NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT

81. You Don't Have to be Good - Part 1: BIG, JDS, PLOT

2012-02-03T21:17:00.004+01:00

I don't want to be interesting, I want to be good
-Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Good work + good promotion = fame in architecture
-Conrad Newel

Good: That is the common denominator in the two quotes above, and that is what I would like to zero in on in this note; specifically the former part of the equation "good work" which I have so endearingly engrained in the consciousness of all my long time readers.

I had a teacher in college that once told me that to be a good architect you have got to innovate; push the envelope and do something interesting or you have to go the way of Mies and raise the level of precision and craftsmanship to a level of high quality. I have always respected Mies but I also felt he was too extreme in his insistence on quality to the point that it was quite often boring for me, so I tended towards architecture that was attempting to do something interesting. My preference for interesting works however did not mean that I did not appreciate quality in craftsmanship and detail. To the contrary, for me good architecture means a combination of both.

So earlier this year I went on a trip to Copenhagen and I thought naturally I would grab my copy of "Yes Is More" to read on the flight over. With the book in one hand and a map of Copenhagen with all of BIG's projects clearly circled on the other, I embarked on finding and seeing all of these exciting works first hand.

The first stop was the harbor bath project that was done under PLOT with Julien De Smedt. As I approached, I recognized the profile from all the images I have seen of it before, but as I got closer it became strangely unfamiliar. The bright golden color of the wooden planks that made up the structure has aged to a dirty splintered gray. [Addendum: february 9, 2012: Some of my readers have informed me that this may be because the wood used here was either larch or some other kind of local Scandinavian wood that resists natural forces without need for any finish. It turns gray naturally and was most likely intentional by the architects. If that's the case I concede this point and kudos to the architects here] There was a roughness and uncraftly quality to it that was not present in any of the photographs or images that was seen in the publications. It seemed somewhat crooked and shabby. This brought to mind another maxim that was impressed upon me while I was still in school:

A good building should enhance in character with age like a fine wine; Since most buildings will last about 100 years or more, a good building should be designed with that in mind and consideration should be given to how it will appear as it ages.

Time and the effects of its aging was not considered here. I was disappointed but not deflated. Surely this was a fluke, BIG and JDS are arguably among the world’s most celebrated and exciting architects today.

The next stop was the VM apartments also done under PLOT. The buildings are located in a new suburban development just outside of Copenhagen called Ørestad. You can read more about it here. While on the monorail that takes you out there I saw quite a few interesting apartment buildings that caught my eyes. The area seemed recently developed and quite a lot of the buildings out there were attempting to do something interesting in some way or form. Though I did not know who the architects were, they were attention worthy and I wanted to at least go over and take a closer look. However, my time was limited and I was here to see the VM Apartments and the Mountain dwellings that I had read so much about.

Arriving was akin to seeing the statue of liberty for the first time. I have seen the images so many times before it felt like I knew it very intensely yet there it was; a strange yet familiar icon. Approaching it from a distance was exciting, it was just as how I imagined it: the genius man made mountain stood there shining in the Scandinavian light. It was a beautiful thing to see. Then there was the jeweled array of razor-sharp Leanardo DeCaprio balconies gallantly defending their facade.

As I got off the train and started approaching it up close I began to see another side of the project that I had hoped not to see. Just by looking at the quality of the detailing of the elements used; the fixtures, the handrails, etc. I could only imagine that someone was trying to save money. Either the developers were pressuring the architects to be thrifty or there wasn't much money in the project to begin with.

Little or no thought given to how the building or its materials ages and transforms as it weathers over time. The wood as you can see is already water-rotted and beginning to lose its integrity over just a few winter cycles. This demonstrates a gross lack of understanding of the properties of wood and its behavior in winter climates or capitulation to economic pressures to cut costs by using inappropriate wood sans proper finishing and correct detailing.

Facade elements already beginning to fall apart

Long institutional corridor with poor day lighting and fluorescent light strips glaring directly into your eyes.

Optimistic colors and snazzy graphics painted on top of sloppy concrete-work and cheap metal fittings: Clearly visible in the foreground is efflorescence leaking from grotesque concrete surfaces. Further in the background are water puddles accumulating because of shoddy leveling and grading work on the parking deck.

Either way, at close range certain parts of the structures looks one grade up from the temporary utilitarian structures one might find at a construction site. There seemed to be no consideration or strategy for how the building's material would appear over time as it ages or how it would look after the first two weeks or so after the building was finished and after all the press photos were taken: Pieces were already falling apart and the materials used made it feel more like a temporary Hollywood stage set.

Whether Bjarke and Julian were simply making the best of what resources and budget they had is a whole other discussion. It could very well be that the both of them had a modest budget and they passionately worked their asses off to make something reasonably decent; in which case they should be commended for that deed. I tend to lean towards this theory, but since I have never seen a report that compares what the proposed budgets were and what the actual cost of the building turned out to be then I really don't know.

My point here is not to denounce BIG, JDS or PLOT as bad architects. To the contrary, I think they are probably better than most of the unknown Joe Blow architects out there that you have never heard about. The point I am trying to make is that famous architecture and quality architecture are not necessarily synonymous.

What BIG has been able to do is create buildings animated by playful and innovative ideas, poorly detailed with cheap commercial grade materials and clearly present/promote them with contagious enthusiasm and nifty little diagrams. The bottom line of this formula is that you can produce very interesting and popular buildings on the cheap. It wins you lots of competitions and makes you the darling of developers looking to turn a nice profit. This very project have received more awards and accolades than I can count. They are the inspiration for a great part of all the new projects that are being copied and pasted throughout the architectural hemispheres. I see copies of them in almost every architecture school I visit, and a lot of new residential projects all over the world. Just go to ArchDaily and browse around a bit and you will see the influence of these buildings. The ideas and main concepts are very interesting and admittedly worth inspiring the world, but qualitatively speaking, they are not very different from the crappy commercial office building that you can easily find at any strip mall down the road from where you live. This is simply put wonderful and interesting ideas built of crudely detailed shit: And that's a pity because I think the ideas and concepts that they represent deserve better.

I have never relay met Julian but I have met Bjarke and to be honest, he seems like a genuinely nice fellow. His personality, enthusiasm and mere force of character spits in the face of the notion that you have to be a conceited archi-speaking dick-head in order to be a successful starchitect. That's one of the major reasons I root for him and that is why I want to see him succeed.

However to continue to heap praises and accolades on these projects of his without pointing out their obvious deficiencies is to really do a disservice to architecture. It sends a message to the younger architects who take inspiration from it that this is acceptable, that this is something to strive for, not something to surpass.

After seeing these works from up close, the best conclusion I can come to is that the level of quality and craftsmanship was disappointingly shitty while the marketing and presentation of ideas was absolute genius. I am hereby disputing (or modifying) the maxim that I often touted on this blog

"Good work + Good promotion = Fame in Architecture"

Now I will have to say something like this:

Good (and /or interesting) work + Good Promotion = Fame in Architecture

The one thing I now know with all certainty is that the only thing that is invariably consistent with famous architecture is just good marketing and publicity.

Conrad Newel

NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT

Liberating Minds Since August 2007

80. Why be famous?

2011-10-08T22:20:00.009+02:00

One of the most popular question I get from my readers is: Why do you want to be famous anyway? To me, I always thought the reasons were self evident. Its like the question "why would you want to sit in first class anyway? In fact I often wondered who wouldn't want to be famous? But it is a good question and well worth pondering. So below are 22 reasons (not in any particular order):

People will respect you. For all the drawbacks of being famous people tend to generally respect famous people. Becoming famous is a tremendous accomplishment and it is universally respected in most parts of the world.

Even though architecture is a team sport and the work that comes out of your office is a product of the many talented people who work for you, it is you that gets all the credit. You can pretend to be gracious all you want by showing a picture of you staff and saying “oh, this is my team, and I show them to let you know that it is a team effort. bla, bla, bla...” hogwash! If you are the head of he firm and you are clearly the leader and spokesman, it is you who gets the credit.

You will get asked for your autograph. That alone is reason enough.

People (esp. architectural critics) will stop really questioning you. They just assume that everything you do and say makes sense and is just wonderful.

Even when the hair on top of your head have migrated down to your back, members of the opposite sex will still find you attractive.

You may get to have a retrospective at a major museum before you die

You don’t chase down magazine editors to get your work published, magazine editors chase you down to get your work published.

You don’t need to wait till you have something important to say to get heard. What ever bull-shit you think of and say is listened to with the full attention of the architecture world.

You get credit for things that lesser known architects have already invented long before you stole...ahem, I mean borrowed it from them.

You get to meet other famous people. Why is this so great? You can take pictures of yourself with them and put it on your facebook profile. You will be the envy of all your friends.

I am hanging with Tutu, top that suckers!!!

You get to work for autocrats and dictators. Why is this an advantage? These are the types that have the good sense to put great architecture in its rightful place: above the concerns of uncultured people who have no taste what-so-ever in architecture. With a supreme leader behind you, your design visions can be realized unmitigated; without all the nonsensical layers of regulations and bureaucracy commonly found in democratic countries.

If you are a Caucasian or Japanese male living and working in a major first world country, you stand a pretty good chance of winning the Pritzker Prize: “The profession's highest honor” - that comes with $100,000 of pocket change by the way.

You get invited to competitions that are closed off to regular architects.- imagine offered the opportunity to design some of the most exciting and important buildings of our times. There is real opportunity in that to flex your design muscles and show off your talents, but you don't even get considered if you are sitting in the economy section of the architectural class.

