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csintexas
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Joined: 06 Feb 2006
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Location: USA
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 Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 10:18 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | I don't doubt your expertise in the domestic market, CS, or disagree with your comments. However, one-off house construction isn't quite the same as management of multiple large scale projects. |
I don't know anything about large scale since I don't serve that market.
| Quote: | | The way I see it is that an aspiration to provide better than competitors at a lower price makes sense in manufacturing, where the idea is to sell more of the products at this lower rate therefore upping the overall profit. |
I suppose this would be based on each individuals belief in a free market society. I for instance believe in freedom as long as it does not harm others. What harms us changes as our perception and understanding changes.
| Quote: | | To market a bespoke service with this logic seems senseless, unless continuous employment just making a livable wage is your intention (which is a fair enough intention, but not what the highest earners work for). |
There is room in the system for all approaches (may the best one win!)
| Quote: | | Rather, in a service economy, expertise is what is being sold and this expertise comes at a premium. That is, unless no-one appreciates what the expertise is, which seems to be the case with architects, |
Exactly
| Quote: | | aided and abetted by the fact that many architects sell service like product and drive down each other's prices so that they all end up just scraping that living. |
Yes the same forces which drive the building industry in general also drive the architecture industry.
| Quote: | | I see it as a hole to be somehow dug out of. If it were the truly creative artistic activity it's often trumpeted as, perhaps that would be its own reward (I think it would) |
I think it is.
| Quote: | | but so oftens it's just grubby commercial enterprise, done badly (badly in the sense of commercial acuity, that is). |
I'm not sure what this means.
[/quote]
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Chris Stewart
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solidred
Joined: 05 Jan 2006
Posts: 596
Location: Scotland
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 10:40 am Post subject: |
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Chris, you asked about my last point, so I'll explain a bit.
See, I love art and culture... I have a passion for these things: music, beauty, literature and my limited experience of involving myself in these areas tells me that their reward isn't financial but vast in every other sense of what it feels like to be rich as a human being.
However, that side of my passion, and the fact that that aspect of architecture is also my passion, shouldn't be confused with what I (and most other architects) generally do during the business day. This latter activity sure has its rewards-in-kind: it's an interesting job, one achieves a measure of mutual respect in one's dealings with people, the technical aspects can be intricate but fun, the challenges exhilarating. But no more so than a mentally alert and right-minded person would find any reasonably high-powered job. And most other reasonably high-powered jobs come with a pay-packet bigger than mine and so I feel somewhat aggrieved by that. I'm not saying it's fair that people trying their best in all walks of life receive vastly different remuneration for their efforts, I'm just stating my claim as many others have just as much right to. I don't do this job for the love of it. My loves are elsewhere... |
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csintexas
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Joined: 06 Feb 2006
Posts: 1840
Location: USA
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 11:05 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Chris, you asked about my last point, so I'll explain a bit.
See, I love art and culture... I have a passion for these things: music, beauty, literature and my limited experience of involving myself in these areas tells me that their reward isn't financial but vast in every other sense of what it feels like to be rich as a human being. |
I can't claim to understand how you feel. I do understand valuing the wonderful rewards life gives us.
| Quote: | | However, that side of my passion, and the fact that that aspect of architecture is also my passion, shouldn't be confused with what I (and most other architects) generally do during the business day. |
I don't know what other people do I play and create all day.
| Quote: | | I'm not saying it's fair that people trying their best in all walks of life receive vastly different remuneration for their efforts, |
I don't think it is fair but that is the way it is.
| Quote: | | I'm just stating my claim as many others have just as much right to. |
I think we can agree that everyone has the right to their own opinion.
| Quote: | | I don't do this job for the love of it. My loves are elsewhere... |
I'm sorry to hear that. I know something of unrequited love.
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Chris Stewart
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lekizz
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Joined: 11 Jan 2006
Posts: 1070
Location: UK
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 1:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | The way I see it is that an aspiration to provide better than competitors at a lower price makes sense in manufacturing, where the idea is to sell more of the products at this lower rate therefore upping the overall profit.
