selophane.blog

One of the things that has been the most disturbing to me since I graduated and joined the world of working architects is how little our craft seems to be understood in the United States, not to mention how little demand there is for architects to work on projects. There is a discussion raging over on archinect about the public conception that architects are wealthy, well paid, and always in high demand; while in reality compared to most of the other white collar professions (doctors, lawyers, et al.) it is the opposite. I for the past three weeks I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain why I think this is the case without devolving this post into a history lecture, and I think I’ve finally figured out how to do that. The root behind all of this confusion is two fold.

First, while architects work in the twenty-first century world, we still base our business on a nineteenth century business model. Unlike other doctors and lawyers who offer a mix of relatively small fee quick services (like sick visits and legal consultation) and large fee longterm services (complex procedures and trial and business law) architects perform mostly large fee longterm services for our clients. Most of our billing is for long drawn out projects, and even when we are involved in smaller home renovation services these projects still take weeks. What we need to discover is a way to sell single visit architectural consultation services which would be attractive to the public. To do this we have to determine a way to quantify the value that our services would add and why business and home owners should hire us instead of a less expensive builder driven solution. This leads into the second issue that architects face.

Architecture is a classist profession, it is only seen as necessity for business and government and as a luxury for upper and upper-middle class people. This contrasts sharply with Doctors and Lawyers who are seen as vital components to the modern way of life. Even the person of the most modest means will most likely visit a doctor in their life, whether through a medical clinic, hospital, or health care plan of some sort. In addition, since 50% of marriages end in divorce, even the poorest person has a very good chance of needing legal counsel if not for divorce, for some other reason. Whereas, most people will never work with an architect directly, and if they live in rural or suburban America, they will probably never live in a home designed by an Architect; the closest they will come will be working in buildings which are required by law to be designed by an Architect. This detachment from our industry prevents people from realizing not only the value of our services, but why we charge what we do for them. This lack of knowledge and detachment makes architecture and design a mysterious luxury, one which is far outside the world of most Americans. This will only change when we as a field discovers a way to make quick small fee services which will make us more accessible and affordable and not such a luxury.

So I’ve been on the job market since February; in that time, I’ve applied for over 175 different positions. Some of these have been outside of the world of architecture, while most have been with architecture practices.

I can see the writing on the wall, the architecture industry is changing and until it finds its new face there are not going to be many new positions out there working for other people. This is one of the reasons I’ve started my own residential design firm, studioSML, with a good friend of mine. On one hand we have the dream of working for ourselves, but on the other we are trying to be realists and understand that it is very likely that we will not bring in enough money to be self sufficient for years. This means that we both need full time positions elsewhere, and not just temporary ones. We are looking for long term (a number of years) positions that will allow us the ability to work on our own projects while still paying the rent/mortgage.

In my mind, the best way to accomplish this is to find jobs outside of architecture, and for me that means looking to my graphic design experience. Now, don’t get me wrong, if I somehow find a position with another architect or interior design or find myself with so much work i can actually take a salary I’ll be overjoyed, but I’m trying to be realistic. So I have been applying for graphic design jobs and not gotten much of a reply. Tonight, I finally got some helpful feedback from a potential employer. He questioned my desire to leave architecture and my dedication to graphic design, as well as the inability for me to find a salary that both takes into account my architecture experience(+4 years and almost licensed) as well as my graphic design experience (less than 2 years).

I don’t really know how to respond. I’ve already reworked my resume to feature my graphic design skills, but i feel it would be wrong to leave off the last 4 years of architecture jobs. In addition, in my cover letters I mention that I am looking to redirect my career into graphic design and leave architecture. I also mention that I understand that my architecture experience outweighs my graphic design experience, but that in my opinion (and hopefully theirs) it allows me to approach design issues form a different point of view. Beyond these measures I’m not sure what to do. Do I start applying for senior positions, or continue applying for entry level to positions requiring 2 years of experience?

