Butaro Hospital © MASS Design Group

Many of you may have probably noticed Scott Timberg’s article “The Architecture Meltdown” (Salon, February 4, 2012) circling the internet. The gloomy article discusses the unknowing future and possible demise of the architectural profession – the “glamour profession of the creative class”. Timberg describes struggling professionals that are either unemployed or working full-time at intern wages within a profession that is largely focused on the 1 percent.

There is no doubt that many architects and recent graduates are struggling. Architecture succeeded with the economy and crashed with it as well. With statistics revealing the highest unemployment rates among those with bachelor’s degrees in architecture and articles flooding the internet with titles “Want a Job? Go to College, and Don’t Major in Architecture” (New York Times, January 5th, 2012), there is not doubt that people are scared and unsure of where the profession is heading. Meanwhile, the (AIA) is cheering for a “2.1 percent rise in spending this year for non-residential construction projects”, a bit of optimism many are grasping onto for hope. However, we are headed somewhere. As Timberg states, “People will always need houses, cities and nations will always need schools and libraries and civic buildings, and trendy restaurants will need redesigns. Architecture will never die completely.”

Please continue reading to see Thomas Fisher’s response to Scott Timberg. read more »

ICON's 20 Young Architects, photo via anarchitecture

By David Fano and Steve Sanderson, edited by Julie Quon

A well-known and often cited truism of architecture notes that forty (as in years) is considered young for an architect and most don’t start hitting their stride until they’re seventy. This may partially explain why well-known architects seem to live forever… they’re simply too busy to die. What is often omitted from this narrative is how the architects spent the first twenty (or so) years of their careers as freshly minted graduates prior to being recognized by their peers in the profession as “making it”.

If you approach any architect about their early-career experience in the profession you will get slightly different versions of the same story. They are all, in essence, about paying your dues.

1. Taking a low-paying position for an A or B-list architect, where the compensation for long hours is the privilege of anonymous design on important projects, and in return a few hours are spent outside of the studio (usually with a group of similarly indebted classmates) on open design competitions that pay trifle stipends.
2. Taking a low-paying adjunct teaching position, ideally in a design studio, where compensation for long hours is the privilege of working on your design interests with students in order to become a part of the elite tastemakers and to one day be shortlisted for an exclusive cultural competition.
3. Taking a slightly better paying position with a corporate firm and spending your hours outside of work designing kitchens and bathrooms for wealthy friends and family with hopes that their social reach is broad enough to lead to additional commissions that will one day be substantial enough to make a living.
4. Taking a slightly better paying position with a corporate firm and slogging through the incredibly tedious intern development and professional registration process in order to move up the corporate hierarchy. The goal is to eventually become a principal or partner with an established firm or even break off on your own with some of the established firm’s clients.

In each of these scenarios, the only path to a significant commission is to spend the few hours outside of these paying jobs in the pursuit of establishing credibility and reputation through exposure in architectural publications. In any case, it seems that around the age of forty is when all of this hard work finally begins to pay off with consistent commissions. For the vast majority that never succeed by following these models, there is usually a ‘pivot’ (in startup terms, a change in approach) that leads to a stable corporate position, a full-time teaching post, or an exit from the profession altogether (we did the latter, see Fed’s post). The difficulty of ‘being’ an architect is branded about in schools (oftentimes by people with little to no actual experience in the field) as a source of pride, a perverse hazing ritual intended to weed out all but the most dedicated adherents to the ideals of architecture as a pure form of expression, a rationale which further reinforces architecture as an intellectual pursuit for the privileged (that topic is for another post).

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Courtesy of ifoapplestore.com

We have all heard of patenting building systems, building technologies, details and of course, products.  But what about patenting architecture?  Jack Martin brought this to our attention in light of Apple successfully getting an architectural patent for the design of a store in the Upper West Side in New York City, asking “On what grounds can you patent architecture?”  The inventors listed in the patent are architects Karl Backus, Peter Bohlin and George Bradley of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, and Robert Bridger, Benjamin L. Fay, Steve Jobs and Bruce Johnson for a design that Architect’s Newspaper describes as “meticulous and seamless as its clients”.