To market a bespoke service with this logic seems senseless, unless continuous employment just making a livable wage is your intention (which is a fair enough intention, but not what the highest earners work for). Rather, in a service economy, expertise is what is being sold and this expertise comes at a premium. That is, unless no-one appreciates what the expertise is, which seems to be the case with architects, aided and abetted by the fact that many architects sell service like product and drive down each other's prices so that they all end up just scraping that living. I see it as a hole to be somehow dug out of. |
To get away from this tit-for-tat point scoring and back to the question in hand, I would like to go back to solidred's earlier comment. Isn't it our duty, as haevily qualified, educated and experienced designers to demonstrate our value to the public, to dig ourselves out of the hole? I imagine, for example, that csintexas is very adept in demonstrating the value of his work, creating utilitarian *and* poetic domestic spaces as he undoubtedly does. So his clients are persuaded his input is good value for money.
Having spent 5 years at college and now being given my own commissions, I realise what a pressure there is to throw away everything I've been taught, about poetic design and place-making, for instance. One of my current projects which I've been working on for four months and is at an advanced design stage, has been done without once visiting the site! I've had to try and use Google Earh and internet trade sites for the town to get an idea of the location  The developer is happy to have any building of any design as long as it uses common construction tecniques and makes him a profit when it is sold. I imagine the local planners may have a dim view of this approach, but the fee is so 'competitive' my employers don't deem it necessary to fund a day visit to site.
But at the end of the day, it is my own responsibility to remind my boss (and persuade our client) that place and context are important, resulting (I hope) in a more desirable property that contributes to the site and the occupiers' wellbeing. |
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csintexas
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Joined: 06 Feb 2006
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Location: USA
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 1:57 pm Post subject: |
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this is not "tit-for-tat point scoring"
This is a logical discussion point for point.
| Quote: | | I realise what a pressure there is to throw away everything I've been taught, about poetic design and place-making |
why would you throw away what you have already learned?
| Quote: | | for instance. One of my current projects which I've been working on for four months and is at an advanced design stage, has been done without once visiting the site! I've had to try and use Google Earh and internet trade sites for the town to get an idea of the location Smile The developer is happy to have any building of any design as long as it uses common construction tecniques and makes him a profit when it is sold. I imagine the local planners may have a dim view of this approach, but the fee is so 'competitive' my employers don't deem it necessary to fund a day visit to site. |
If your company is going to except work that they can't do well because they are not at that location who's problem is that? Are you blaming the client for hiring your company, the system for allowing it to happen or what?
| Quote: | But at the end of the day, it is my own responsibility to remind my boss (and persuade our client) that place and context are important, resulting (I hope) in a more desirable property that contributes to the site and the occupiers' wellbeing.
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I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic "commodity or complex craft"
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lekizz
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Joined: 11 Jan 2006
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Location: UK
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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For christ's sake *raises hands in exasperated despair*
Isn't this thread about the appreciation (or otherwise) of the architect's craft? Maybe you could wait until you have another positive contribution to make rather than picking peoples posts apart sentence by sentence. Some people will never change!
Bye! |
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csintexas
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Joined: 06 Feb 2006
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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So you don't want me to respond to what you are saying. Is that correct?
I don't understand how are we supposed to have a conversation if we don't respond to each other.
I will be happy to not respond directly to your post in the future if that bothers you for some reason.
Since you seem to have ended the conversation I will just assume that you don't want me to talk to you directly in the future. Although I find it difficult to ignore only parts of a conversation but I will make my best effort.
Maybe I can just pretend I'm talking with other people.
I guess what I am learning is that many people do not like to have their ideas challenged. In other words instead of debating issues we just each say whatever we want. While this is not the way I am used to discussing things I will try.
For some reason I thought your "tit for tat" comment was directed at me but I suppose I was wrong.
So what would you rather be doing solidred? There is no way we can legislate that everyone likes their job.
I think we can prove that architecture is complex craft. If the only requirement is that it is a common standard service than everything is a commodity.
This basically goes back to the theory that if an artist gets popular and starts to sell a lot of work than she is no longer an artist. I don't think this is true. Many well respected artist where both productive and successful.
Nor do we want this to be true. The best architects should do the most work and be paid the best.