Freebies. Oh my God! the freeking freebies. People will just give you stuff for nothing. You will get discounts at hotels, restaurants, get bumped up to first class, etc.

After a certain stage people will just give you awards and accolades for things that you didn't even know there was an award for, just because you are famous.(look at all the awards and accolades that SANAA got after they made their break through)

You don’t need to prove your-self anymore. You can just sit back on your laurels and regurgitate your same old shtick and everyone will say “oh he is such a genius.” Just look at Zaha and Lebiskind.

Like Norman Foster, when your name becomes so famous and valuable you can arrange it so that your own company basically pays you just to keep your name on their stationary. Then you can buy a ranch in the french countryside and come in to the office once or twice a month just to show your face and sign autographs for your star-stuck employees.

Also from the Norman Foster play-book: When a financial crisis hits and most of your employees either have to take a pink-slip or a pay cut, you can have your-self a nice pay raise and a hefty bonus. You deserve it!

The most talented people will want to come and work for you and what’s more they are willing to do it for free or very little. Even more, they will work much, much, harder for you than they would at an average office. I think Frank Lloyd Wright once had the children of his rich clients actually pay him money to work for him. Now that's what I call "Big Pimpin"

You will get to travel the world over to promote your self and even get paid to do it,

Contractors don’t argue with you, and clients?... well clients will be clients. Sorry!

Just the thought of groupies. If you are famous you will no doubt have a bunch of superficial friends and loyal devotees that will follow you around like secret service agents just because you are famous.

People will drop your name to make themselves look important; "Oh I was having dinner with Conrad Newel yesterday darling, who were you dining with again?"

People will call you a genius - for most famous people i.e. movie stars, singers, etc, when they are famous people say oh they are fantastic, etc. but architects? when architects are famous people tend to say "well he is a genius!". Just think about that for a second: Conrad Newel a Genius! - I kind of like the sound of that. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

You will be memorialized simulntaniously for about a week on facebook when you die. People will replace their profile picture with a flattering picture of you. All the vicious and tyrannical things that you have done throughout your career will be forgotten or forgiven. They will say nice things about you, write quotes of all the wonderful things that you said on their statuses, and every website and news articles will be all about you. Although you won’t be around to basque in all the adoration, I think that's much better than silently slipping off the planet with not a mention in the press.

People will actually want to read your autobiography

You will have a place in History. People will write about you, and continue to be inspired by you long after you are dead. Just think about this. Hundreds of years after you are dead, architecture students will be visiting your grave with flowers.

Conrad Newel

NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT
Liberating Minds Since August 2007

79. Muses are overrated, Suzannas are underrated: Make a bad First Draft

2011-09-04T23:39:00.003+02:00

muse (mjuːz)
— n
a goddess that inspires a creative artist, esp a poet
[C14: from Old French, from Latin Mūsa, from Greek Mousa aMuse]

You know the funny thing about the Ivy League schools is the huge difference between your inflated expectations of what an Ivy League class should be like and what it actually is. Take the kind of students for example. In my puny little brain, I imagined that there would be the most brilliant students there from all over the country and perhaps the world. I imagined them having encyclopedic knowledge and that they could recite Baudelaire or expound on Foucault’s philosophical theories on demand. And, indeed there were quite a few geniuses, and I am not exaggerating. They were some super smart people who seemed like they were hyper intelligent aliens from another planet, but they were the exceptions not the rule. Most of the students there were just plain old average Joe’s about to be indoctrinated into the cult of architecture. They were kind of the same people you went to high school with minus a few class clowns. I said a few not all. There were people from many different backgrounds of varying IQ levels, and ways of working,

One guy I remember quite well was Alec, he was what you call a classic talent. He was one of those people that was born with it; the gift. His visual skills was highly developed in comparison to the rest of us. Some of his close friends told me that when he was in high school he was close to a rock star. He was revered by his teachers and fellow students because of the things he could make and the way he could draw. When he got accepted to one of the top architecture schools in the country, everyone just kind of accepted it as a matter of inevitability. Alec was never the vocal type, he was a little reserved, and felt more comfortable expressing himself through his work.

When he got to college, things worked out a little different for him though. The problem with Alec was that he was so accustomed to being the best and the center of attention with his work that he just could not accept being an average guy when it came to visual expression. He was certainly not the worst in his class but he was not exactly number one either.

The way I saw it, there were two broad categories of people in our studio. There were the people who gave a damn and those who didn’t. 90% fell into the first category and Alec fitted squarely in it. They were the hard working types that worked and worked and worked and worked. They lived in the studio and if they weren’t limited to how long you could be in school, I figured they would probably die there too. They always set high standards for themselves in terms of design. It would behove them to create something that they considered banal, or unsatisfactory. Their modus operandi was “I have to make something interesting, something that is gong to blow everybody away”. They were so caught up in trying to make that one masterpiece, that one where people will be talking about it for years to come. They were going to make a memorable super fantastic project and they will do it at what ever cost it takes.

They burnt the midnight oil, smoked pot, and drank themselves silly, whatever. Whatever helps them to come up with that great killer idea.

Come presentation day, they would pin up and what they have up on that wall was indeed interesting. I remember when Alec used to pin up, everyone would huddle around his work to marvel at the fantastic image that he had up there before he cold finish pinning up. And while the professors were talking about the other folks work their eyes could not help but glance over at Alec’s drawings every now and then. The rest of the presentations was just a long annoying prelude to Alec’s presentation. I could guarantee that everyone in the room was thinking the same thing “I wonder what he is going to say about it?” And when it came time, it was almost always a little deflating. He would present and then once all the questions were asked then things would start to go down hill from there.

It was always like:

“Yeah Alec, these images are really nice but I have yet to see a section through the project. These plans are great but I can imagine the actual elevations and sections in a hundred different ways. They are all fantastic. But what is your version?”

or my favorite:

“Yeah Alec, but what happens when it rains?”

His answer to all this was:

“Yeah but, this is just the general idea, I haven’t worked out all the details yet. Can’t you just critique the idea of the project?”

And so you get this constant back and forth.

“No Alec, I can’t critique what is not there!!! you need to...”

My theory is that Alec could not figure out a very elegant way to solve the section so he just did not draw it or present it. He just need to go back into his hallucinogenic state and wait for the muses to deliver him that perfect section. It was not because he was lazy or did not work hard. Although he did not put much physical work into it he was emotionally engaged. Perhaps too engaged. If that fucking muse would just deliver the Gaad damn section he would produce a million beautiful sections like you have never seen before.

But the sad thing was, the fucking muse did not deliver in time and Alec though a talented well meaning and quite a charming fellow failed the course, and another and another and was eventually thrown out of school.

I know a lot of Alecs out there in the world.

On the opposite side of the scale from Alec was Suzanna. Suzanna fits in that 10% of my class that did not give a damn about how it looked. She had no visual talent that I or anyone else could see. Everyone wondered how she got into this school or any architecture school for that matter. Her work ethic was just abhorrently normal in relation to the rest of the schizophrenic and downright unhealthy work ethic of the rest of us. She was just like a regular normal human being and it bewildered everyone in the class. What the hell is she doing in architecture school?

Suzanna would arrive in the studio sharply at 9:00 am and proceed to draw very diligently for about 2 to 3 hours. She would then take a 45 min lunch break come back to the studio and continue to work until about 5 and then she went home.

When it was time for desk crit, Suzanna would calmly take her drawings to completion the day before and come to the studio at the appointed time. She would unroll her completed set of drawings: plans, sections, elevations, and details and lay them out on her desk. Then she would reach into her hand bag and pull out a pocket romance novel and begin to read patiently while waiting for a professor to come around to critique her work.

Now, I don’t know about you, but seeing a fellow student sitting across from you reading a romance novel while you are in a state of complete and utter stress trying to come up with a building that is supposed to revolutionize architecture, save humanity, create world peace, and eradicate universal hunger is a little bit annoying.

When Suzanna pinned up, her work always seems invisible. Everyone would just glance by it as if it was not there. It was just well...boring, bland, blaaaa. All the lines were light and roughly the same line weight. If you stopped to take a look at it, you would see that everything was done by the book. Everything that was required of her was done. She approached architecture with the same even handed logic that one would approach a high school algebra problem.

step 1 - solve for all the Parentheses

step 2 - solve for all the Exponents

step 3 - solve for all the …

...and so on and so on...

When the professors commented on her work their body language would all express that something was missing. They would explain to her in diplomatic and undiplomatic archi-speak language:

“This is boring Suzanna you need to get inspired!”

But in the end, that was just their opinion. The fact is, she did what was required of her and they could not fail her on the grounds that her work was boring.

Suzanna passed class after class after class and eventually graduated, became an architect and I presume, went on to add to the collection of grey boring buildings that dominate our skylines.

When I think back on Suzanna & Alec, I always thought, if they could figure out how to work together, those two would make a really kick ass team. No seriously. Here is how I imagine them approaching an architectural problem.

First, Alec would go into a spiritual trance and come down from mount euphoric with a remarkable and very inspiring plan that was sketchy, incomplete and unresolved. Then he would struggle to death to come up with a way to resolve it in a way that was up to his standards. After a fruitless and exhausting effort, he would just keel over with exhaustion. This would be where Suzanna come in. She would take up the hopelessly unresolved plan and sit there steadily, line after line and come up with a clean, comprehensive set of drawings that thoroughly solves Alec’s plan. Upon waking up and seeing what Suzanna have done with his plans, Alec would suffer a mental relapse and pass out again. When he recovers again he would begin to lecture Suzanna

“Holy sweet Jesus, what have you done!

