Category: Concerning the Professional

Out of a Job?

Archipreneur has a great post (Archipreneur: Archipreneur’s Guide to Surviving Layoffs & the Recession) on things to do in today’s market if you are unemployed like me. I think it’s a great read, though I have to add an additional item to it.

Get licensed, make your full time job studying for and taking your exams. Take any prep classes out there, the other students will be intern-architects as well and it’s a great way to meet people and network. You never know, you may get some job leads — like I did today. If you can get through all of your exams in one big burst, statistically you should have passed a bunch of them and you’ll only have a few to retake in 6 months.

Surviving the Great Recession

In light of my current situation, I was happy to find that Architecture Record is finally good for something other than product mailings and precedent studies for architecture students. The most recent issue is dedicated to surviving the current recession, including articles for the unemployed and the firms that are still operating. The advice they have to offer for the unemployed is mostly common sense, but the article on starting your own firm peaked my interest. Now if I was only licensed …

Laid Off

I normally don’t post my personal/professional life to this blog, but I figured I’d give it a shot.

I just got laid off today due to workforce realignment/restructuring. My office laid off 20% of their staff – 4 people including me. Honestly, I’m not really upset, more relieved. Now I don’t have to worry if I will get laid off or not. Though, I now have to find a new job.

So, does anyone know of any opportunities in the DC area? My resume is on here. I’d be interested in anything architectural, graphic design, urban planning, or IT.

Architect as artist

In the past century we have seen the rise of polytechnic architecture, a method of building which divorces the architect from the world of art and creativity, and instead treats buildings as solutions to engineering problems and casts architects in the role of project managers, facade coordinators and space planners.  Working and living within this modern paradigm it can be easy to forget that our profession is not just about ensuring the health, safety and welfare as our licenses require, but also about creating spaces that inspire and capture the imagination.

The New York Times has an interesting article describing a new exhibit of sketches by Frank Gehry at the Princeton University Art Museum which help to remind us that architecture is more than creating big boxes for commercial and residential means. While I am not a huge fan of Gehry, and feel that he is more popular for the “cool” factor of his buildings than for the real reason he should be popular – that if you consider the sum total of his works as one examination in form, it is a very interesting exercise in mass and volume and the delamination of these masses and volumes, I am glad that someone has started a discourse about the art form that architecture once was, and could still be. The real issue here is not that too few architects sketch, but rather too few architects are given the freedom to explore and create works of art. Instead they are directed to design to meet a specific style (and sometimes meet public approval) and then produce a building within (or under) budget while creating drawings that assume that the construction team will have no knowledge of how to build a building so as to limit their legal exposure. This creates buildings that have a watered down aesthetic and take few risks.

LEED, the trials and tribulations of the Green Revolution

I just finished reading an article on the Wall Street Journal’s site about the green building movement and the practical issues faced with training professionals and navigating an unstable and untested market. As a design profesisonal who keeps putting off his LEED exam in favor of other equally worthy endeavors, this article hit home. The problem with green building right now is that the market is so new and untested both for professionals and for the products. The article describes a situation similar to one I recently faced at work. An architect specified a Green product that ended up not being reliably available which caused delays and impacted budget. In the end litigation was reached. Fortunately, in my situation we were able to determine that the LEED point was unattainable even with the specified product, and that we were well within our target status (silver) so a non-LEED approved solution was found which allowed the budget and schedule not to be impacted.

This type of problem is rare in proven markets, when was the last time you heard that concrete or brick was not available? And when they are not, an alternative product usually exists and can be used without detriment to the project. The problem with the current state of Green products is that in some divisions (parts of the construction trade) there may few choices that help qualify for points, and each choice can qualify for differing points, so an alternative product may be the same monetary cost but may cause you to lose LEED credits. All of this coordination (and possible legal exposure) is one of the main reasons that LEED projects demand a high premium on the design fees.

