Why I do what I do...

Somebody told me these blogs are sounding pretty negative.  I guess I write when I’m fired up.  This blog is a good outlet for trying to crystallize my thoughts.  The fact that you read it is a little bit of an afterthought, but it has led to some pretty lively discussions.

Maybe it’s a good time to explain why I do what I do.

I grew up in a pretty small town in the Midwest and while the people there are awesome, designing buildings/architecture seemed pretty exotic.  Most of the buildings in this little town were utilitarian; built for a purpose with little regard for aesthetics.  I’ve come to appreciate that way of thinking.  I learned later that there was a whole group of designers who prized a no-frills functional approach to the design of even the most high profile buildings.  But, at the time, it seemed that the few buildings in town that seemed to have a little more, a little art to them were designed by people from the city.

I admired those people.  They seemed to live in another world; a world with art and culture and big ideas. I couldn’t wait to join them. And, when I graduated from high school, I ran as far from that little town as I could get.  I’ve moved from city to city over the years and still feel like I’m catching up.  I feel like a lot of people got a head start on me.

I’ll probably never stop feeling like that, and it’s probably what propels me to keep going.  It’s probably why I think we can always do things better, and why I’m always looking forward, trying to improve things. It might not be the healthiest way to live.  Maybe I should spend more time appreciating what our firm has accomplished, what I have accomplished.  Maybe I should be happy with the clients we have.  It sure would make life easier.  Examining your flaws is tough.  Trying to improve is hard.  It’s much easier if you feel like you have it all figured out.

Now, I am one of those city people, but I suppose I’ll never shake my roots.  I don’t want to, now. There is something that came out of being raised in that small town that made me who I am and it’s the reason I do what I do... -ds

Keep it simple

I work in a pretty complicated industry. The way buildings go together is complicated. Building codes are complicated. The political process for getting projects approved is complicated. Dealing with clients is complicated. There is no end to the difficulty involved in taking a vision and making it a reality.

I learned this again recently while working on a new student housing project. Our client is a major University and the folks we are meeting with are super smart...I mean really smart. Boy can smart people make things complicated. I guess it stems from having your worth determined by your brain and having to repeatedly prove it. Us, we can point to tangible examples of buildings we've built, designs we done, and drawings we've produced. No such luck for our clients across the table. Their worth hinges on the opinions they've levied. They are all trying to do the right thing. No doubt about it.

What I've come to understand is that simplicity is the way to perfection. I would go out on a ledge and say that almost nothing gets better when it is more complicated. I don't care if you're talking about the design of a building, communications with clients, your relationship with your family, or how you cook your dinner. All are better if they are simple, easy to understand, and leave little room for confusion. As the adage goes - stand with your back to the mirror. Spin around. Whatever catches your eye first, take it off. Now you are better dressed.

It goes for the emails you send, the agendas you create, the meetings you conduct, and the relationships you have. Don't get me wrong, it takes a certain amount to get your point across and skimping will make things just as difficult, but almost no one complains about the words left unsaid.

With that, I shall end before this gets complicated. -ds

The Sales Pitch

It never clicked with me during architecture school how much of my job would be a sales job.  I thought clients would come seeking advice from an educated thoughtful professional and we’d do loads of beautiful work together. Yeah, naïve…

It’s pretty funny.  I’d never think second guessing my accountant, dentist, dermatologist, or lawyer.  There could be serious consequences.  They are seasoned professionals with years of training who live their subject matter every day.  If somehow I think I know more than these guys, I’m using the wrong guys.  Yeah, I ask them tough questions and make sure I understand what they’re telling me.  I make sure they have all of my information.  And, if I think they missed something, I’ll ask them to double check it, but I always default to their opinion.  I know they’re smarter about this stuff than I am.

Ok, maybe it’s because a lot of what we do is subjective.  It’s in the “eye of the beholder” and all that…maybe, but if I commission a piece of artwork, I don’t choose the colors for the painter, or tell the sculptor how to bend the metal.  That would be tinkering with their vision and compromising the artistic process.