You are killing me Suzanna, you are killing me!

you don’t do it like that”

then he would take out his pencil and begin critiquing and editing her solution.

“It’s better if you do it like this”.

Then he would sit there cutting and pasting and tweaking and polishing until it becomes a brilliant master piece he is satisfied with.

It would be an ugly process but I think it would have worked.

The key to this working relationship would be that they complement and compensate for each others strengths and weaknesses.

For Alec, like most people, it is a lot much easier to criticize and edit what someone else have done than it is to create something from scratch. He is far too self critical to make something bad, so he just goes into a creative block and freeze up. He just cares way to much about how it looks.

Suzanna on the other hand doesn't give a damn about how it looks. She just wants to get it done so that she can get back to reading her romance novel. Alec’s unconventional ideas, and forms would challenge her to think outside the box and force her to be a lot more imaginative than she would normally allow herself to be.

But without Suzanna there to make a bad draft the first time around Alec would never be able to have something to criticize or edit, and thus would never be able to do anything.

Now I am talking about Alec & Suzanna, but this is also struggle that exist in the heads of most creative people. We all have both an Alex and a Suzanna, embedded into our creative dialogue. I believe however, the most effective creative professionals, (ie. Famous Architects) are the ones who have the courage to back the fuck off and allow their inner Suzannas to do what she does best: produce a boring functional first draft.

In fact, I think the Suzannas in our creative process have been underrated for far too long. She is always overshadowed by that fucking erratic muse (who comes and goes whenever it pleases her) with the beautiful inspiration that only lives in our heads. Our inner Suzanna is the dependable faithful midwife that allows the idea to come into the world that you and I live in. There would be no 99% perspiration without our Suzannas my friends.

I believe Alain de Botton, put it best when he said.

Those who go on to be proper writers are those who can forgive themselves the horrors of the first draft

This was what Alec could not allow himself to do. He could not make a terrible first draft. He could not forgive himself if he did while Suzanna just accepted it.

We could have easily said

Those who go on to be great architects are those who can forgive themselves the horrors of the first draft.

By Conrad Newel,

NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT
Liberaing Minds Since August 2007

What better way to celebrate Suzanna than by naming my first airplane after her.

☞ PDF

78. What is Architecture? (Part 3)

2011-06-23T00:59:00.003+02:00

Here is an obvious part in this series that just did not occur to me for some strange reason. Thanks to Jody Brown, here it is:

Architecture (noun): the act of artfully placing complex forms in remote locations to be photographed for magazine covers.

Architecture (noun): the memory of that which could have been, that is invoked by the residual form remaining after extensive value engineering.

Architecture (noun): Public disinterest derived from a combination of self importance and greed. .

Architecture (noun): The compromise arrived at by the client and the designers after the president of the firm and the client played golf yesterday. .

Architecture (noun): The hard metallic other shell surrounding confused school children pointing at the large early period Calder mobile hanging from the ceiling. .

Architecture (noun): The space between 4 or more glass walls, wherein wealthy people shower. .

Architecture (noun): Profession wherein ones salary is amusing to the majority of other professionals. .

Architecture (noun): The homes that hipsters admire. .

Architecture (noun): Structure approved by banks. .

Architecture (noun): The touch, the feel of titanium. The fabric of our lives. .

Architecture (noun): creativity plus financing minus creativity

Architecture (noun): The solid form of angst

What do you think? Am I getting close?

Jody Brown
COFFEE WITH AN ARCHITECT

Jody Brown is an Architect running INFILL, pllc. in Durham, NC. He's drinking coffee with someone at a coffee shop near you. He's that geeky guy over in the corner yammering on about Le Corbusier. Nice glasses though...

source: http://www.coffeewithanarchitect.com/2011/06/15/definition-of-architecture/

77. Professional Success vs Personal Development

2011-05-16T17:43:00.002+02:00

Milton Glaser is the graphic design world’s closest equivalent of a star-architect . Here he talks about the differences between professional success and personal development. It is directed towards young artists but the lesson is just as applicable to architects as well.

Professional Success vs Personal Development

In professional life you must discover a kind of identity for yourself, that becomes a sort of trademark; a way of working that is distinctive that people can recognize.

The reason for this is that the path to financial success and notoriety is by having something that no one else has. Kind of like a brand ( one of my most despised words)

So what you do in life in order to be professional is develop a brand, your way of working, your attitude that is understandable to others.

In most cases, it turns out to be something fairly narrow...

..and then you discover you have something to offer that is better than other people have, or at least more distinctive.

And what you do with that, is you become a specialist.
Then people will call you to get more of what you've become adept at doing.
So if you do anything and become celebrated for it, people will send you more of that.
For the rest of your life, quite possibly, you will have that characteristic and people will continue to ask you for what you have already done and succeeded at.

This is the way to professional accomplishment: you have to demonstrate that you know something unique, that you can repeat, over, and over and over until ultimately you lose interest in it.

The consequence of specialization and success is that it hurts you. It hurts you because it basically doesn't aid in your development.

The truth of the matter is that understanding development comes from failure. People begin to get better when they fail. When they move towards failure they discover something because of it. They fail again and they discover something else. So the model for personal development is antithetical to the model for professional success. As a result of that, I believe that Picasso as a model, is the most useful model you could have in terms of your artistic interest, because whenever Picasso learned how to do something he abandoned it. As a result of that, in terms of his development as an artist his results were extraordinary.

RELATED NOTES:

14. Do Good Work & Keep Your Soul

15. You have to work at it

76. Predicting The Pritzker Part II: Take a Lesson from Brad and Angelina

2011-04-22T15:08:00.004+02:00

The Pritzker would like to consider themselves the Nobel Prize of architecture. I know this because they say it on their website:

(We are) Often referred to as “architecture’s Nobel” and “the profession’s highest honor”

So let's compare them to the Nobel prize then.

Although on the surface it would appear that the two awards are similar, in actuality they are ideologically worlds apart. The biggest difference can be summed up in what I call the Brad-Angelina Doctrine. I know, I know, just bear with me for a little bit, hear me out. Please!

I define it as follows:

When a well known celebrity such as Brad Pitt and/or Angelina Jolie commands so much attention from their celebrity status and at the same time begin to feel that their lives are empty and meaningless (usually when it becomes evident to said celebrity that their contribution to humanity and the greater society is just hype and empty vanity) they begin to look for other ways to make a substantive contribution to the world. This usually comes in the form of a strategy that leverages their fame to positively influence or support a worthy cause of their choosing. They may adopt a child from a war-stricken country to show by example that it is cool to do that so others can follow. When disaster hit New Orleans, Brad and Angelina took active roles in charities such as the Make It Right Foundation and Global Green. In the subsequent months, they were also engaged in projects that aided in the rebuilding of many parts of the city. In doing so, they direct some of the massive attention and publicity that they command towards these charitable organizations. In my view this is a good thing, it is a marriage between the meaningful and the meaningless; a mutually beneficial relationship. Brad and Angelina find meaning in their lives and a substantive purpose behind what they do, while foundations like Global Green and the Make it Right Foundation finds a spokes person to raise awareness and raise funds to solve problems. Say what you want about Brad and Angelina or their motives, but because of the humanitarian work they do, the world is better off because of them.

The Nobel Prize uses a similar strategy by maintaining a relatively even ratio between “the famous” and “the relatively unknown” among their recipients. Take the Nobel Peace prize for example. In 2009, the award was given to President Obama (He is pretty well known I would say). When Obama goes to Oslo to pick up the prize, the whole world media follows him and the world focuses its attention on the Nobel Prize too. This attention elevates the profile of the prize itself and increases its recognition value. For Obama, it gives him credibility, respect and places him among a select group of highly distinguished and respected figures in history. Its a win-win situation for both parties, but more importantly, it is a win for peace in the world, since (whether it works or not) it puts pressure on a sitting U.S. president to live up to a promise to he made to ending the wars that his country was engaged in and work for peace.

The following year, the Nobel Prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, an unknown Chinese political prisoner and human rights activist that needed the attention and support of the world. Everyone remembered that Obama won the prize the year before, and suddenly Liu Xiaobo is in the same elevated group as Obama. Suddenly everyone around the world was Googling Liu Xiaobo and finding out more about him, bringing a lot of welcomed attention for the cause he supports. Along with that, came a lot of pressure on the Chinese government to reconsider their human rights policy. Again we have another win-win situation.

In a delicate maneuver, Obama’s notoriety was harnessed and carefully diverted to help a worthy recipient whose cause would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

Historically the Prize has done similar. In 1964, it gave a relatively unknown preacher named Martin Luther King and his civil rights cause the international attention it needed by awarding him the prize. With the whole world focusing on the conditions of segregation in southern United States, it embarrassed the U.S. government into putting pressure on the segregationist mechanisms that were in place and bringing it to an end.

The Nobel prize has a benevolent if not humanitarian agenda behind it. Its not just handing out prizes to the latest sensation in the profession or the guy who have racked up the most credentials under his belt. Without reading its mission statement and just looking at their track record alone, it is evident that there is an intent to advance humanity in some sense.

One might say "well, that is the peace prize, that is inherently humanitarian". Well, that's a plausible argument, but I would disagree. They could have opted to give the prize only to the Obamas of the world, but they didn’t: By giving the attention to the un-famous as well, they have made the prize more than just a symbol of status, they have made it into something that is useful to greater society.