So, what is the extent of patenting architecture?  Structural systems, materials, details, conceptual strategies, the look of it?  We interpret architecture as a language in itself, but it is difficult to conceive of copyright infringement when it comes to architectural design because it is difficult to pin-point exactly what makes all of the parts of a building a copyrighted entity. What if Le Corbusier patented his designs?  Mies van der Rohe? Frank Lloyd Wright?  Their work and strategies have been copied and implemented all over the world to varying degrees.  So, where is the line between protecting an original idea and creating a barrier against progress? Or does this commercialization of architecture fuel competition to design better or design around strategies already patented? More after the break.

Metropol Parasol © Javier Orive

This article, recently seen on The New York Times, was kindly shared with us by the author Sarah Williams Goldhagen.

A REVOLUTION in cognitive neuroscience is changing the kinds of experiments that scientists conduct, the kinds of questions economists ask and, increasingly, the ways that architects, landscape architects and urban designers shape our built environment.

This revolution reveals that thought is less transparent to the thinker than it appears and that the mind is less rational than we believe and more associative than we know. Many of the associations we make emerge from the fact that we live inside bodies, in a concrete world, and we tend to think in metaphors grounded in that embodiment. read more »

© www.flickr.com / Jakob Montrasio

A recent article discussing the disconnect between the decades old Intern Development Program and its effective reality in the current environment brings to light shortcomings that are in dire need of redevelopment. NCARB recently announced an upcoming significant overhaul of the IDP program, which in its current state requires 5,600 hours of various logged tasks in addition to the seven exams for licensure. read more »

Back from the grave, the first post from The Indicator series by Guy Horton, published in 2010 at AD.

This town, is coming like a ghost town.
This town, is coming like a ghost town.
This town, is coming like a ghost town.
This town, is coming like a ghost town.

- The Specials, “Ghost Town”

When I look back at the events leading up to being laid off, I think of zombies. Of course zombies aren’t real so what I’m really thinking of are movies about zombies. I haven’t seen them all—there are hundreds—so the zombies I’m most familiar with are the pop-locking ones from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” or the funny ones from “Shaun of the Dead”. I never thought that that part of my subconscious that identifies with zombies would get triggered. But, then again, I never thought I would get laid off. There is a first for everything.

So, how does one identify zombies? As I learned from “Shaun of the Dead”, by the time you know, it’s too late. Remarkable as it seems, the people you least expect to become zombies are suddenly shuffling along shedding limbs and trying to eat you. They are, as it turns out, usually your close friends and colleagues.

When the economy began to falter back in 2007, architecture was one of those fields that began to experience a steady increase in zombie population. There were many rumors about which firms they worked for, whose softball teams they were playing on, whether they were more likely to be associates or principals. What about that Arch II with the mysterious limp and the foreign accent? Then there was the designer who always looked like he had had too many late nights out. Maybe those strange interns.

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Photo by opacity - http://www.flickr.com/photos/opacity/

Alumni descriptions of the architectural education experience can often range from frustration to admiration. The article Creative Education? An Analysis of Existing Architecture Education in Singapore, written by a fourth year student attending the National University of Singapore, is a collection of thoughts and observations based on this individual’s experience. The article primarily focused on particular frustrations. However, these same frustrations are comparable to those commonly voiced throughout many institutions across the United States.

read more »

Obscura Digital HQ © IwamotoScott Architecture

San Francisco-based IwamotoScott Architecture has just shared their latest project with us – a renavoted 1940s warehouse that holds media company Obscura Digital as well as the architects’ new office space.  Upgrading from an unorganized and dimly lit timber warehouse, Obscura looked to Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott to outfit the 36,000 sqf building in Dogpatch to suite their needs, while extending the invitation for the firm to set up its practice in the building, as well.   “It wasn’t a formalized agreement but a pretty casual thing,” Iwamoto told Lydia Lee for Metropolis. “Obscura by nature is collaborative. The hope is that by sharing space, we’ll have the advantage of seeing their process and what can be done with digital media, and they’ll get an idea of the architectural possibilities.”

In addition to this great refurbishment, we are fascinated by the architects’ dividing wall entitled BookCaseScreenWall, an amazing hybrid of surface projection technologies with a “traditional” bookcase which sits between their office space and Obscura Digital’s.

Be sure to view our comprehensive photo set of construction photos, finished work, and of course, the BookCaseScreenWall after the break. read more »

© Shawn Swisher

Shawn Swisher, architecture student at the  USC School of Architecture, is currently on a traveling research fellowship focusing on the work of Peter Zumthor. The research centers around Zumthor’s ability to create visceral reactions through his architecture, work that is based on fundamentals of architecture that seem to be fleeting in some emerging architectural trends. Here you will find periodic updates from his journey.