I’m not sure what it is, but everybody has an opinion when you start designing a building.  From the layout of the rooms, to the construction materials, to the color of the paint and the fabric on the furniture, there are piles of opinions. Part of this discussion is understandable.  The client is paying for it, and ultimately, they have to live with it, so they should be part of the process.  I’m not saying we should sequester ourselves, Howard Roark style, and the client should be happy with what they get.  It would be nice, however, if there was a little trust – just a little bit more of a leap of faith.

I thought maybe it was just me.  Maybe my ideas just stink.  Maybe I don’t have enough gray hair.  Maybe every other designer had clients that joyously accepted all of their ideas and they were thrilled.  Not so.  I’ve spoken with plenty of designers who have similar issues.  All we want is a little respect.  We live this stuff.  We think about it night and day.  We can make our client’s lives easier if they simply have a little faith….Help me help you!

I’m spending as much time strategizing how to sell the idea as I am thinking of it in the first place.  How do we show it?  How do we talk about it?  Can we show where this has been done before, so it’s not so scary?  It is exhausting.  Sometimes I want to scream “Just get out of the way and you will have an awesome building!!”  But, alas, this is not the way our profession works.  Until I’m my own client, I’ll have to continue to refine the sales pitch…. ds

Shoot for the Middle

What do the Parthenon, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water, the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Great Pyramids, and the Pantheon have in common?  Yeah...they're all awesome and pretty much universally adored.  As designers, we’re all striving for that perfect design; the one that will be loved by the masses and respected by the architectural community.  It’s a lofty goal, and one many designers spend a lifetime chasing, only to fall short by circumstance or talent.  But, that’s part of what makes this profession so compelling.  It is a game without an end.  The joy is in the playing, not in the outcome.  I’m sure the designers of the buildings above saw the finished product and thought they could have been better.  You know Enoch stood back from those pyramids at a site visit and said “What’s up slaves? That’s not how I drew it. Man!” 

I’ve got a pretty simple way of thinking about this goal.  It amounts to thinking about the world population as a big pyramid of architectural knowledge.  At the bottom of pyramid, the fattest layer, are the uneducated masses. They don’t know or care much about design, and it really doesn’t take much to please them.  In contrast, at the top of the pyramid are the architectural elite, the scholars, the geniuses of design. The middle is striated with varying levels of architectural care and concern, from folks with a passing knowledge of design to people with a formal architectural education.  

The goal, as I see it, is to design a project that cuts straight through this pyramid from tip to base. A perfect project has something for everyone.  It appeals to the masses on a base subconscious level and to the elite at deeper metaphysical or technical level.  Most of us are designing projects to the left or right of center, hitting the base, but missing the tip.   Sometimes we’re a little closer to the middle sometimes a little further to the edges. There are lots of reasons for this.  It could be design talent.  It could be client.  It could be budget, or craftsmanship.  The stars must align perfectly to get close to the middle.

There are also times when projects will slice through the pyramid horizontally; satisfying only a narrow band of the population.  I see this happen at the top quite often.  Usually it happens with an avant-garde design that the elite can’t stop talking about, but very few others actually understand.  The top group chalks it up to a dense proletariat.  I say, those projects fail, too.  Yes we need them to move the discourse of architecture forward, but they’re never going to be loved by the masses. They’ll be in all of the architecture books and magazines, but most will shrug their shoulders.

I’ll keep playing the game; shooting for the middle.  Who knows, maybe someday everything will line up perfectly.  --ds  

How big is yours?

e·go  

n. pl. e·gos

1. The self, especially as distinct from the world and other selves.

2. In psychoanalysis, the division of the psyche that is conscious, most immediately controls thought and behavior, and is most in touch with external reality.

3.

a. An exaggerated sense of self-importance; conceit.

b. Appropriate pride in oneself; self-esteem.

