're not solving for them.
If you have 3D capabilities, show them the model with the sliding glass doors and the sink (preferably with scalies) and use the ugliest, chunkiest mullions for those sliders, use a crappy sink - especially one with faucets you know they hate. SHOW THEM why you, in your professional judgment, think this is a bad move.
Stop talking about why your design is good and show them. If you don't have it modeled, get out your thick marker or watercolors and sketch the damn thing.
Show not tell.
Damn you Steven and your quick typing skills!
how did it get there?
forget about educating the clients. i am tired of hearing it. clients don't want to be educated.
we are the ones as architects who need to be educated on how to tell people what we do and how we do it. we have been neglected building value for our design but we have concentrated building value on our other services mainly technical.
it is only natural for clients to take over after the technical and structural framework is done and either call the finishes themselves or hire a decorator who is placed over you when it comes to things about taste.
but also there is a whole class of different clients, who choose their architects based on architecture and with them you do your best work. because they appreciate you for who you are, and what you do for them.
take the check and move on. even if you salvage the kitchen sink, you know fake stone is going to be... sounds like they are educating you on how it works. they see it like, 'their dough their show..,' at this point.
sorry to hear that. write it off and spend your efforts on people who deserve them...
happens a lot.
question, are they picking these things out of a magazine or have they seen these options on other homes? is it possible to mock-up or model for them their choices/decisions so that they may view the full impact of their decision on their new home?
i agree with Steven, maybe there's a way to take their reasoning and turn it into a better solution then they are proposing
i agree with orhan most people who have money to hire an architect have the ego to go with it. they have already designed their dream projects. their wives have already picked out the towels. if you look at the websites of most firms the rap is service giving the client what they blah blah blah. its never about the beliefs of the firm the design principles that should constitute the reason a firm should exist. however we are caught up in the making payroll or just getting some jobs(especially now) to keep us going.
fitzgerald said life was a compromise but i have compromised to the point where i have been desensitized. having to pretend to think what you are doing is good just so the bosses don't think you have a bad attitude. taking on work that you know just sucks so you can pay the rent. having to listen to the check signer utter inanities like firmness commodity and delight and then ask you who was it that said that anyway...well we all have done it but its a soul crusher and my soul can only take so much weight.
farwest, I have ran into this situation a number of times. I wonder if we as a profession have finally lost all of our "powers" of standing. Maybe we are just painters and shoe shiners, my question would be two fold. How did allow this to happen? and What can be done to change this perception within the public? In short, how do we as a profession regain our class and influence? We can see what happens to our surroundings when we give in to so many client wishes and desiires. Is it possible to "stand up" as a profession?
On the plate glass issue, they're actually big plate glass windows at eye level, with low and high awning windows for air. But they want to remove this whole arrangement and replace it with one sliding window. Rather than a nicely arranged set of windows, one dumb punched opening in the middle of the wall.
It's what they know. In discussing this, as with all of the decisions on this house, they revert to "their last apartment" as the source of all architectural goodness. Punched openings, fake stone, a kitchen that sounds like it didn't work.
Even more frustrating is that the husband actually seems to (almost0 want good design. But then he goes home and talks to his wife at night, and the next morning we get an email erasing all the gains we made the previous day.
The other weird part about this is that they've seen other work of ours. They've seen that it's modern and clean and elegant. They hired us on this basis—got us really excited about working with them.
But as we're moving into specifics, the project is going through the uglification machine.
I've done renderings. I've shown examples of good work—they like it, but then don't make the connection that what they want is nothing like the good work they've been shown.
It's a difficult situation. And the tragedy of it for me is that I know this is a majority of the projects out there.
You have to deal with the client making these bad decisions if you do residential work. You don't need a stamp or a degree to make a house. Either get used to really botched up client input or elect not to do residential. Outside of single family residential you get to call the shots. If you didn't do modern residential then none of these issues like fake stone would be a problem. Fortunately in non-residentail work there is no 'gingerbread' office or 'mediteranian villa', it is modern because that is what it is. In the end it is you against the house wife that wants faux stone and that is what you are going to draw for her.
Providing services to people who don't necessarily share every aspect of our particular vision is part of our profession. It just is. They pay us.
This is nothing new. For every PJ or FLW who managed to hornswaggle (sorry, my Mom's from Missouri) his ideal project out of a reluctant patron, there were thousands of architects who had to wrestle over plans and elevations, details and materials with uncooperative clients.
We can try to educate, cajole, lecture and beg. Sometimes we'll prevail, but sometimes not. It is their project, too.
