The Indicator: The Next Architecture, Part 7
An article in this week’s Economist about Italian business clusters—that is, where businesses in the same industry form geographic clusters—offered some interesting observations. First, that traditional business models cannot survive global competition. A strategy to deal with global competition includes innovation and building brands. In short, diversification.
This led to a question: how does one approach diversifying architecture firms so that they, too, will be more able to weather economic vicissitudes? For that, let’s turn to Paul Nakazawa. Of course, there is the more “traditional” model of diversification: “many architects have several different kinds of SEPARATE businesses, which serves to diversify dependency on one source of revenue. The time-honored diversification scheme is teaching and practice — we all know lots of people who do that gig.”
More after the break.
The Indicator: The Book by It’s Cover: 2
This week I’d like to introduce you to some books I’ve come across while traveling the city. This first one is CLIP STAMP FOLD, an encyclopedic compendium of radical little architecture mags from the sixties and seventies. More than just clip stamp fold these were also draw cut paste scribble slash ink. This brick of a book is a portable archive and you don’t have to wear latex gloves to handle. These small, independent publications curated the contemporary and collected what may have been the disposable present. The challenged the orthodox historicism of architecture with a hippy slant. I would have stolen some images for you, but alas it was wrapped in protective hygienic cellophane.
More after the break.
The Indicator: The Next Architecture, Part 6
An informal poll of recent M.Arch graduates resulted in a very interesting statistic: approximately ½ are either unemployed, working for free, or “working for themselves” though many of these new “firms” have yet to win contracts or projects. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, this statistic mirrors the national unemployment rate in the profession. For those who are fortunate enough to gain paying projects, residential remodels seem to dominate.
More after the break.
The Indicator: The Next Architecture, Part 5
Compensation is, let’s be blunt, a controversial and touchy subject in the architecture profession. It’s taboo to even bring it up. If you are working in architecture there’s a good chance you don’t even want to tell people how little you make because it’s just embarrassing. If you are an employer you don’t want to admit how little you pay your people because it looks bad and is equally embarrassing. So, let’s all be embarrassed together, employees and employers alike. After all, we are all in this together and we all depend on one another.
“What sort of salary range are you seeking?” This was an email a former colleague shared with me. After he sent them his resume and portfolio this is all they asked in reply. What is one supposed to do with a question like that? It used to be that firms would tell prospective employees what they were paying for certain positions. Now, they want you to tell them what you expect. They are banking on you telling them some ridiculously low amount, something way below what you might have been making before the recession.
More after the break.
The Indicator: The Next Architecture, Part 4
Leadership is important in determining the course of a firm’s success. Leadership style determines a firm’s overall culture, how it positions itself in the world, how it will face down difficulties. In addition, the true, long-term ramifications of leadership style become evident during periods like the last two years, when the economy is racked by recession.
The challenges presented by the recession reveal the essence of a firm’s leadership by laying bare all the dormant weaknesses that were most likely put in place when times were good. What are these weaknesses? They are primarily related to the culture of a firm’s day-to-day operation, how its personnel are managed, classified, and compensated.
Keep reading after the break.
The Indicator: The Next Architecture, Part 3
“Architecture is too insular.” How many times have I heard this? Too many times to count. I’ve heard it from architects and non-architects, alike. It is not necessarily insular in the strict sense. It is more the case that it appears insular because it is self-referencing and self-validating. OK, so on second thought maybe it is just insular no matter how you define it. But my definition has more to do with the inward gaze of the profession that makes it a world unto itself. Like all worlds it has a need for celebrities.
More after the break.
The Indicator: The Next Architecture, Part 2
We in the profession all understand architecture can mean many different things, both types of knowledge, and ways of thinking. But to the general public, architecture means expensive, “designer” buildings. The qualifier “expensive” must be added because this is how the non-architectural population perceives it. From that narrow perspective, it requires the mobilization of equal amounts of three elements to have a building designed and built capital, a willingness to assume risk, and a generous measure of psychological instability. Maybe the latter comes after the project is complete.
More after the break.
The Indicator: The Next Architecture, Part 1
This article was written entirely by hand in the margins of a book I’ve been trying to review for the last few months. The book is entitled Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future, by Robert B. Reich, former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. Remember those days? Probably not.
Currently he is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at Cal Berkeley. My guess is that he is not well-known among architects—his books are comprised of dense fields of text and the only images are graphs and charts with numbers. Given the current challenges the profession is facing, I thought now would be an appropriate time to introduce him. Actually, it’s a pity his ideas—which by the way are not merely his alone—are circulating now when they could have been instrumental in preventing the current recession.