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csintexas
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:41 pm Post subject: |
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Of coarse I would like to make more money. Everyone would regardless of their current salary. But I have the choice to do this and make less money or do something else and make more. I made better money building houses but I still choose design. The better I get the more money I make and that seems fair enough to me.
I believe that we do need to set limits on maximum and minimum reimbursement because it will make a better more just society. But I don't think regulation is the answer to every problem.
If you have read much of my writing you know that I care very much about the quality of our built environment. I support efforts to improve what we have now. I do not support efforts which will not.
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mx2
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Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 1968
Location: Miami, Florida
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:47 pm Post subject: |
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Chris has always had a tendency to further a confrontation in self-defense of tangential sub-topics. It always comes down to the same argument that arguments have to be argued in his way, and so on, and so on...
[I'm picking on you....just to see if it will rile you up] 
| Quote: | | I realise what a pressure there is to throw away everything I've been taught, about poetic design and place-making, for instance. |
Aaaaah...yes! Welcome to the Jungle!! The transition from the theoretical to the practical world is a strange occurrence...the disconnect is HUGE! My first Bachelors (pre-professional) ended very quietly (one class during a summer semester) and the campus was mostly empty, including staff, and I ended up talking more with the professors...and the very last day I was on campus, as I walked the dimly lit hallways of the Architectural department, early evening, one professor (who is now a rather succesful practicing Architect...after quitting teaching) bid me good luck and I replied by saying that I probably will end up designing boxes after boxes and I will miss school. He answered without hesitation, that I must never stop learning and experimenting. He insisted and made me promise...I laughed it off but it was the fact that he was so insistent that stuck with me....to this day I remember the event. As I draw my umpteenth window jamb detail, I am reminded of that...and when I fosuc all of my 10 years of practical experience into that one jamb detail and reflect on the idea of making something beautiful, something worthy, I realize one simple fact: it's all in the details. It's not about the big fat black marker making big swooshes on trash paper over large swathes of scaled Google earth maps that means I am making something worthy (although they have greater impact), it's the joy and thought I put into the little details of the final product that truly make Architecture worthwhile. It can be comparable to anything in life really...take automobile design. Ever drive in acar that has cheap and simply aweful details, even though from afar it's a snazzy looking thing? Ever find yourself surprised by the small, non-descript looking car that drives like a million bucks? That's how I see Architecture, every day I drag my ass into the office and wonder what wild storm is waiting for me that day...and I walk in with the full confidence that no matter how big or small, I will do it and do it well. I want to do everything I can in the best possible way...and I hope everyone starts to think this way.
Where's my drink?
mx2.5
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*Art of Architecture: The conscious use of skill and creative imagination in the production of an aesthetic building.
*Science of Architecture: The calculated use of technical skill and knowledge in the construction of a functional building. |
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SDR
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 7:00 pm Post subject: |
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The architectural practice of whilch solidred speaks ("bespoke" is UK for "custom" or one-off) implies the application of skills to the unique problem of the client, with all the science and art that that might entail. No craft suffers from the acquisition of clients who can afford what is on offer. And it is good that services are available at all "price points." But no craftsman should have to suffer the indignity of having his contribution taken for granted or discounted.
SDR |
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solidred
Joined: 05 Jan 2006
Posts: 596
Location: Scotland
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 7:59 pm Post subject: |
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Chris. A word of explanation.
As you could probably tell, I've had a rough week. I was just venting. I let myself get into the trap of envying other people's earnings, not really because this usually bothers me but because what I personally have instead of them is a working relationship with the mechanics of art that I love, even if this is not the extent of my day job. But this week, I've been going that extra mile to sort out problems that result from a situation created by meanness: meanness of cash to do the job properly, meanness of time (ditto) and meanness of spirit: all the job is about is making money for somebody else. And then ineptitude, too, creeps in. And because I care, generally, I sort it out as best I can. When it's about making schools for children - something worth doing as well as possible - this narrow-minded set of aspirations, my lack of power to do anything about broadening them except to make the job as good as it can be has me sucked further and further into all my energies being devoted to a sort of sinking ship... and I hate how this whole nonsense, this 'the good manager' part of my character, is beginning to take over my life: I go home to sleep, not to do the stuff I survive the rest of the time to do.