Maybe try art as metier with less interference? My hunch is that artists don't have all these problems.
i don't see what's "crap" about vinyl clad windows, fake clapboard siding, etc. they sound are just materials or components...pieces of a puzzle.
architects like to joke about being whores...but real prostitutes never complain about their work being crap (and sometimes their work literally is crap). they just do it.
As architects we are facilitators. Now I may only be a student but Im also not an idiot and have always approached it as so....
There is way more to an architect than just what he design's. We are the people that are turned to as a source of information and we are the people that are turned to when there are problems to be solved. I understand having "integrity" and "morals" about your design, but you are ignoring the whole other side of the "real" world. Your job is to facilitate a dream, yes the client may be a dick, most of them are. Yes the client is an idiot if he thinks seeing a set of blueprints once makes him qualified to design his own house. But.....ITS HIS HOUSE!!!! Who the hell cares if YOUR design sucks, this is NOT about pleasing you it is about pleasing the CLIENT. If the client is happy your design is NOT shit. Your job is to make the client happy, not to stroke your ego.
i'll have fries with that.
It is your job to sell the design. Regular folks rarely have a consistent and good design ideal. They may like Falling Water, but then also like wainscot with crown molding.
The idea is to educate your client on why one is good, the other bad and how they cannot work together.
The design is about their home, but it is also part of your career. They hired you/your firm to provide talent and skills, not to simply do their bidding.
End of day, you'll have to decide how far to push. At some point they'll either agree, respect your opinions more and you'll get a better house, or they'll insist on their ideas.
If it is the latter, then I'd just toss the towel in and let them design everything, path of least resistance. If it is crap, let it all be their crap and take the paycheck.
I'll strongly disagree with abc. There is much more to architecture than just doing what the client asks. Him being happy does not make for good design, nor does it necessarily help business (I'd argue it hurts business, if you use it in your portfolio).
i don't think you're an idiot, abc, but i also think there is a lot to which you haven't had exposure yet. we are NOT just facilitators - and those architects who have acted as if we are are those that have given away much of the discretion and responsibility that we used to have as a profession.
we are responsible to a much larger population than just our client. we must be responsive to ourselves, our profession at large, individual user-groups, and the general public. true, for a house these responsibilities are less onerous than with public buildings, but there is a certain amount of integrity that we must maintain and project. we all exercise a certain amount of judgment with every project - but the amount varies from architect to architect. where your line is has a lot to do with who you are as a designer and a professional.
for example, you would not likely honor your client's desire to build a house out of toxic materials or endangered wood species. you MAY think it's ok to use pvc, despite the things you know about how pvc is produced, but others' threshold of responsibility may not allow them to think use of pvc is ok. if you as an architect are committed to certain ways of thinking about daylighting for lesser use of artificial lighting or eschewing use of materials masquerading as others, you've got an ethical dilemma to wrestle through. how you address it establishes who you are and where your priorities lie as an architect. each time you make a decision, you're learning and repositioning for the next time you have to make a similar one.
i encourage everyone to check out 'the ethical architect' - tom spector. great explication of architects professional responsibilities and the implications of the paths we choose. no moralizing, no 'right' answers, just a framework for how to think about things.
my clients so far are pretty cool. we have never had to cajole anyone to do interesting design. can't quite imagine the point of that, really.
the bad planning would bug me, but the aesthetic stuff is not a concern for me personally so can't quite relate. still i feel for you farwest1. it can't be fun to spend time on something and then see it corrupted and turned into poor work (actually that sounds a bit like my years as intern)...but what can you do?....orhan seems to have the best idea - just get your koin and move on.
abc91686, the job of an architect is not quite that black and white...and anyway, i don't think farwest1 is suggesting his ego is being bruised...
actually farwest, now i think of it, just once we had a project go bad in the middle. we finished the job and were paid for it but asked the company in question (ie, our client) to refrain from putting our name on the project. we felt that it did not reflect our standards and we suggested in any case it had become a project designed by us but interpreted by them. the client agreed though they did not understand. i think that was the right decision. it is hard to get future quality work when your name is attached to something that does not cut the mustard. it was not about ego, but about business. lowering our standards would not have been sustainable as a business plan.
trace, i agree with that wholeheartedly.
the problem is not the architect/client relationship, it's the husband/wife relationship. we as professionals cannot be psychiatrists to the patient if we are not dealing with the right patient. i would find out as much about the issues, and talk with the person making the real decisions, if the husband can't figure out how to talk to his better half, then perhaps you should.
i say this, and i have only ever had one potential client, and they both agreed with me. i know that won't always happen, but i listened well and addressed concerns early and often.
cross-posted with steven.
he knows what he be talkin about, though it is hard to really understand unless you've faced the problem in real life. but when you DO face such things (and you will) just ask yourself, what would Steven Ward do?
yikes.