More after the break.
The Indicator: Atelier Atelier
New architecture firm names are getting out of hand. It’s as if they are trying to sound like Indie bands. Barring that, they often fall back on “Atelier such and such.” One trendy use of atelier has been the “Atelier insert-your-name-here” variation. This has been way overdone. There is also the “Atelier theoretical buzz word” version.
Since a name is how you present your firm to the world, it’s worth giving it some serious consideration. It’s more important to be apt and appropriate rather than too creative with names. Save the creativity for your designs.
More after the break.
The Indicator: Keep Off the Grass
PREFACE
Since 2002, the U.S. Department of Energy has been running the Solar Decathlon to promote innovation in sustainable building technologies. The program places twenty collegiate teams from around the world in competition to produce prototype homes capable of producing more energy than they consume and powered exclusively by the sun. This year, the teams received the surprise news that their “sites” have been changed from the Mall to an as yet undecided alternate location. Even though one of the conditions of participation in the contest is to provide for the replacement of damaged lawn areas, the Department of the Interior and the National Parks Service are worried about the grass. Judging from the current state of the lawn, it would probably be in better shape after the Decathlon teams have removed their houses and fixed it.
Here is a link to a heart-wrenching video produced by the SCI-arc/Cal Tech Team. They ask you to contact members of Congress and The White House. Please support the Decathletes by calling, emailing, tweeting, facebooking, and writing.
More after the break.
The Indicator: Thinking Architecture… in c. 25 BC
Browsing Lapham’s Quarterly, I came upon an interesting little article under the heading, “Practice and Theory.” Then I noticed the date, c. 25 BC, Rome—hardly current for online content. I soon realized I was reading a passage from Vitruvius’ On Architecture, one of those texts in the canon of western architecture that I should be familiar with—or at the very least know about. The former I make not claims to. I’m afraid the latter is more the case.
This might come as a shock, but I have not actually read his entire ten-volume treatise. On another note of disappointment, the man’s life remains obscure and I have no intention of making it any less so here. Be that as it may, the passage reproduced here seems relevant in this era of increasing specialization, professional insularity, technology- and theory-driven practices, and unstable business models.
More after the break.
The Indicator: Fearful Symmetry
What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake, The Tyger
Ehrlich Architects recently beat out Zaha, Foster, and Massimiliano Fuksas to win a competition for the UAE Federal National Councils Parliament Complex (UAEFNC).
Their winning design has received mixed reviews from the online audience. Many are laden with bile and downright hostile. I imagine these online critics spitting with dismissive contempt as they violently bang away at their keyboards. I usually stay clear of architectural scuffles, but in this case I’m making an exception.
Keep reading after the break.
The Indicator: China Before Architecture
My first trip to China was in 1988. Ironically, this was the same year sweeping land reforms were instituted by the government. It was very simple, really. It was like a massive stimulus package. Though, at the time, the full ramifications of these policies were not completely understood.
Basically, the laws governing land management were altered. All land was (and still is) state-owned. There is no private property in China. 1949 erased the concept from history. Under the policy changes, which also coincided with other dramatic economic reforms, land use rights could be traded on a quasi-private real-estate market.
In the eighties, one thing I had in common with China was a complete lack of interest in Architecture. Shocking, I know. Architecture was simply the background, the environmental equivalent to muzak. I was conscious of it, but in a more detached, impersonal way, and without the need to exercise any architectural power over my surroundings. Another shocking thing about that time: I didn’t have the need to filter everything trough the narrative of Architecture.
More after the break.
The Indicator: The Book by It’s Cover
The chin on the typewriter. It’s a typewriter. The college haircut. Before the personal computer, the Internet. No cell phones. Coffee had not yet been fetishized to the degree it is today. I suspect the coffee thing goes along with the technology. Black. Sugar. Cream. I think she likes black. I know I have another one of her books on my shelves. I know almost nothing about her beyond the book, Formless. For a long time I kept this on my desk when I worked at a corporate firm. I was surprised to find this book of collected essays spanning her career as an art critic and historian. I didn’t look inside, just the cover. That was enough.
To be perfectly honest with you, I’m simply too exhausted to write an in-depth piece on the economic outlook for 2011. I did have good intentions. I woke up in the middle of the night with something nearly complete in my head. It was going to be really informative. Let me summarize: if you are working in 2011 you are getting paid less, working longer hours and have less security. If you are running a firm, now is the time to re-envision your vision, identify your identity, and consolidate your consolidatables. I’m in a good mood…and you might be too…so why ruin it with more of this. I’ll write that piece when I’m in a bad mood. And, to be perfectly honest again, it’s just too early in the year to get a grasp on where it is going. So, let us turn to something else that has been on my mind.