But that's just this week. Sometimes my job's great. My feelings of tired anger at the moment are a temporary phase. If it were ongoing, I'd do the obvious thing and look for another job.
And in some jobs, MX2, the Design and Build approach ensures that even the details are as cheap and nasty as the rules allow.
Anyway, I salvaged my soul later on this night by finally printing out a brief romantic correspondence that I enjoyed over Christmas. The paper is thick and luxuriant; it is hand-ripped into A5 sheets so that, when bound into a little red hard-backed book, it'll have the feel of one of those 19thC volumes where you used to have to use a letter-opener on the concertina of pages (I've started to read antique books who's pages were still 'sealed-shut' so: a century of un-readness...
Ah, something I fully control... something not the cheapest... something done with love, to the tune of Rossini's Thieving Magpie overture. All is not lost...
And LeKizz... the closest I've so far got to the site I'm designing for is Google Earth, like you! The Genius Loci we presume, is in two dimensions and has the scent of plastic and static electricity |
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csintexas
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Joined: 06 Feb 2006
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Location: USA
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 9:48 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | It always comes down to the same argument that arguments have to be argued in his way, and so on, and so on...
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Notice that I was not the one who started the criticism or told somebody else what they should do. This is the kind of unfair comment that I always have to endure around here though.
Yes I have bad jobs also (fortunately they don't last long) Sometimes I put them off as long as I can. As long as it is our task to work with other people we can't avoid it completely. I would not be happy in an office drawing details. I dropped out because I did not want to go there. I never worked for other people more than I had to because I never felt they appreciated my abilities. I am fortunate because my wife makes the easy life possible.
I am very concerned about the state of the world and I get very frustrated when it does not change. Maybe that is something you are experiencing with your work.
When I am designing a house that I don't like I have to focus on anything I can do to make it better. I have trouble imagining a project that can't be made a bit better just because the person working on it cared. I think that is imagination. When you have the ability to make every project a bit better how can it be a commodity? Maybe sometimes the limit is my ability to communicate or fully understand the parameters of the problem.
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csintexas
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| Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 10:31 am Post subject: |
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The comparison to fine art stimulated some other ideas.
Is one painting necessarily better than another because it took more time to finish?
I could spend a thousand hours working on a painting and not produce any thing to match what an artist can do in a few hours. I am not a perfectionist but I guess a lot of people believe they are. In my view you can always spend more time on something but that doesn't necessarily make it better.
Again I can't say anything about larger scale work or even what anyone else's experience is.
My view of ordinary residential architecture is that it is more like jazz music. Maybe formal "A"rchitecture is more like classical music. Both are fine, neither are commodity.
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solidred
Joined: 05 Jan 2006
Posts: 596
Location: Scotland
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| Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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It used to take me ages and ages to score a short piece of counterpoint in music (syncopated - rhythmically discreet - harmonic lines in four part harmony, say) simply because I've never gained any fluency in the technique. Mozart could do much better, much quicker, in his sleep (as can I, actually, but I can't wake up and write it out like he did).
Thing is, far better were the pieces I hashed out quickly in real time.
Paintings, I've done slow, quick, and a mixture of both. Verse, the laboured ones are always far inferior to those styled over an intense, controlled moment. Architecture is the only thing I've come across where the only way to get good results seems to be slow and endless re-hashing; be it of a detail or of an overall conception.
I love looking at some intricate thing it's taken endless painstaking hours to do; where every carefully calibrated line adds up to something beyond the sum of its parts.
But time in this sense is only conscious time. The best and seemingly instant creations actually result from the unfathomable and immeasurable complexity of our subconcious logic... |
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SDR
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Location: San Francisco
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| Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 8:11 pm Post subject: |
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Erich Mendelsohn wrote that he experienced an instantaneous concept for a building, usually upon seeing the site (as I recall).
As a devotee of Bach's keyboard work (I've been taking a nice long bath in the Well-Tempered Clavier via Wanda Landowska and her unbelievably rich big Pleyel instrument, c 1949-1950, for RCA Victor) I wonder how anybody can take the time to score while creating such work. How different might anybody's composing have been if recording equipment had always been available ? Perhaps a musician's memory is better than mine. . . |
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