The Indicator: The Latest Architecture and News

Below is the Hollywood Reservoir. I’m two hours early for this interview because, as usual, I’ve guessed the traffic incorrectly. You see, I’m not really from LA. Have never considered myself from here. I’ve lived here most of my life, but I’m not from LA. Being from or not from here usually goes unspoken. It’s typically assumed you are not from here…and never will be.

I park at a trailhead. I’m in dress shoes. Black dress shoes. Black shirt. But I have a scarf and a jacket to fight the wind. Rain coming. The sky is a neapolitan of grays, blues, and whites, laid out horizontally with little light filaments touching down. The canyon is absolutely quiet even though I can see some bulldozers crawling up and down the side of a precarious ravine in the distance. They remind me of the sandcrawlers from Dune. This seems just the type of place where famous LA murders would have taken place. The fact that Ray Manzarek lives in this neighborhood somehow makes it seem more eerie.

I imagine Moby watching from his tower window, watching me turn away from the house and down the dusty trail in my black dress shoes. I’m obviously early. He might think I’m intentionally heading out for a hike. Like I worked this into my itinerary because I knew there was a trail here. Actually, I had no idea. I have never been in this neighborhood and rarely come to this side of town. Just like I have no idea what I’m going to ask him. At this point, I’ve lost almost all interest in architecture, buildings, and the reasons he’s blogging about these things.

Photo note: The artist, Alfredo Jaar, in a 2006 interview, regarded Terragni’s Casa del Fascio as the “perfect memorial to Gramsci.” Jaar used the building’s blank right facade (originally left uninterrupted for propaganda) as a canvas for projecting a sequence of images about Gramsci. As Jaar noted: “Here, the fascist building is transformed into Gramsci’s grave. My trip is thus complete, the circle closed, and Gramsci’s indomitable faith in humanism and the hegemony of intellect is still alive. People were, I think, touched and empowered by my concept of transformation of the former headquarters of Fascism in Como into a commemoration and celebration of Gramsci. It was hopefully a true manifestation of everlasting resistance to tyranny and death.”

The Indicator is back!

In reading Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks I am struck by his lack of irony and pretense. It is not a resistance to humor per se. It is a restraint. A will to power that puts everything in the urgent light of sincerity.

Thus, stylistically, it reads as somehow awkward and formal in our post-post times. It has me thinking about how we write about architecture…how we write architecture.

True. He was writing from prison. But it’s more than that. He was writing what he believed. There is no escape valve of irony in his text. He was, and is when you read him now, in your face, holding you and daring you to veer away. What he is writing is not to be taken with a wink. He commands humor in his language but the humor drives a sustained sincerity, a concern for humanity—including his own humanity.

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.

Sustainability can be associated with wildly expensive technological advances. Which not coincidentally can immediately turn off clients.

So how do we define it? What does it mean, from a resource-conservation standpoint, as well as from a business one? For one viewpoint, we turn to Mark English, AIA. He has promoted sustainability efforts on several different levels for years. That means that not only does he incorporate sustainable strategies in his designs, he also helps other firms implement them in their work. He has been involved in programs including the California Solar Initiative, Green-point Rating, and he is also a Director on San Francisco’s AIA Board. He also edits two online publications including “Green Compliance Plus” where articles explore such topics as Passive Houses and the debate on Green Certification, and which also assists other professionals in meeting energy-efficient goals. Another publication, “The Architect’s Take,” presents news from an architectural standpoint. In fact one of those articles provided the basis for some of this author’s work.

“Made in China.” For so many in Western nations, this phrase conjures up a plethora of horrific images. There is the Human Rights argument: low wages, inhumane working conditions, and so forth. Then there is the issue of quality, as in, there is none.

First let’s talk about human rights in terms of manufacturing. The favored discourse is that Chinese factories exploit their employees and hence the resultant quality of the goods is far inferior. Sensational stories that support this conclusion always seem to cross international lines. Moreover, there are basic protestations of Human Rights’ violations and then the specter of Tibet is raised.

My old firm, the one I got laid off from almost exactly two years ago, has had another round of layoffs. I’ve lost count how many that is (over ten I think), but since it included several principles, I’m guessing that this is either a death knell or time for a major restructuring of that office.

And that got me thinking about my own situation. Again. Because if there’s one thing that triggers intense feelings when you’re unemployed, especially when it’s been a really long time, it’s hearing other people at your old firm have suffered the same sad fate.

When a major architecture critic heads for the exit, does anyone care? One would suspect most architects would hold the door open and wave him on through. Critics, after all, can be quite nasty and make one’s life work look like so much poop.

So, it depends. When Herbert Muschamp died in 2007 the collective tissue boxes of the architectural profession were emptied as architects of all stripes, especially those he championed, shed rivers of tears. Mr. Muschamp, it seems, was a critic of consequence. People listened to him. What then of his protégé, Nicolai Ouroussoff? (Hereafter, simplified to N.O.) Will be N.O. missed?

More after the break.

As the economy staggers through the pre-dawn streets of a slow and agonizing “recovery” – some economists including Robert Reich argue we are not in a recovery – it is important to remember what has been learned.

As far as architecture is concerned, the lessons learned were the same ones as in prior recessions. Maybe this time architects will not suffer from amnesia or lapse into denial when billings tick up once again. It is easy to forget how difficult things have been. People tend to just want to move on and not dwell on the past. Psychologically, people seem to just want the economy to be in a recovery – even if there is evidence to support that it is not necessarily at that stage yet. Recession this, recession that. Everybody is tired of hearing about it. I’m tired of writing about it! But it is still a reality that affects the ranks of our chosen profession. No one has been immune. Professionals at all levels of experience, whether licensed or un-licensed, domestic or international, healthcare or commercial have been impacted.

More after the break.

Focus! Focus! Focus! Why are you reading this! You should not be reading this now! Get back to work! You are being unproductive! You are DISTRACTED!

Architecture in an office environment often functions like the opposite of how it was in studio. For one, offices are businesses so there is a need for oversight, management, evaluation, assessment, leadership, discrete task assignments, meetings…the list goes on. Notice that all of these elements to running a firm somehow come down to time management and staffing issues. Leaders have to keep an eye on junior staff, not to be annoying and stand over their shoulders micro-managing them, but to stay aware of what everyone is doing and where the different aspects of complex projects stand. Of course, this also relates to project budgets.

More after the break.

The best of architects is not that they can use cool software or design buildings, or even that they can help create interesting spaces. If you think back to your school days, the best of architecture was problem-solving. You were given a challenge and then you had to think of good ways to address those challenges. That included addressing social, cultural, racial, environmental, and not least, spatial, needs.

Given the opportunity, architects use a myriad of tools and critical thinking skills to solve many different problems, not just strictly spatial ones. In fact, years ago, Guy Horton and I discussed the possibility of starting a round table or a colloquium, to brainstorm on different issues with others both in architecture and other academic fields, and to offer possible solutions.

More after the break.

According to Architecture I have what you might call a Past. I never thought I did, but there you go. I do. What I mean precisely is that at one time I had a life that did not revolve around architecture. I’m one of those suspicious Non-Architectural Background types—or a person from the realm of the Non-Architectural Background.

Architecture has found ways to accommodate people like me, but at times it is still an uncomfortable accommodation. Architecture likes to view itself as cosmopolitan, cultured, and intellectual, but when it comes face to face with individuals who have educations and experiences of non-architectural sorts it doesn’t always know what to do with us.

More after the break.

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.

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 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.

“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.

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.

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.