More after the break.
The Indicator: Why We Look at Architecture
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
– Oscar Wilde
I’m drawn to John Berger’s essay “Why Look at Animals” for many reasons but primarily because it takes something obvious and turns it inside-out to reveal dimensions that were completely unexpected. The way he describes our cultural and personal engagement with animals got me thinking about how we look at architecture and why we look at it. What are we trying to see there? And is there a there there?
More after the break.
The Indicator: Post-Occupancy 01
This week, we present the first of a special series called “Post-Occupancy” in which we feature the experience of the owner-dweller in different types of architectural spaces. Our goal is to present architecture by letting the users narrate for themselves what it means to them, how they experience it, how it has transformed them. We pose the questions. What do owners want? What do they need? How do they experience their homes after they’ve lived in them for a while?
Often, architectural discourse begins and ends with the designer. Here, the owners come first. They provide the answers in their own words, without the dialect of the discipline mediating what they say.
In this first installment, the goal was to examine the experience of domestic space from the point of view of a globe-trotting intellectual couple. James Massengale and Tracey Sands are both scholars. And as is the way of many academics, they have more than one residence: one in the United States and one abroad, located in the region of their studies. In this case, that is Scandinavia. And this is what they had to say.
More after the break.
The Indicator: Defining China
Defining the City
The construction of a city involves how is it defined, understood and experienced. These processes and definitions diverge wildly depending upon one’s location: East or West. Heretofore, western architects have subjected analysis of “The City” in China, indeed all of Asia, to a set of western-privileging universals for both physical and epistemological constructions.
More after the break.
The Indicator: 2011 Resolutions
New Year’s Resolutions for principal of a firm (in this case, size does not matter).
1. Be honest with my employees.
2. Be respectful to my employees and open to their suggestions.
3. If absolutely necessary for economic reasons, I resolve not to lay off any employees but instead to furlough them—as well as to furlough or reduce my own salary. And I resolve not to exploit them by demanding that they work on their furlough days.
More after the break.
The Indicator: Book Review: Walter Benjamin and Architecture
Here is something to consider: September 25, 1940. Portbou, Spain. Walter Benjamin, aged 48, is found dead in his hotel room. He had been fleeing the Gestapo, intending to make his way to the United States. He carried with him a manuscript he deemed more important than his own life. To this day, it has never been recovered.
The end of Benjamin the man would ultimately be the beginning of “Benjamin” the international philosopher. Had he made it to the United States one suspects he would have attained the unique fame philosophers can enjoy—alive and relevant rather than dead and relevant. Due to the influence of colleagues, Benjamin’s position in the pantheon of the philosophy of modernity would be secured.
The discipline of architecture, seeking new ideas, would ultimately turn to his oeuvre through Manfredo Tafuri’s influential Teorie e storia dell’architettura, translated in 1968. This marks Benjamin’s official entrée into architectural discourse. The attention subsequently led to an explosion of Benjamin citations in the field.
More after the break.
The Indicator: Interview: Witold Rybczynski
Witold Rybczynski, author of fifteen books and over 300 articles, is one of the most prolific and engaging writers on architecture and the urban milieu. He is the Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania and architecture critic for Slate.
His writing, propelled by the insights of a sensitive designer, imbues subjects such as the home, Central Park, and cities with feeling and wonder. Like a guide to the built environment, his sharp prose points to what needs to be looked at and seen and why architecture matters.
As part of my series of discussions with critics, I recently exchanged ideas with him about his interest in cities and architecture, his role as a critic, and his new book Makeshift Metropolis.
Interview after the break.
The Indicator: The Student is the Client
This article is co-authored by Sherin Wing
It’s the season for end-of-year juries before everyone escapes to the sanity of real life. And true to expectations, horror stories abound about instructors and jurors.
Here is one story: a student at a well-known Southern California program said that after spending five straight days at studio without returning home once (he clearly didn’t read The 101 in re: change your underwear and it’s not medicine), his instructor approached him and said one thing: “You’re F%#@$!”
Hey, thanks for that helpful and really insightful advice!
And if that weren’t enough, this same instructor had embarked on a campaign of concerted humiliation of this student, teasing him not just to himself, but repeatedly in front of his entire studio class regarding another student he supposedly had a crush on. That is clear harassment and she should not only be fired, but she is opening up the entire school to a lawsuit.
More after the break.