The other major reason for the premium that LEED projects (or Green projects in general) carry (besides the increasing demand) is that the supply of trained professionals is just not enough to keep up with the demand yet. The LEED exam, while well within reach for anyone who is good at wrote memorization, is a barrier for many to achieving LEED-AP (Accredited Professional) status. In my case, every time I start to study for the exam something more germane to my career comes up. The first time it was focusing on completing my IDP, now I am preoccupied with studying for my licensing exams. Once I finish those, I am sure I will be concerned with getting my continuing education credits. Now I know these don’t take up all my time, but as opposed to when I was a student, I have more pressing things to do in my free time than read and memorize a 500 page book for instant recall. I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that, yes professionals know that we SHOULD get accredited, but until it becomes a necessity of our field, or we are offered increased compensation for our accreditation, I have a had time believing that supply of LEED accredited professionals will catch up with demand.

Lord, all firms can’t be corporate!

The DC area is filled with architecture firms, but I have been hard pressed to find many that are real players in the current avant-garde architecture climate. Most of the big name firms that have local offices focus on government work and not theoretical/concept work.

To wit, I am compiling a list of the best firms in the DC metroplex for publication as a future post to hopefully dispel the belief that good design cannot be found in DC.

Does anyone have any suggestions of architecture firms that go beyond the norm? I am specifically looking at firms that have an exemplary design identity.

Architecture in Crisis

In light of the recent 2 week’s financial news I have been a little preoccupied with reading the news blogs and playing fake day-trader on updown.com and have not found many articles to write about. That being said, I would like to write an extra special post detailing how an economic collapse, or at least a shaky market, will affect the architecture world as we know it. Unfortunately I do not have the knowledge or research to make any grand predictions or explanations. Instead, i will just make my own observations.

Here goes the list of things that we might see happen due to recent economic events:

  1. Due to a decrease in speculative lending, new construction loans will become harder to get, and many private commercial projects will be tabled.
  2. Because of the economic slow down there will be less capital and therefore less commercial growth, so the drop in commercial projects will be compounded by their being less demand. This may be beneficial to the projects that do seek financing, because there will be less fingers in the pie
  3. Less commercial growth, in turns creates less personal disposable income and reimbursable business expenses. This can translate to a slow down in hospitality construction and restaurant and entertainment interiors jobs.
  4. Less commerce, means less jobs, and in turn that means less of a likelihood of a turnaround in the housing market, because there will be fewer buyers with enough savings to qualify for the new restrictive loans. This will hurt the multifamily and mixed use development architects.
  5. A smaller housing market and lower property values mean that municipalities will have a lower tax revenue stream and public use building contracts may start to dry up.
  6. With 401(k)s and IRA’s and housing prices in the toilet, baby boomers may need to wait to retire. This means the assisted living and retirement community developers will be hit hard. On the other hand, with a graying population staying home, the suburbs will need to be retrofit to accommodate the newly elderly and infirm. Couple this with a drop in housing prices and more people finding ways to make their current houses work for their needs, and this means architects who focus on home renovations probably will see a rise in productivity.
  7. In addition to retirement savings, college savings accounts may be hit hard. This may mean smaller enrollment numbers for private universities and larger applicant pools for state schools. In addition, tightening of purse strings equates to less donations for private universities. Together this may mean less collegiate jobs on the table, and those that are available will be for state institutions who need to expand capacity on a shoestring budget
  8. I do think we will see growth in two other sectors beyond home renovation, they are sustainable and environmentally conscious design and institutional (prison and health care). Sustainable design will be a necessity as people look at ways to decrease their monthly expenditures. This will work in cooperation to the home renovation boom; people will replace windows for more efficient glazing, switch to tankless water heaters and solar hot water, and look at domestic energy production as ways of increasing their property value and decreasing their quotidian expenses.
  9. Prison construction and hospital construction and/or repair and renovation will increase for two reasons. First, with recessions come crime waves (the need for more correctional facilities) and a greater demand on the health care infrastructure. With more unemployed workers, there will be less people with health care. These individuals may not seek medical treatment until an issue becomes an emergency. In addition, the stress of a recession could cause emotional trauma – depression and mental health disorders. All of this will stress the existing system. Secondly, the government may look for ways to provide labor for the unemployed, a la the WPA, and, transportation infrastructure aside, hospitals, prisons, and other larger public use projects are the best use of these funds.