WWSWD?
Following with interest but no comments yet; it's a grey, grey area.
Steven, brilliant! Thank you for talking about an architect's responsibility to the larger world. This is SO important, and I often consider the larger context when clients are asking us to do things that are, say, environmentally unsound.
Incidentally, the fake clapboard they've found is PVC based, and the fake stone is cultured out of concrete, neither of which is great for the environment. I suppose I'll search around for some sustainable products that might satisfy them.
I don't have a bruised ego, by the way. The real disappointment here is not that our clients have bad taste. It's that they turned out to have bad taste after four months of designing something that really seemed like it would be in good taste. In other words, we spent four months designing something that we thought would be fantastic. Then the client stepped up their involvement a notch, and also started demanding changes.
My feeling is that they had a long domestic dispute where the wife basically said "But I want a traditional house like all the ones I've seen in the neighborhood! None of this modern junk!" And the problem is that the overall massing is decidedly modern—flat roofs, etc. And now with a fake stone base, and fake clapboard. Probably in some shade of beige. A horrorshow of decontextualized components.
Architects are the only professionals whom I can think of off the top of my head who are frequently told how to do their jobs. People don't go to the doctor and tell them how to treat them and they don't go to their lawyers and tell them how to handle their legal issues. I seriously am beginning to think that if it wasn't for the fact that our stamp is required on so many projects our profession, as we know it, wouldn't exist at all and it would still be done as a kind of hobby.
where is our "first do no harm" motto?
i have no problem with wainscot or crown mouldings. i have no problem with traditional residential design if it is good. i have worked for people who did it and did it right. their work was principled. design principles have nothing to do with style.
farwest1-
We had a client that wanted to use cultured stone on their house. Take a look at the installation details. If it is the same product that we looked at, it requires that the cultured stone is held up above grade with a flashing detail at the bottom so that you see a strip of parge coat below the stone. I believe that its because the cultured stone is pourous and would discolor if it was at/below grade.
Show your client how their stone will look fake since it will be basically floating above grade as opposed to a 6" stone veneer base and see if they will pay up for the better material. Worked for us.
Then, pick your battles on the rest. Good luck.
abracadabra, FAIA
Episode 10.5
04/15/05
HGTV card
Sounds like u need to decided whether u r in this business to build a name for urself or to build homes for people
I once worked for an architect who told me that if a couple are having problems in their relationship they'll do two things: have a baby, or embark on some big building project.
just be thankful that you aren't fielding calls from both spouses telling you to ignore the other.
farwest - is it your stamp on the drawings? if not, you can express your concern to your boss, but your boss has final say and you have to go along with it (if it really bothers you, quit working for the guy). if it's your stamp on the drawings, you have every right to tell the client why you aren't going to use unsustainable materials, or do anything else you think is unethical. the good clients respect people who stick to their guns.
"Outside of single family residential you get to call the shots." ahhh so not necessarily true.
Yes Vado you could find an extreme example to counter the point. For the majority of examples it still stands that farwest1 is in this unfortunate circumstance dealing with a residential project. Apurimac brings up a very good point, "People don't go to the doctor and tell them how to treat them and they don't go to their lawyers and tell them how to handle their legal issues." Lawyers have it written clearly and can point to it in print that the client can not micromanage the project. I really think architects need a clause in the contract or something in print stating the client can not botch things up with their sophomoric bungling . If architects had that written somewhere this would not be a common cause of hair pulling, angst & OMFG what have they done to the design now.
If only we could get rid of those damned clients, THEN we'd be okay....
tell me about it citizen...
I think the best thing an architect can do, really, is simply try to court a client base that has a vision that, as closely as possible, matches your vision of what architecture should be. Doing that however is kind of hard from my experience. Like any relationship, you don't want to get involved with people you have no common ground with. If there is one thing I want to be able to do with my career, is get it to a point that when I'm approached to do a building that I simply do not want to do I can say "no" to the commission and point them to another architect down the road who would more closely match their vision. The trick to all that is of course, I don't want to starve in the process!
I was being ironic, Apurimac.
See my earlier posts about the economic nature of our work, dependent upon a supply of money coming from said clients in exchange for services provided by us.
We are free to educate, persuade and cajole. We are also free to resign.
atom, i'm with vado. commercial and institutional work is just as fraught with after-hours re-designers.
i'm reworking a brand-new $31m high school right now because ONE person on a public/admin/faculty design input committee said 'we're a traditional community' and the superintendent thought the one comment warranted having us prepare 3-4 rendered options for what the building could look like, i.e., 2 weeks of work making alternate revit models we hadn't planned to do.
don't forget church building committees whoogah....
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