Above is the keynote address from the Tulane School of Architecture sponsored symposium: Preservation Matters by Tulane Alum and Editor of Architectural Record magazine, Robert Ivy, FAIA. The speech is a long overdue acknowledgement of the work of the Preservation Studies / Historic Preservation Program headed by my past professor, Eugene Cizek, FAIA and a discussion of the historic preservation movement within the city of New Orleans and Tulane’s role through the twentieth century. I have to laud the efforts of the new Dean of the Architecture School, Kenneth Schwartz, who introduces the conference and Mr. Ivy. Regional Modernism has a more detailed synopsis of the presentation.

Throughout my years at the school, I always felt that the historical importance of place and the efforts of the preservation program to bring this idea to the student body was too often bulldozed by a blind passion for high modernism and other international styles. Issues of climate and green design were handled in the structural technology classes, but too often they did not play a part in the critically explored design studio work.

As an aside, I spent a number of minutes trying to figure out where they held this symposium. This lecture hall does not remind me of any space within the building while I was there. The main lecture hall is sloped, while this is obviously flat. Eventually after much head scratching I reread the symposium invitation and realized that this was held in the new University Student Center. Now I’m glad to see that this building (which was under repair for most of my years at Tulane) is in use, but I have to wonder if this type of event shouldn’t have been held at Richardson Memorial Hall (the Architecture School) where it could have had a greater influence on the student body and faculty.

Tulane School of Architecture is hosting a one day symposium at the end of January focusing on Preservation. The keynote speaker will be Robert Ivy, FAIA and one of my favorite professors, Eugene Cizek, FAIA, will be providing commentary. This symposium is free and open to the public. If I was able to be in New Orleans, I would love to attend.
…

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.

After watching the latest episode of Architecture School I was struck with just how accurate of a portrayal the reviews seemed. I remember reviewers baiting students just like that, and verbally backing them into corners such that they were forced to say their design was bad. What was missing from this was the critics literally tearing apart models to express their disgust with the scheme.

I stand by my previous opinions about the student’s work, none of them responded to the scale of the neighborhood adequately. At least some of them were looking at filtering elements of New Orleans housing iconography through a modernist lens, specifically the front porch and the screening elements. Furthermore, most of the house strategies did not create any site strategies for creating a public/private separation outside of the house itself.

So I just got done watching the first episode of Sundance Channel’s Architecture School.

I have to say, for the first reality TV depiction of the world of architecture education, and especially the Tulane variety, it is starting out as a decent representation. They managed to capture the ever condescending tone that most professors use towards their students as well as the tensions between rich and poor, black and white, and Tulane and the city; issues that have always inhabited New Orleans even before Katrina. I have to say, one of the things that is severely missing is the sense of height and lack of air conditioning in the architecture building – Richardson Memorial Hall, and the oppressive humidity that I am sure is plaguing these students in the field. With it being the first 2 weeks of the semester, it has to either be august or January and it doesn’t really look like they are dressed for January in New Orleans. C’mon Sundance Channel, where are my sweaty dehydrated daiquiri sipping architecture students?

Let me also add, that it is totally surreal to watch not only people that you know but buildings that used to be central to your life on TV. It has sparked in me a real desire to move back to New Orleans, maybe one of these days my life will take me back there.

[Image via Martin Dougiamas.]

The Times Online has an interesting article on the new CCTV building in Beijing. I’m sure everyone has seen this new iconic building by now, it rises like a wracked square casting an imposing shadow over the city below.

It is no surprise to me that the co-architect of OMA’s CCTV building, Ole Scheeren, is an impossibly young (35 years old) German Architect who was lived through the unification of Communist and Capitalist Germany. In the shape of the building it is easy to see the fingerprints of earlier experiments in modernism, in both the stark oppressive communist variety and the lofty grasping skyscrapers of New York and Chicago. And yet it has been distorted and made more complex. It is almost as if someone took the Arche de La Defense and twisted it until not only did the building distort, but the skin was also skewed.