Again, this is just what I see when I look at the tangled web of finance and its relationship to the profession of architecture. I am sure other people will be glad to point at the ways i am wrong.

Integrated Project Delivery

The AIA website has an interesting article on the future of the architectural process.   This is something that greatly concerns me.   As the office I work for, and many others, contemplate moving to BIM there are great changes that will need to be made in house.   Not only will the time required for tasks change, but the general break up of time will shift more heavily towards the beginning.   The most interesting thing about this article is that it discusses a the change in nomenclature:

  • Predesign becomes conceptualization
  • Schematic design becomes criteria design
  • Design development becomes detailed design
  • Construction documents become implementation documents
  • Agency review begins at conceptualization
  • Bidding becomes buyout
  • Construction is still construction

By changing the language of phases, it makes it easier to break away from old contracts dictating time ratios, and forge a new understanding about how Integrated Project Delivery and BIM will affect billing and management.

[W O R D S B Y…Integrated Project Delivery and the Fully Engaged Emerging Professional]

Articles of Interest

Here are some links to articles that have peaked my interest in the last few days:

Its the global economic paradigm, stupid!

As anyone who has been even remotely cognizant of the news can tell you, the US is facing some bad times. We are having credit failures, banking collapses, increased food costs, increased energy costs, a craptacular housing market, and a general retail slump. The last one is worrisome to me, the incessant purchasing of the American middle class has been the economic engine keeping this boat afloat and paddling upstream. With the recent closing of national chains such as Steve and Barry and the downsizing of Starbucks I have to wonder how this is affecting the independent merchant, and then I stop and realize that except for the high-end boutiques and artists and artisans there really are no more mom and pop shops in this country. But that chilling thought aside, the area most visibly harmed in this country has been the housing market.

Breadlines, are they our future?

[Image via TRiver.]

As anyone who has been even remotely cognizant of the news can tell you, the US is facing some bad times. We are having credit failures, banking collapses, increased food costs, increased energy costs, a craptacular housing market, and a general retail slump. The last one is worrisome to me, the incessant purchasing of the American middle class has been the economic engine keeping this boat afloat and paddling upstream. With the recent closing of national chains such as Steve and Barry and the downsizing of Starbucks I have to wonder how this is affecting the independent merchant, and then I stop and realize that except for the high-end boutiques and artists and artisans there really are no more mom and pop shops in this country. But that chilling thought aside, the area most visibly harmed in this country has been the housing market. People have lost their houses and many who haven’t are trapped in their homes until the market rises again. This directly affects the architectural community in this country; the majority of architectural services are performed in the residential sector, either as new construction or renovation. With people being upside down in their mortgages, there is little available capital for renovation and additions, and less demand for new homes. Less new homes means less institutional (schools and government) construction and in turn less incentives for commercial construction. The great hope has been that while the credit market is global, the housing market slump would stay local, or at least national. But this article in the Scotsman, Architect firm axes workers – Scotsman.com Business, helps to drive home the point that this economic crisis is no longer a local event.

Now as a community, we architects have two choices, we can either shrug and play ostrich until we too have to join the breadlines or we can try to design a solution. I think that if we can help change the design discourse from luxury and excess to efficiency and thrift we will see a capital return on our efforts. But I have to stress that cutting budgets are not enough. There is no reason why architects are not developers in the US, we are skilled in design and planning in ways that developers aren’t and we can see beyond the bottom line to the total life and health of a project. In addition, I think we need to start thinking locally again and starting small. We as designers should lobby our local governments to construct well designed bus shelters and other utilitarian spaces, and if the mass transit system doesn’t exist we should push for its development.