But to be fair, let's take a look at another type of Nobel Award. Take Literature for instance (since it is an artistic expression and closest to architecture). The only thing it has in common with the Pritzker is its far less than perfect record. Though not as flagrantly lopsided along gender lines as the Pritzker, its list of recipients are predominantly male and Western. Its first female recipient however, was awarded the prize as early as 1909 and its first non-Western was awarded to a novelist from India back in 1913. Beyond this dismal commonality, the prizes begin to differ sharply from here on out.

The choice of Nobel’s recipients in Literature is guided by its founding mission to reward a writer with outstanding works that is moving towards higher ideals. Directly translated from the will of Alfred Nobel, it reads,

"in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"

The latter part “ideal direction” implies a built in forward looking predicate imploring the jurors to consider the direction in which the writer’s work is developing and the ideals that they champion.

Although this can be (and often is) liberally interpreted by the jury, in recent years, this has come to mean a kind of idealism championing human rights on a broad scale. So thought is given to the political, social, and/or humanitarian impact the attention of the prize will have on the recipient and what he or she represents. Take the last award in 2010 as an example, it was given to Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". His hugely political writings explores the dangers of power and corruption in Latin America. Think about the consequences the attention a prize such as the Nobel brings to the issues he discusses. The Nobel jurors certainly did.

Unlike architecture, literature is significantly more difficult to grasp across linguistic and cultural barriers. Never-the-less, the Nobel Literature Prize jury have attempted to consider literature from the greater part of the entire planet for the prize (not just the first world).

The Nobel prize for Literature has been awarded to a greater variety of recipients across a wider spectrum of genres and cultural view points in comparison to the Pritzker. With the exception of Antarctica, it boasts a list of recipients representing every major continent on the earth including the Caribbean, the Middle-East and even the Republic of Mauritius (a tiny island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent)

With the Nobel Prize in general, you get the feeling that anyone, absolutely anyone who is doing something outstanding to advance the condition of humanity in their respective field can win, no matter where in the world they are: Whether you are neuro-psychiatry professor at Columbia University discovering the physiological basis of memory storage in the nervous system or a banker in Bangladesh pioneering micro-credit for poor people to help them establish credit and financial self-sufficiency, you can win the prize. But more importantly, the attention, especially in the case of the un-famous recipients, will help to advance something useful to the world.

Now, compare this with the Pritzker. Do you see where I am going with this?

The Pritzker only celebrates the celebrated and gives more attention to the already famous. It does not advance architecture or humanity in anyway beyond creating mindless chatter in the hallways and online chat-rooms throughout the architecturally-interested world about whether the latest pick was worthy enough to be crowned America’s top star-architect.

In this respect, it is much more like the Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Awards that honors the career achievements of retired or near-retired movie-stars: It is sentimental, retrospective and backward looking. Because it is devoid of any underlying mission to advance the profession or humanity, it is ideologically no different than the spectacle of a cosmetic beauty contest.

socially insecure post-pubescent fraternity jocks, preoccupied with prestige and exclusivity

If you are a juror on the Pritzker committee reading this, listen up and pay close attention to what I am about to say.

You ain't no Nobel Prize!

Not yet anyway.

For reasons that I will not get into today, you are highly respected in the architectural world. Every year towards the end of March, tremors of anxiety erupts in the bellies of the worlds most prolific architects as they sit anxiously and await your call and they get extremely upset when you don’t. The rest of us look to you for leadership. You have an enormous influence on our profession. The values that you expose through your choice of recipients send profound currents throughout the world of architecture. As much as I wish it weren’t so, but because of the weight of your influence, you are indeed the profession’s highest honor. This is why I care about what you do.

Although you have the power to harness the attention of the world and focus it on the architect of your choosing, you have not been using it in a very thoughtful way.

You are hurting architecture!

I get it, you are a first-world boys club. You guys are awarding within first-world boundaries that was created along political lines drawn in the cold war era.

Pritzker Prize distribution Map

compare to the cold war era divisioning of the world

Loosen up! The cold war ended over 20 years ago!

I know architecture and politics have been inextricably linked together since the beginning of the profession, but I have always thought that as an expression, architecture at its finest is when it is able to transcend politics. An award system such as the Pritzker could be a wonderful vehicle to encourage and challenge architecture to strive towards its highest ideals. Instead you are using it as a shackle to re-enforce our darkest prejudices?

One Caucasian or Japanese male star-architect from Europe, America or Japan after another, after another?

Look, senior star-architects don’t need more attention than they already have. They are stars because they have mastered networking and publicity skills. Giving them more attention is like giving financial aid to thriving billionaires.

Think a little deeper.

You have heard of Brad and Angelia haven't you? You can take a lesson from them. You guys have been around for 32 years. You are grown ups now, and you are behaving like socially insecure post-pubescent fraternity jocks, preoccupied with prestige and exclusivity to make yourselves feel more important than the next guy.

What?

Why the long face? ...Cheer up!

Guys, I hate to criticise you at a moment when you are actually stepping in the right direction. With the selection of Eduardo Souto de Mora, a relative unknown, you were celebrating a recipient who has not been celebrated so much, but deserves to be. That's all well and good, but it is also too little too late. Don’t you think?

In the long view of things, I think you guys can cut the exclusive-fraternity-club mentality and be a whole lot more inclusive. I am not saying you should forget about the first-world or star-architects all together. Star-architects worked hard to get where they are. They contribute to architecture by challenging us to look at it in ways we have not done before, and in doing so they inspire us. That is certainly worth recognizing, but they are not the only ones and their ways are not the only ways to contribute to architecture. What I am saying is that you could mix it up a little bit.

If you really want to advance architecture, throw some of that support and attention to areas where it can make a real difference as well. Think about the political and humanitarian impact the attention of the prize (not to mention the $100,000 prize money) could have if directed in a socially conscious way.

Look outside your fraternity, outside of Europe, America and Japan. There is a second and third-world too, there is a whole world of talented, committed, architects that exist out there. Architects that are genuinely working to make “significant contributions to humanity”. They live in the Middle-East, Africa, the rest of Asia outside Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Caribbean. Although you have chosen from South and Central America before, there is a lot more from there as well.

Look around you, beside Kazuyo Sejima and Zaha Hadid, there are many more architects out there without penises as well; committed, talented and making significant contributions to humanity and architecture. They are architects too.

It is up to you to discover them, reveal them to us and give them the attention they need.

Come on, I believe in you.

You could do it. I know you can!

Conrad Newel.
NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT
Liberating Minds Since August 2007

RELATED NOTES:

75. Predicting The Pritzker part I

60. Play Peter, the Pritzker Peddling Hermit Genius

68. Take a lesson from SANAA

75. Predicting The Pritzker Part I

2011-03-29T01:58:00.007+02:00

In a few days from now (March 28, 2011) the Pritzker Prize Committee will announce the recipient of the 2011 prize. In anticipation of this momentous event, I have prepared a special note about the award.

If you are a starchitect with serious credentials working outside of the Americas, Europe or Japan and you are anxiously just sitting by the phone waiting for the Pritzker people to call you, first of all relax. I am about to show you why you should.

The Pritzker’s self-defined purpose is summed up in the following statement:

"To honor a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture"

I will first take issue with the underlined phrase significant contributions to humanity as significant is a relative word here: what is significant here is based on what is significant to a small group of like minded individuals in the upper echelon of the western world.

Contributions to humanity? how has the buildings of the past laureates contributed to humanity? Humanity? Okay maybe I have the wrong idea of what humanity is. Lets consult the dictionary.

all human beings collectively; the human race; humankind. [nope, can’t be that, this prize is certainly not considering all humanity. Just the western world me thinks]
the quality or condition of being human; human nature. [not this either]
the quality of being humane; kindness; benevolence. [okay, okay, maybe Norman Foster did it as seen here, but what about the rest? If this were the case, wouldn't have someone like Cameron Sinclear been on the laureate list a long time ago?]

Maybe, they meant “the humanities” as defined below:

literature, philosophy, art, etc., as distinguished from the natural sciences.

the study of literature, philosophy, art, etc.

The prize is awarded irrespective of nationality, race, creed, or ideology. Nominations are accepted internationally from persons from diverse fields who have a knowledge of and interest in advancing great architecture.

If the prize is given irrespective of nationality, race, creed, or ideology why does the make-up of recipients not reflect that?

73% Caucasian?
17% Japanese?
all the other races combined 9%?

See Charts below:

Though they did not mention gender its interesting to look at the gender break down as well:

Age was not mentioned but also an interesting perimeter, the average age is 63:

Regardless of ideology?, well unless you are responding or relating to modernism in some way, you are not getting the Pritzker.

If nominations are accepted internationally from persons from diverse fields then I would imagine that the nomination pool would reflect that as well. If the nomination pool is wide and diverse and the results are homogeneous, then what does this say about the jury?

Well don't just make cruel and baseless assumptions. Lets take a look.

The independent jury of experts ranges from five to nine members. Jury members serve for multiple years to assure a balance between past and new members and are entrusted with selecting the laureate each year. No members of the Pritzker family or outside observers are present during jury deliberations which usually take place during the first months of the calendar year. The jury members are recognized professionals in their own fields of architecture, business, education, publishing, and culture.