I wrote a little about ego in my last entry.  It seems like I’m thinking about this a lot lately.  Our society sure does place a lot of importance on keeping self-esteem intact.  From the no score youth soccer to “whatever you dream, you can achieve” slogans, we really place a high priority on keeping people’s self worth as high as possible.  I can see the reason.  We don’t want a nation of quitters and pessimists, but boy are we creating a bunch of people who think they’re entitled.

Good example;   I’m writing this blog.  Somehow I’ve gotten it into my head that somebody cares about what I have to say, so I’ll just put it out there.  There was a time when anybody hoping for a platform from which to preach needed to be vetted by somebody.  They had editors.  They had to do research, go to school to learn how to put their words together, compete for the few jobs out there that would let them give their opinion.  Now, spew away, nothing to stop you.

The architecture world has always been a place of the pumped up ego.  Architecture school makes you this way.  Sometimes in school, it’s not the talent that wins, but the best arguer; the one who can post rationalize and vehemently defend.  This culture makes you puff up, develop callus exterior, and creates a group of people who need to be “right” no matter what.  I guess that gets you through school, but it’s not so great when you need to work in a team, whether on a project, or in a firm.  Maybe that’s why most people in the architecture field are sole practitioners.

So, what do you do when you need to work as a team, or to compromise, and you’re surrounded by big egos?  Two choices: 1) Stroke the Ego, make them think it was their idea, politic, cajole, and placate.  Get what you want without getting the credit.  Pick your battles.  Keep your ego small.  2) Fight.  Tell them what you think.  Take no prisoners.  I’m usually in the camp of the former, but it’s tiring.  I’m tired of massaging people, not making waves, maneuvering, and worrying about upsetting the wrong people.  Maybe I need to move on to number 2….-ds

And, the winner of the award for most awards is....

Our firm has been submitting projects to architectural design competitions for years. I have even judged a few. Everybody gets pretty excited when we pick up some piece of hardware, but I’m not sure what any of it proves. Yeah, we can call ourselves an “award winning firm”, but really that’s not a very high bar to clear. It seems there is a competition for everybody, and as long as you shoot low enough, you’re bound to win something. A lot of the awards programs are simply a way for magazines to sell advertising, fund raising opportunities for myriad organizations, or a way for the industry to pat itself on the back. Some of these awards programs are businesses in themselves with entry fees and awards banquets simply as a money making venture for an entrepreneur. These groups want to spread the awards around, especially to the firms with deep pockets. They want to keep them entering.

I realize that it’s part of our culture; this need to compete, but it’s silly, the need to judge our projects against others and award a winner. I’ve read that it is the large egos in Architecture that need reinforcement. I’d say our profession could use a little more self-esteem. I don’t need other people to judge my work. I can do that all on my own. If some judge at an awards program doesn’t like it, it doesn’t make it better or worse. Does this sound like sour grapes? It shouldn’t we’ve had our share of recognition. I also know that I don’t have the clients, or budget to do many of the “award winning” projects gracing magazine covers.

Architectural projects are so different. Unless the budget, client, program, and neighborhood are exactly the same, you’re comparing apples to oranges. Some competitions break their awards into categories; trying to come closer to leveling the playing field, but really, this just spreads out the awards further. Is it prestigious to win an award for “Best production house 2,000-2,500 square feet in Las Vegas”?

I’m not saying that honoring projects that are outstanding is necessarily a bad thing. But, if you need a judge to tell you that you’ve done well, I’d say you should become a better self critic. I’ve seen my partners do a complete one-eighty based on a project winning some sort of award. A project they couldn’t stand one day was suddenly awesome the next, based on the evaluation of some strangers looking at a book of photographs.

I guess the press is nice, but do clients really hire you because you have a couple of plaques on the wall? I don’t think so. They hire you because you know what you are doing. Awards don’t necessarily prove that. They do prove that you can find the right angle from which to take a photo and you can write a creative description that pushed all of the judges’ buttons.