This building challenges not only the symbol of a skyscraper but also that of the communist party controlled media in China. It could be a building in the process of collapse, a colossus falling to the ground, or it could be seen as a tower pulling itself up from the ground. Just as it could be a symbol of oppressive all-seeing orwellian control, or possibly a watchdog sheltering the people of china and enshrining their future. Only time will tell.

I’ve been out of town for the past two weeks and had nary a moment to read architecture stories, let alone compose a post of my own criticism or comments. Sometimes the real world seems to not want to let me get back to the virtual one.

So instead, as my welcome back post, I thought I would post a link to Eikongraphia’s Most Popular Architecture Blogs of 2008. This is really a best of the best list, look for future articles to be sourced from these blogs (and their coming addition to my links list). Maybe one of these days I can make this little side project into a top 25 worthy entry.

[Image via Wikipedia via Wikimedia Commons some rights reserved.]

The Newseum has always been a strange concept for me: a museum, an embodiment of the past, dedicated to the news, the embodiment of the present. Way back in 1999 I came to DC with my Highschool Government Class to participate in the “We the People” Competition as the New York State Champions. One of the many tourist-y things we did was visit the old Newseum in Rosslyn. At the time the museum was two years old and with its gleaming white ceramic sphere of a dome architecturally significant. I do not remember much – we were only there for an hour or so – but I do remember the rooftop garden and memorial, which was dedicated to journalists who died in pursuit of the news. It was a twisting spiral of glass plates engraved with the names of the fallen, a light and airy contrast (and tiny) to Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial. I can not wonder, that in light of the Iraq Occupancy and the 127 journalists who have died there, if the new Museum was to have such a structure, how big would the spiral be? Would it start to approach the Vietnam Memorial in size?

In the years since, the museum closed in 2002 and spent 5 years dormant while its new home in the district on Pennsylvania Ave, NW was constructed. For the past few months I’ve been driving into the city once a month and I’ve noticed the new building. Its new glass curtain wall façade easily mistakable for an office building if not for the giant stone panels engraved with the first amendment. The new building sits almost directly on the mall, just behind the national gallery of art. This is a fitting testament to the changed role of broadcast journalism in the last decade. Much like the museum, the media seems to have left its position as the fourth estate, the other, and become entrenched as a part of the federal system.

The new building performs a remarkable architectural feat. It simultaneously blends into the federal style fabric of the District while also fitting firmly in the vernaculr of the contemporary architectural mode. In the façade it is not hard to see watered down references to Morphosis’ Cal Trans building and the urban infill work of Coop Himmelb(l)au. Yet it is done in such a way that it offends no one, and by doing so, causes no one to embrace it either. It is hard not to compare the new Newseum to the I.M. Pei addition to the National Gallery across the street. Pei’s work proclaims “I am Modern, Love me or Hate me” yet does so without detracting from the original gallery next to it. Polshek Partnership Architects’ new Newseum seems to be saying “Move along folks, nothing to see here.” The New York Times’ review of the new building does a very accurate job of discussing the state of architecture in DC and the way that this building relates to it. Unlike me, the author of that article has been inside the new building and can discuss the interior as well as the skin.

Saturday, April 14th, the day after the Newseum opened to the public, I had the pleasure of seeing Ira Glass, host of This American Life at the GW Lisner Auditorium. One of the things he discussed in the question and answer session was the role of News in America today. He was concerned that by removing emotion from the News we have removed the Human element and in doing so changed the scale to one of giants instead of men. I have to wonder, has the Newseum done the same thing? By moving itself from Rosslyn, where the scale of the city is more human, its building was not so huge and itt had a premier place as one of very few museums, to DC where, as I previously discussed, the city is a place out of scale and it has become one of many museums (but one of the very few that charge admission) has the Newseum also changed the language of its discourse?