Combining the 9 current members together with all the past members as listed on their website to date: March 2011, the jury make-up is as follows:

88.2% are Caucasian and male
11% are Japanese-Asian (all Japanese-Asian members were male as well)
11.8% were female
To be fair, there was one non-Japanese Asian [Le Corbusier’s former apprentice in India Balkrishna Doshi], and he accounted for 2.9%

maybe a more accurate mission statement would have been

"a living architect, preferably a Caucasian or Japanese male, whose built work relates to modernism, demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision commitment, which has produced consistent ~~and significant~~ contributions to ~~humanity and~~ the built environment through the art of architecture"

Otherwise, they would be statistically saying that South Asia, the Middle-East, or Africa have not produced any architects that demonstrate the qualities of talent, vision and commitment in the past 32 years.

With the exception of I.M. Pei, no architect outside of the Americas, Europe or Japan have produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture?

Is that so?

Really?

Lets break it down by country:

God Bless America!

By Region:

Viva Europa!

The official ceremony granting the award takes place every year, usually in May, at an architecturally significant site throughout the world. The choice of location of the ceremony reinforces the importance of the built environment while providing a unique setting for the ceremony. The presentation ceremonies move around the world each year, paying homage to the architecture of other eras and/or works by previous laureates of the prize. As the ceremony locations are usually chosen each year before the laureate is selected, there is no intended connection between the two.

This is a map of the cities that have hosted the ceremonies so far

Here are the percentages:

54.5% in North America
33.3% in Europe
6.1% in the Middle-East
3% in Central America
3% in North East Asia

Statistically speaking the committee has yet to find an architecturally significant site in the following regions of the world:

Africa
South-Asia : Indonesia, India, the Koreas, etc
Central/Western-Asia: China
Australia

Other gaping disproportionalities:

only one architecturally significant site in all of South America
6 in Washington DC and 5 in Chicago alone

Trends:

Although I can not say with all certainty, the trend suggests that initially the plan was to have the ceremony in Washington DC, but after three years it started to move around within the borders of the United States. In 1986, for the first time the venue was hosted abroad in London, and a few years after that a loose pattern started to develop whereby the venue is rotated between the US and Europe. Last year, the venue was hosted in New York, so there is a reasonably good chance the next venue will be somewhere in Europe or another location abroad.

My Predictions:

This week we are most likely to see a caucasian male architect win the prize. He will most likely be an European, around the age of 62.97. His work will most likely have been strongly influenced by modernism, and he will most likely be presented the award somewhere on the European continent.

Conrad Newel.
NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT
Liberating Minds Since August 2007

60. Play Peter, the Pritzker Peddling Hermit Genius

68. Take a lesson from SANAA

74. Work for Rem Part II: Behrens vs Koolhaas

2011-03-25T18:01:00.004+01:00

Do you believe Le Corbusier is a genius and a God among architects? Do you believe that he is a prophet sent from the architectural heavens to show generations to come a new way, and that there will be no other like him as there was no other like him before? Do you just know in your heart that Mies van der Rohe knows more about steel and the art of putting a fine building together than any architect alive today can ever dream of? Then I suggest you stop reading now, close this browser, hit the back button or better yet exit here, because reading any further will only upset you.

Are you still here? Well I will assume that you are either an architectural atheist or a glutton for punishment.

Be warned, for me Le Corbusier was nothing more than another star-architect.

The inevitable problem with the Corb-faring architects is that the minute you start discussing or comparing Corb, Mies, Wright, Kahn or who ever the deity of worship is, with any living star-architect you commit blasphemy.

Do you have a friend like that?

...sure you do.

Next time you see them, try this experiment:

Just walk up to them and start comparing Mies to say Jean Nouvel. Then just watch the veins in their neck swell to ripe pulsating tubes under their skins, you will notice their faces start to get red, their nostrils will flair and their eyes start to twitch.

“No way!... no way!
...there is no way you could compare Jean Nouvel to Mies van der Rohe!
How dare you!”

they will likely sputter out, followed by a laundry list of reasons why Jean could never measure up to Mies.

“Mies was a true genius!!!”

Its as though you have asked something ridiculous as “who would win a fist fight between Jesus Christ and Rev. Jesse Jackson?”

Well I am gong to do just that today right here on this blog. I am going to compare Peter Behrens to Rem Koolhaas and the former employees of Behrens (Le Corbuser, Mies Van der rohe, Adolf Meyers, Walter Gropeus etc) to the former employees of to Rem (Zaha, Bjarke Ingels, Winey Maas, etc ). May God help me.

Okay, the first and most obvious point of similarity between Koolhaas and Behrens is in their tremendous influence on architecture. They both related to the profession in such a way that quite a few people who have worked under them have managed to successfully replicate their influence or surpass them. Behrens for example had Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , and Le Corbusier among others working for him before they went on to open their own firms and go on to have a profound impact on architecture that can be felt up to this day. You only have to look on this poster I posted in part one of this series to see how influential Koolhaas is today. The list of influential architects that have worked at his office includes, Zaha Hadid, MVRDV(Winey Maas & Jacob van Rijs), Bjarke Ingels, REX (Joshua Prince-Remos & Erez Ella) among many, many others. I would argue that he has even surpassed Behrens in this area in some respects. While the individual firms that came out of OMA may not be as influential as the ones that came out of Behren’s office, the quantity is staggering. One could argue that the difference can be summed up in the expression “quantity vs quality”, but keep in mind, the story of Koolhaas’ generation’s influence is still unfolding. A fair comparison can only be made maybe 100 years from now.

Who knows, perhaps several decades from now we may have Bjarke Ingels manifestos and monographs becoming akin to biblical scriptures, required reading for architecture schools around the world, and architects and students alike making annual pilgrimages to his poorly aged buildings saying “wow! I can’t believe I am actually here! I have goosebumps on the back of my neck” .

Okay, snap out of it!

The second point of similarity is in the kind of architects both Koolhaas and Behrens were: the way they approached architecture and the scope of projects that they took on. Both of them were working inside and outside the traditional boundaries of architecture, specifically with branding. For Behrens, we can this in his work for the AEG electric company. Not only did he design the company’s buildings he also designed and developed their entire corporate identity and branding strategy: the hexagonal logo, its catalogs, its office stationery, product design, publicity strategy, etc. In fact he was credited with the creation of the concept of corporate identity branding itself and directly influenced corporate identity giants such as Braun, McDonald's and even Ikea today.

Koolhaass has done similar. He is well known for his building projects, but he is also branching out into territories outside of architecture and into corporate identity and branding as well. He has structured this parallel venture by developing the think tank firm AMO. AMO has been described as a venture exclusively dedicated to the investigation and performance in the relm of media. Its primary function is to deal with issues that goes beyond architecture’s definition of making buildings. One of their most well known commission for instance is the design of a new European Union flag in the style of a bar-code incorporating the colors of the member nations.

We can attribute some the similarities between the two to their similar educational backgrounds. Both were trained in media & communication related studies before going into architecture. Behrens, studied at several art academies in Germany and thereafter worked as a graphic artist in Munich. It was not until after nearly a decade of working as a graphic and industrial designer before he was commissioned to design his first building.

Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, and then took up journalism as a career before ever attending any architecture school.

The significance of a communications and media background becomes visible when contrasted against the dysfunctionlaity of conventional architectural education.
Architecture schools (both historically and presently) are concerned with studying the starchitects of the past and trying to emulate them, while communication and media studies are concerned with studying and understanding the state of the present and its media and figuring out how to communicate with it.

When architecture schools are producing architects with an extra-reverent view of the past and myopic outlook on the present, it isn't so difficult to see how Behrens and Koolhaas with their communications backgrounds would have a distinct advantage over architects educated in this manner.

While most starchitects have a Sarah Palin-like relationship with the media (ie. the media is the enemy, a necessary evil that distorts your message with snippets and is suspect at best), Koolhaas and his starlets (especially Bjarke Ingels) have a more Obama-like relationship with it (ie. they embrace it and use it as a tool to advance their influence).

So, there I said it. I compared mortals to Gods. You can post all death threats in the comments section below or forward them to me via email in the form-mailer on the upper right hand corner of this page.

But seriously. What does this say? Where does this bring us?

For one thing, it says that if influence is something you value as an architect, then having an up to date understanding of media and communication is key. It also speaks about what is lacking in architectural education.

My advice? Don’t wait for architecture school to teach you how to achieve the enormous goals that they place in front of us. Equipping ourselves with the tools to do so has to be our responsibility. Though by no means am I suggesting that an understanding of media and communications are magic pills to stardom, it is certainly a key part of the puzzle.

Conrad Newel.
NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT
Liberating Minds Since August 2007

73. Work for Rem

2011-02-20T15:30:00.003+01:00

If you have been following this blog for any period of time you may have noticed several reoccurring patterns in my posts. One of which is my not so subtle insistence on working for a famous architect as seen for example in post number 5, titled Work for a Famous Architect. If that didn't do it for you I reenforced it here and here.

So when I saw this poster in Metropolis magazine a few weeks ago I thought it would be a good opportunity to do it again.

However, in this post I will let Metropolis editor Paul Makovsky do it for you in a well illustrated poster. But this time we get a little more specific. Working for any ol' famous architect is definitely going in the right direction but working for Rem is well...the next best thing to a guarantee.

This poster, by virtue of showing the staggering amount of star-riffic practices OMA has produced is impressive. Whats even more impressive is that the list was incomplete, since it is missing a few including Space Group in Oslo, DnA in China and the appropriately named Rotterdam based ~~STAR architects. Yes! they did name themselves star-architects.~~

CORRECTION: We received word that the office is actually called: STAR strategies + architecture or STAR for short. Still a very impressive name.