There are many ways that architecture can stimulate us. We can be enthralled by theoretical concepts that intend to revolutionize how we interact with our buildings. We can be overcome by the metaphors underlying a project’s design. And, at times, we are able to separate ourselves from these more cerebral desires and draw intrigue based solely on our reactions to space and form.

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Title page from original 1843 Danish edition via Wikipedia

The numbers look good/bad. The economy is recovering/anemic. The markets are up/down. If you follow economic reporting and analysis the economy seems to be a schizo-economy. What this indicates, in this era of battling economic models, is that no one really knows from one day to the next.

When will this end? Nobody knows this either. Even the economists don’t know because we have never been in a recession rooted in such deep complexities and systemic vulnerabilities. In such an environment, the phantoms of group-think become a virus that exacerbates real conditions. Doubt shadows every possible move.

As the Buddha said, life is suffering. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard defined this as either/or. The central issues in his book, Either/Or, hinge upon the individual’s choice and will in the face of life’s difficulties. This is his take on how to end the suffering.

Danish architecture has exerted a powerful influence on the profession. Danish philosophy may also present some insight. Though he wrote in the eighteenth century he is sometimes considered a postmodernist. Now might be the appropriate time to include him in the Thinkers for Architects series. Although his philosophy may not, on the surface, seem relevant to design, it is definitely relevant to business…and to being human.

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Architecture Billing Index, via CalculatedRiskBlog.com

Propaganda, n. The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a political cause or point of view. Also: information disseminated in this way; the means or media by which such ideas are disseminated.

– Oxford English Dictionary

This heavy pause in the profession, unsettling as it feels, is just the open mouth of the river, beckoning. As the doctor said, “Du calme, du calme.” You will turn, head up, and pass through the stations ahead. This is affirmation of redefinition is the essence of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The recession is why I am drawn to it.

Given current conditions, must architecture, the discipline and profession, embark on a journey of redefinition itself? Though it may not be on the same level as GM’s restructuring, broader economic forces beyond the profession’s control compel it to thoughtfully consider the course forward. On a private level, this is perhaps the best time to define or redefine yourself as an architect or architect-to-be. This process of self-discovery is how you own it.

read more »

Maya Lin Vietnam Memorial Entry

Derek Leavitt (@architectderek on Twitter) recently posted an opinionated blog entry on ‘Why Open Architecture Competitions Are Bad for Architects’  . The author outlined why entering competitions is detrimental not only to the individual, but also to the field of architecture.

Competition has been a defining characteristic of architecture for centuries.  Without competitions to spur creativity, a young woman would have never submitted her graceful yet powerful black line…and we would be without the Vietnam Memorial.  Without architects using competitions as a way to test urban gestures, a young team would have never submitted their idea to use just a portion of their allotted site, leaving the rest for a public plaza…and we would be without the Pompidou Center in France.  And, dating quite farther back, without an Italian man initially losing a competition and then determined to further his architectural understanding, we would be without the grand achievement of Brunelleschi’s dome.

The point is that although competitions are demanding, and at times may seem unfair, they are a staple in our profession which pushes the field forward.  With this in mind, we will attempt to argue in favor of the open competition, in the hope that we can persuade and inspire you to keep listening to your instinctive competitive nature and keep compiling those entries. read more »

Last week I read this tweet by our friend @fedenegro from CASE:

Why do architects always base their marketing strategies based on their peers instead of potential clients? I blame it on studio

I couldn´t agree more with it.

What do you think?

Ponoko, Production chain 2.0

Last weekend I had the chance to spend the afternoon with a group of entrepreneurs and Chris Anderson, editor for Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail and Free, two books that define the new economies of the Internet (highly recommended if you haven´t read them yet, specially Free)

Chris did a little speech on his new research, which immediately made sense to me from an architect’s point of view. At this point, it is more than clear that the bit revolution turned our world in 360º, and thanks to the connected world it seems that the technology development curve is more steep than ever. And now, many rules of the online world are being adopted by the physical world, and according to Anderson “atoms are the new bits”.

First, it was the media revolution. Information became democratic, collaborative, the tools became free, and everyone is part of it. But how do we take this to the World (World 2.0?)? Actually… it´s happening and very close to our profession:

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