LEED....scam??

“LEED is a scam” came the cry from a client recently on learning that certifying his building under the popular green building program would add more than $200,000 in administrative costs alone to his project. And, the city was thinking about making it a requirement.

Now, I want to take care of our planet as much as the next guy and our firm touts or LEED certified projects when we can, but I think this client has a point, and I think it’s one we’re going to hear a lot in the near future. It’s not that he was against the environment, or even that he didn’t want to spend the extra dough, but his question was really about the worth of that certification. He reasoned that his building could be even better for the environment if he took those certification dollars and spent them on more green features, rather than on guys with clipboards.

Somewhere LEED went from a well-intentioned program to raise the bar for green building to a giant money making machine. I’m not talking about the cost of making a building more environmentally responsible. That’s just doing the right thing. I’m talking about the cost of pushing the paper. Between the direct costs to the developer of consultants to shepherd the process and third-party certification to the indirect cost of all those USGBC disciples becoming LEED AP accredited, keeping current by attending USGBC workshops and maybe even raising the bar to a LEED AP + specialty, the money associated with “doing the right thing” gets downright crazy.

Add to all of this, the discussion about whether LEED is actually the best way to evaluate the environmental responsibility of a building (Famously, Thom Mayne derided it years ago. http://archrecord.construction.com/features/interviews/0711thommayne/0711thommayne-1.asp) and you get the idea that the PR folks at the USGBC have done a remarkable job of branding and creating a household name for those who want to sound in the know at a cocktail party, or worse, a city council meeting.

LEED guidelines were never intended as a code, and they don’t work like one. So, for a city to require LEED certification is asking those guidelines to do a job for which they were never written because for the city that’s the easy way out. The city doesn’t need to be fluent in green building issues. They’ll rely on outside third-party inspectors, make the developer foot the bill and brag how “green” their city is. --ds

The Beige Curtain

As somebody who works on design projects all over the country, and the world, I’ve found that if I want to be taken seriously as a designer by the design community, it’s best if I hand out my Santa Monica business card. I guess Orange County has a reputation and for somebody who’s serious about design, it’s not a good one.

I’m not sure how it happened. There was a time when Orange County was the place to go for the latest in residential design, for innovation, and for great new ideas. Maybe the builders in Orange County got complacent, maybe they got old, maybe the world just caught up to them. It could be Donald Bren’s desire to turn everything into a beige stuccoteranean wonderland. Portland, Seattle, even the San Francisco Bay Area are taking the lead now.

Some would say the market has given buyers what they want. I’d say how do you know, there is little in the way of inspired design to choose from in Orange County, and what there is, tends to be either in the pricey beach cities, or in what could be called emerging neighborhoods in the North part of the county. It is a little bit of the chicken and egg. Do buyers not purchase interesting design because there isn’t any, or is there a lack of it because buyers won’t purchase it. I think it is the former. Besides, great ideas make the market, not the other way around. You can’t know you want it if you haven’t seen it.

I think there is a huge demand for architecturally inspired housing. There a large numbers of Orange County residents who are patrons of the arts, shop at cutting edge stores for clothing, drive the latest in automobiles, and read dwell magazine, only to drive home to a house that looks just like their neighbors’.

When I talk to my friends in Los Angles, or San Francisco, it is obvious that the Orange, er, beige curtain is as strong as ever. Orange County is viewed as the place design goes to die, a black hole for creativity. I know it’s not true. You can point to countless artists doing their thing in Orange County. But, people know what they see, and what they see is a bunch of sameness. Yeah there are pockets of cool stuff, little bits of old neighborhoods, and a tiny development here, or there. But we all know that is puny compared to what joins these pockets—miles and miles of what looks to be the same house in colors ranging from sand to light brown.

What do we do about this reputation? How do we shake this when we venture out? Is there a way to be viewed as design leaders if you work, or live in Orange County? Or, do I just keep handing out the Santa Monica card… -ds