The other lesson in this poster that I have pointed to in this blog is that you should marry an architect, for example in post number 24 Marry an Architect. You will notice that a few of these startups are married couples or partners who have met while working at OMA.

So the big lesson of this post is?: Go get a job at OMA and when you are there find a nice girl or guy (depending on your sexual preference), get married and start a firm together.

It's as simple as that.

This is the overview, [click on image to see larger]

key [click on image to see larger]

First Generation [click on image to see larger]

Second Generation [click on image to see larger]

72. A Compromise Manifesto: 50 Techniques for Aspiring Starchitects

2010-12-08T09:14:00.002+01:00

It is a given that success for the average architect necessitates sacrifices. However, Starchitect-level success, the kind that so many ambitiously aspire to (and so few achieve), often requires compromise of an especially perverse nature - namely, of one's manners, ethical standards, objectivity, social propriety, mental faculties, and capacity for reason. As evidenced by the behavior of numerous Starchitects and their suborbital attributes to distract from real investigation into the work itself and undermine the process of design. For those preparing to enter into such and endeavor, we offer the following mission statement, based on years of observation, for achieving success in spite of yourself:

1. Profess a commitment to collaborative design. Proceed by designing what ever you want.

2. Promote employees who excel at flattery.

3. Disappear periodically, leaving your team to work unaided. Upon your return, destroy any progress made. Rinse and repeat.

4. When presented with a superior design not of one’s own making, ignore it. Regurgitate said design weeks later as one’s own- add camouflaging tweaks as necessary.

5. Delegate decision-making authority to the least cooperative member of the team.

6. Keep designers emotionally disengaged from the project by discouraging discovery of their own creative solutions. Rather, instill your leadership with ambiguity keeping designers focused on arguing, worrying, agonizing, and fruitlessly trying to read your mind.

7. Hold a design charrette open to all in the firm. Rule that no presented options suffice.

8. Create a design with great potential. Squander it.

9. Everything is due by the end of today.

10. Cultivate competitive factions within the office and silently watch as they busily undermine one another whilst no work gets done.

11. Model your design based on what someone told you the market wants.

12. Delay decision-making by ordering numerous iterations of superfluous design investigations. Shortly before the deadline, proclaim that, as anticipated, your first design impulse was correct.

13. Pick any employee, and publicly parade them as your exclusive favorite. Share meals, pillow-talk, socialize, and plot the future direction of Architecture together. Inexplicably drop them after six months. Pick another worker and repeat.

14. Cultivate team apathy and low morale by continuing to develop ideas and designs ten-to-thirty years out of fashion.

15. Drive your most intelligent team members off the design team and onto the technical team via wilful, impulsive critiques of their creativity. Proceed to design with an even less creative team.

16. Make your rhetoric not match your actions.

17. Develop multiple personalities. Deploy as needed.

18. Allow your drug, alcohol, or sexual addiction to interfere with your work.

19. When you have attained enough fame, rest on your laurels and lose your interest in architecture altogether. Focus instead on football.

20. Identify an outside person or entity that, due to their continual obstructive behavior, absolves the design worthy of your attention. Delegate the design to subordinates declare the project is “bread and butter” and forever ignore it. Collect fees.

21. Create a police-state within the office. Initiate procedures, audit reported hours, surveil computer screens, question in-out times., spot-check emails, restrict meals, increase workloads, reduce pay, threaten objectors, accuse suspects based on hunches, fire people at will, crush rebellion, and generally make employees think more about their exit strategy than designing buildings.

22. Bring your spouse in to assist in running the office. Watch your workers squirm when they cannot alert you that he/she is undermining the firm with his/her idiocy.

23. If a functional request, city ordinance or building code requirement threatens the viability of a signature design element, do one of the following: question the intelligence of the individual raising the issue, make empty appeals to “higher standards”, dismissively declare”just fix it”, or ignore it until it’s too late. Under no circumstances should you take the issue seriously.

24. Demonstrate your passion for architecture by unashamedly bursting into tears when describing the anticipated transcendent experience of your design. Just assume everyone else feels likewise.

25. Publicly act as a beneficent figurehead, a beacon of positive leadership for all in the firm. Privately direct a squad of your lieutenants to do all your firing, slave-driving, salary-cutting and other dirty work. Feign innocence of their actions.

26. Hire a talented new employee with an impeccable resume, trained in a firm more esteemed than yours. On their first day, give the individual a single chance to impress you with their abilities. The instant they deviate from your design affinities, crush them and declare them ruined by their former employer. ignore them until they quit.

27. Interrupt, interrupt, interrupt.

28. Announce to the office you intention to author a Groundbreaking Theoretical Tome. Do nothing.

29. Initiate loud squabbles with your business partner or spouse in front of all employees. Grumble about him/her under your breath. Act surprised when employees quit.

30. Request several color samples of an architectural element, material, or surface. Rule that the correct color is somewhere between Color 1 and Color 2. Repeat ad infinitum.

31. Change part of the design during project documentation. Next, forget that you made this decision. Upon encountering the change as built on site. Fly into a rage.

32. Optional addendum to #31: insist, INSIST! the change be corrected regardless of cost, schedule, or client desirability.

33. Should an employee quit your office, curse them, disavow ever liking them, disparage their abilities and thereafter ignore them. Upon encountering the employee years later, act as if you’ve remained good ol’ pals.

34. The photograph is paramount. Concentrate all your resources on areas to be photograph. Construction need only be durable enough to survive the photo-shoot, not actual use.

35. Brow beat your computer support fellow. Remember, your computer has never ever worked correctly, and “why must I ask you to keep fixing this?”

36. At least once per client meeting, directly question your project leader’s intellectual capacity. Apologize to the client for his/her ignorance (regardless of the validity of his/her remarks”)

37. When others are speaking, do not listen. Concentrate instead on what you will say next.

38. Assert that you work is better than (insert name of architect more highly-esteemed than your)

39. Hire a young attractive employee fitting your sexual preference, regardless of their intelligence or lack thereof. Never find any fault with them. Never fire them. Just leer at them.

40. Punctuate your speech with words for which you have created your own new, bewildering definitions.

41. When walking by an employee’s desk, briefly glance at whatever lies on top, declare it unsatisfactory, provide no solution, and simply continue on your way. Allow no more than 10 seconds for said exchange.

42. No office-wide staff meetings. This would needlessly give workers a sense for the future of the firm, and consequently, their jobs. Much better to keep them nervous, nervous, nervous.

43. Receive praise only. Never provide it.

44. Assume that the office runs on autopilot. New work arrives, contracts get signs, people get hired, people get fired, drawings get drawn, clients get invoiced, bills get paid, paychecks get printed, buildings get built and your Audi gets washed, all whilst you blithely sip chardonnay in first class.

45. Publicity is absolute. Yield to this axiom: if your name isn't in print, you simply do not exist.

46. Copy robustly from yourself. If it worked with a different client, on a different project, with a different building type, in a different time and in a different country, why bother creating unique solution for this project.

47. Cultivate a voice of condescension, a manner of aggression and an appearance of eccentricity.

48. Acquiesce to all of the following client requests, no matter how disastrous it may be to the firms financial integrity: major last-minute changes, reduction to your fee, reduction to your schedule, reductions to the quality of the project, endless design options, client request for delayed payments, pro-bono side-work, working with out a contract, cleaning up another architect’s failed design, or employing the client’s son or daughter in an internship.

49. Remember, inside you are just a child who needs to get his way.

50. Lastly, pass down you unconditional conviction of your own genius to younger generations, so that they too can nurture an unjustified sense of self (regardless of their accomplishments) and mutate their integrity in the pursuit of fame, thus perpetuating the twisted personality cult of Starchitecture inexorably into the future.

-by Anonymous (may be Conrad) may be you. Anonymous is an architect. Anonymous went to the Right universities, and there studied with the Right professors, and recieved the Right grades, the Right awards and the Right degrees. Subsequently, Anonymous earned the Right professional registrations. Anonymous has the Right architects on the Right projects, but that has somehow turned out Wrong. Anonymous has quietly endured in their little fiefdoms, and observed aghast at their often childish, irratinal behavior, yet inexplicable success. Anonymous is ultimately fearful that s/he may turn out just like them.

From Conditions Magazine, #0310

71. Go after what interests you

2010-10-03T14:36:00.010+02:00

While reading the morning newspapers a few weeks ago I came across the headline "McCain Is Now Running Just to Stay in Place". If anyone besides me was closely following the American election in 2008 saw the incredibly rough landing of the McCain Campaign as he fumbled, stumbled and bumbled making one fundamental mistake after another, and another.

He has long built a public image as a man of solid moral character. He doesn't play dirty, he is a veteran, former P.O.W. that would rather let his fellow P.O.W. colleagues be freed before him, etc. Then when Obama's numbers began to rise he outrightly stated "I am going to play dirty" and followed up with a slew of dirty political ads and misleading accusations. It went against everything he had branded himself as up until that point. But he figured it was a gamble he had to take. It barely got him a bump in the polls, followed by a dip which further torpedoed his campaign down like a sinking anchor.

Now that the campaign is over and he is up for re-election to keep his senate seat. He comes to the challenge with a long standing reputation and brand built around what his calls "maverick"; his ability to negotiate between parties and make alliances across political ties to get bills passed, even if it irks his own party. It told the world he was an independent thinker and has the ability to stand above politics. However when things got tough, he willingly threw all that out the door. The political climate in America now with the Republicans and the Tea-Party movement in full swing, is very hostile to the Democrats. In order to gain some immediate popularity McCain told a reporter that he never really considered himself a maverick. He was lampooned in the media and jeered on late night talk shows for days. He eventually went on to keep his senate seat. But for someone who was the presidential candidate for their party it was an embarrassingly close election.

The lesson I extract from all this is that it is really bad to change who you are fundamentally, your core values (or what you branded your self as) for any short term gain. It is just dumb.

Why am I bringing it up in this context?

Because it has everything to do with handling your career as an architect; especially a famous architect who's career is in the spotlight and is closely followed by the rest of us.

One of the best advice I have ever heard any starchitect gave was from Frank Gehy when he said

"Dont look over your shoulders, be yourself, find your own way, become an
expert in your own work."

Your best work is your expression of yourself. When you do that, you become more of yourself. To me that means a commitment to finding your own core values and building on them and expressing it. Finding out what is interesting to you in architecture and following it relentlessly and passionately no matter where it takes you.

I also heard Diller+Scofidio say that in this interview. when they said

" We always found things that interested us and that's where we went."

Joseph Campbell the famous mythologist puts it squarely when he coined the phrase-

follow your bliss

He spoke of the character in Babbitt who famously proclaimed 'I have never done a thing that I wanted to do in all my life.' Because he was doing all that society expected of him in order to climb the social ladder. He dutifully conformed to society but never followed his bliss.

The opposite of following your bliss is to go away from what you are really interested in, to go away from the thing that made you excited about being an architect in the first place for some immediate gain.

There is always a big temptation especially with a professon like architecture that is very suceptible to fads and waves of styles to jump on to.

The temptations are many:
-Oh that style is more popular right now so l am going to do XYZ because thats
what everybody is excited about and wants.
-We want to have more money - no one can argue with that we all want more money.
But in the end is it what makes us happy?
I sometimes see articles with titles like "10 hot careers that pays $100,000 a year or more and are in demand". My thoughts are always why would I want to dedicate a major chunk of my short life on this planet to doing something just because it is hot and pays $100,000 a year? Would I not just have a lot of expensive toys and an sad and hungry soul?
Don't get me wrong, money is good. I am not one of those who claim that money is the root of all evil - that's just crap. What I am saying is that you should not go into a career with the major reason being that it pays well. I say go after what you love to do, go after a career that makes you happy, and if it pays well too then great, if it doesn't then figure out a way to make money with it - if that is important for you.

I realy believe that the architects that are really successful or famous are the ones who stuck to their guns, who followed their bliss, and did what made them happy and excited about architecture and branded that interest so well that everyone else thinks it is cool.

It requires an unwevering conviction. If you don't have it get it. Some people are born with that conviction and thats good for them. For others it is developed. What ever you have to do, do it. Find what makes you passionate about architecture, believe in it, stick to it, and convince everyone else around you that it is the best thing since slice bread.

Conrad Newel

NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT
Liberating Minds Since August 2007

70. What is important in STARchitecture school (part 3)

2010-09-09T21:17:00.006+02:00

When I named The Bartlett school as an example of a STARchitecture school in my first note in this series it started a tiny wave of backlash against us. Simultaneously to our publishing of the article there was an article in the Times (who would want to be an architecture student) that was somewhat critical of the school, a link in the comment section pointed here (to the first note in this series) which seems to have exacerbated it. Later on, a post on Building Blog (link here) discussed the article quoting some of the commentary including the one made by Frank Murray which also linked here as well. The commentators on this Building Blog post also included the likes of Lebbeus Woods among others. The quote below is from one commentator Rob Holmes, who angled his Bartlett defending critique particularly at this blog. I would normally let it go by but I thought it was a particularly thoughtful and very well written comment and I thought I was worthy of a rebuttal. (I love the debate)

Some of the reaction reminds me of the passage from Leon van Schaik's Spatial Intelligence which Dan Hill quoted in his commentary on the Sentient City exhibition:

“To complete with this practical glamour our forebears went to the heart of making in architecture – its technologies of carving, moulding, draping or assembling – when they staked their claim to be caretakers of a body of knowledge for society. The architectural capacity to think and design in three and four dimensions, our highly developed spatial intelligence, was overlooked, and for the profession space became, by default, something that resulted from what was construction … What if our forebears had professionalised architecture around spatial intelligence rather than the technologies of shelter? Might society find it easier to recognise what is unique about what our kind of thinking can offer?”

Interesting that the work at Bartlett is described, essentially, as an assault on the status of the profession as a body of technical knowledge (particularly here, which was linked in the comments at the Times) -- that if you have time to do these things in school and yet still go by the same title 'architect', then that implies that the technical knowledge is not essential to being an architect -- while, from another perspective, the strict delineation of architecture as that body of technical knowledge can be seen as the root of the marginalization of architecture.

That's a very interesting and provocative statement. It is a good statement to put forward in this discussion. It epitomizes the essential premise of starchitecture schools:"

we reject the profession being defined by technologies of shelter so we will redefine it around spatial intelligence"

That's the logical consequence of the question here isn't it?

What if our forebears had professionalized architecture around spatial intelligence rather than the technologies of shelter?

So what we get is a jump form one extreme to the other. The implication is that we have to choose between spatial intelligence or technologies of shelter. Its basically a black and white issue, draw a line in the sand and stand on one side. Well... I don't see the world or this issue in that way. I think in vivid rainbow colors, with multiple hues and shades. I believe there is a place where spatial intelligence and technologies of shelter overlaps, and this is where good architecture exists. I think the proposal as you have it is just as lopsided as the reverse condition. Architecture can not exist as architecture without acknowledging shelter, I would offer a different proposal instead.

What if our forebears had professionalised architecture around both spatial intelligence and the technologies of shelter?

Its not "either you are with us or you are against us on spatial intelligence". You don't have to choose one over the other.

When I agreed with Frank that the Bartlett's teaching methodology is an assault on the status of the profession, I did not come to that conclusion based solely on the argument that it was because students have or spend too much time on rendering or presentation. That was merely a marginal observation. The substance of my argument was mainly that by divorcing or severely depleting basic issues of shelter from the studio projects, you divorce it from architecture as well. When you educate students in such a way and give them architecture degrees you devalue the profession. But of-course if you want to challenge me on the marginal observation, I am happy to discuss that too. My sources who have studied at the Bartlett in Unit 20 (the example I pointed to in the first articles) tells me that they start preparing final images a little after midway through the semester. They are pinned up and discussed, the bad ones are thrown out and the better ones are worked and reworked right up until the end of the semester. This is not to say that the design does not continue to develop after the final images have started, it does. However, the image/renderings becomes the primary determinant and the project develops around it there after. Just under half of the semester is devoted to image making. Does this fact alone then implies that they believe technical knowledge is not essential to being an architect in their view? Perhaps not, but it certainly gives some insight into how much image making is valued in comparison to the other phases in the cycle of the project's development: research, site analysis, concept development, design, structure, etc.

When I criticize the Bartlett for not demonstrating enough rigor in their projects, its not because I believe there is no place for such explorations in architecture school. They do offer value, they are exploring interesting territories of architecture where schools on the other end of the spectrum will never go, they are useful contributions to our profession, it is important that we have them, and it is important that they are supported . As I said they nurture imagination which we need as architects.

Let me make this very clear, when I criticize the Bartlet it is not because I support a world where architects only know how to put tender packages together, or that I understand the profession only as a body of technical knowledge or that I believe in over simplistic conclusions that Bartlett students will go on to make exploded buildings, or any of the likes.

There should be a place in architecture school for students who want to explore whatever they want within the confides of architecture. If that means loosening some of the considerations of basic shelter, fine. However, it should be student led not teacher coerced.

If you say to me that you are a student of architecture and I ask you
"what is your current project about"

...and you say "it is an embassy"
and I say "That's very nice! what are the countries involved?"
and you say "it is an embassy for cyborgs from outer-space",
immediately I will ask "did your professors put you up to this? does he have a fetish for science fiction movies? did you feel as though if you didn't do this you would be in for a hard time in the course?"
...The majority of students with projects like these will tell me yes. Then I will pat you on the back and say there there I know, I understand, your project and your education has been hijacked. The real modern day pirates are not floating around off the coast of Somalia, they walk among you in plain sight in the hallways and studios of Starchitecture schools around the world.

If you tell me "no, no, no, its all my doing, I wanted to explore some phenomenology and I thought that this was the best way to go. And here is why....
I have several projects in my portfolio that demonstrate that I can address technologies of shelter in a meaningful way."
Then I would say "well that's awesome, I am inspired. I hope that you find what you are looking for"

....If you say "absolutely not it was all my doing. This is my passion. I really don't fancy dealing with technologies of shelter. All that stuff is for plumbers, and engineers, and the likes."
I will say to you "son you need to go home to mommy and daddy and have a long conversation with them. You need to look them in the eyes and muster up all the courage you've got and tell them you are going to be an artist and that they should just accept it. You need to tell them that art is a wonderful, wholesome, respectable and serious profession and that they need to respect your decision. You don't need an architect's title at the back of your name to make you serious. The world will have more respect for you if you do that. I certainly will."

Architecture satisfies a program, it involves providing both physical and emotional shelter for human beings, it deals with both real and abstract spaces for the human condition and it is both pragmatic and conceptual. When you forget to confront the physical and tangible part in a clear and comprehensive way, not only does it become art, it becomes artsy-fartsy, because it doesn't know what it wants to be. Conversely when you leave out the imaginative, and abstract parts that demonstrates spatial intelligence it becomes engineering. I am not against spatial intelligence, neither am I against engineering. I am an architect, I am interested in a union of the two.

There are projects whose main point is to comment on society, or explore a phenomenon, or delineate an abstract vision, in doing so they are working more like an artist or a cultural critic. They are a useful contribution to the profession but ultimately it is outside it. An architect solves a program and puts forward a comprehensible solution: not just a critique, or exploration, or commentary on the problem alone. An academic institution can and should provide a sanctuary for exploration, commentary, and critique but this alone in not enough to prepare students for a career in architecture. This strategy fosters a disconnect between academia and the profession; between spatial intelligence and the issues of shelter.

Any good architecture school or architectural practice should always open itself to learn from and be informed by other disciplines, whether its artists, developers, engineers, critics, writers, poets, philosophers etc. Architecture schools should have practitioners from other disciplines come in and inform their students. But it should be clear that if an artist, graphic designer, or film-maker comes into the architecture school to lead a course, that it is clearly understood as an arts course and credited accordingly. If they come in to an architecture studio course it should be to inform the architecture not the other way around.

As a buffer to this kind of criticism, and as a tactic to legitimize art classes as architecture studio courses, I know there are some starchitecture schools (I don't know if Bartlett does this) that separate the engineering and technical courses from the studio courses. So when the institution is questioned about the academic standards in their studio courses they point to the curriculum and say "see we teach structures, we teach environmental technology, we teach all of that stuff". This way they satisfy the accreditation standards while freeing the studio courses from such nasty realities as gravity, economics, overpopulation, environmental pollution, in a meaningful way. These issues are safely quarantined and kept as far away as possible from the ivory tower studio courses. These side classes are often either superficial or overcompensating. They carry less academic credits, they are meagerly funded, and they are more of a necessary evil. They are sometimes referred to as nuisance courses.

This reminds me of the problems that Walter Gropius and company faced 90 years ago when they established the Bauhaus. There were artists who considered themselves as sort of an elitist bourgeoisie class of academics and free thinkers who were socially and intellectually way above the craft worker class. The Bauhaus sought to abolish this class difference and bring them together.

Something similar is happening today among architects. There is an elitist ivy league class of architects who somehow consider themselves above issues of shelter. They want to be free thinkers that focus on issues of spaces and phenomenology and to come up with wild crazy visions and pass it off to the lower class of architects that are more concerned with issues of shelter, economics, construction etc should it be required to be built. The Starchitecture school inadvertently nurtures this kind of class division.

On Building Blog, Geof Manaugh made the remark that "If architecture school is the only time and place in which you can have the freedom to explore that sort of thing, then I don't see any reason why you should be told not to do so."; that student work can often stand on the absolute fringes of incomprehensibility, charged with the energy of poetry, myth, or confrontational politics, even verging on functional uselessness"

I don't disagree, but understand this, if your architectural education is based primarily on projects such as these, where you have not been required to address issues of basic shelter in your studio course project, then your education is incomplete.

Remember architecture schools are first and foremost entrusted with preparing students for a professional career that engages both spatial intelligence and technologies of shelter.

If you are marginalizing technologies of shelter, then you are shifting the burden of education from academia on to the profession. That is downright irresponsible

The architecture field is so wide, there is so much room within the profession for all kinds of diversity. You can go out towards the artistic, critical theoretical end, you can go off and do more engineering or structurally oriented projects, hell if there is not a part that you like you can make one up. But when you go so far off to the artistic side and stop thinking about issues of construction, and shelter, you have stepped outside of it and you become an artist, or critic or commenter or something else (maybe a comedian). Conversely, when you go so far off to the engineering & construction end and you stop thinking about issues of culture, expression, space or poetics, then you have stepped outside of architecture as well and you have become an engineer or builder or maybe a real estate developer.

When you tell students that architecture is boring and you better do the crazy stuff while you are in school, you drown their hopes. It is no wonder they run off and become film makers, and video game developers. If this is what is happening, Bartlett, you have a problem.

We should bring in architects who have learned to realize their dreams in this world that we live in to teach courses on how to combat the forces of capitalistic greed, and commercialism etc to get wonderful things built. There should be courses on networking, ethics and client management and the likes.

If we continue on this path we will continue to have our brightest minds marching right out of architecture schools into video game design firms, etc. Geof also pointed out the running joke that upon surviving their final day of project criticism, those students "can now get back to designing minimalist boxes." It is no wonder that they would do that. If they make these crazy things and have no idea how they can support them structurally, economically, socially outside of academia etc, then how can they suddenly go out into the world and miraculously make them happen? Maybe if Rem as a student had some courses on how to navigate the perils of commercialism he would have been different. I am not a big fan of Rem but one has to see that he (and quite a few of is offsprings, BIG, JDS, Work, REX) is making an effort to deal with and confront commercialism. He may not have been even close to successful but at least he tried.

The extremities between Rem and the Bartlett defenders reminds me of the scene from Stanly Krubric's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. As Rem is willing to try and engage commercialism, the Bartlett defenders see him as a sell-out of sorts, since he becomes wealthy and famous while doing so. Meanwhile, they are only willing to lament the predicament that the architecture profession finds it self in under commercialism. They ridicule anyone who dares to engage it. They see the task as impossible: If you attempt it you will inevitably become like Anikin Skywalker and get seduced by the dark side. So the only recourse is to huddle together and pass time in the comfort of academia; making idealistic, self-important, art-like projects on paper, with no intention of building anything. Mock and ridicule anyone who dears to build in the commercial establishment.

Another of the commentators reiterated the statement:

"We do crazy stuff when we're young because we know we're going to do boring stuff when we're old."

I have heard this a thousand times before in starchitecture school, always kind of tongue-in-cheek mind you. But it is repeated so often that you catch the drift all right. I find this sad, if you believe the future that the profession of architecture has in store for you is not exciting enough for you, why go into it in the first place? Gosh there is a million and more ways you can go.

To teach students only to criticize, or to bury their heads in a cloud of dreamy and fanciful projects that has no basis in reality, you teach them to disengage from the profession. It is a very pessimistic posture. It says that you have so little faith in architecture or its future that we should side step it. That you believe that capitalistic greed and commercialism is too powerful a force over architecture to overcome so the only recourse is to stay outside it and criticize.

I don't believe you have to go outside of architecture to find things that are interesting. You don't need to go on the fringes of incomprehensibility or verge on functional uselessness to do a project that is charged with the energy of poetry, myth, or confrontational politics for that matter. In fact it is an oxymoron to consider architecture as separate from poetry, myth or confrontational politics. Architecture is interesting and exciting enough on its own, you don't need to devoid it of its functional qualities to do so. Just look at its history and its present. Antoni Gaudi didn't have to leave architecture or be incomprehensible, neither did Louis Kahn, nor Greene & Greene, nor Peter Zumthor, nor any other past or practicing architects that pushes the boundaries and question the nature and perception of architecture. My God, look at Gaudi, this guy way doing fantastic groundbreaking stuff for the time that he was living in and all the while he stayed within architecture. The Sagrada Família, was based on mathematically precise funicular engineering intertwined with the spatial sculptural imagination that we have come to know and love him for. That's what makes it meaningful, that it was not just some crazy stuff conjured up out of his head alone. Things were there for a reason. If you want to leave architecture and do research or explore a phenomenon, fine, go outside and do it but call it what it is. Le Corbusier painted to inform his architecture but when he painted he called it painting and when he made architecture he called it architecture. When you are done exploring you can always come back to architecture. But don't build and program architecture schools around this exploration and exploit students to do your legwork. Architecture school is about preparing students for the professional world and exposing them to what is wonderful about it and giving them the tools to stay clear of its pitfalls. Researching phenomenology is peripheral to that, not the other way around. I leave you with this interview that charlie rose did with Richard Serra

Richard Serra comes off as a guy with a chip on his shoulder. Clearly he holds architects in lower regard than artists. I don't. Neither do I think artists are above architects. Where I do agree with him however is that there is a clear distinction between what I do as an architect and what he does as an artist and yes, that there are aspects in buildings that deal with the province of sculpture or art or painting, but don't start telling me that buildings are works of art. Vise verse don't start telling me that art works that deal with the province of buildings are architecture because I don't buy it either.

I don't buy the notion of the artist as architect, or film maker as architect, or video game designer as architect, and I don't think society should buy it either. Architecture does not have to become art to be interesting. Architecture is interesting and beautiful and amazing on its own -period.

Conrad Newel

NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT
Liberating Minds Since August 2007

69. Be Shameless about Asking for things

2010-08-17T14:30:00.010+02:00

I am going to tell you a story which may disturb you, or even more, completely discourage you from what I am about to argue for, but its a good little story and I will tell it anyway. Who knows, if you are still convinced of my argument after this story then I believe you are truly material for being a famous architect.

Back in the days when I was in collage, I had an interesting classmate named Andrew. Almost everyone in the studio seemed to have a certain aversion towards him. Very few actually described him as a friend, and even these so called friends of his always seemed to have a problem with him. It is difficult for me to count the amount of times a friend of his would come up to my drafting table and start a conversation that begins with the phrase "Andrew is my friend but..." and then continue on to tell of the latest conniving thing that he did to them. The other problem with Andrew was that he walked around the studio with a certain air of superiority about him. If you met him at a party and had a brief conversation with him, chances are you would walk away with the impression that you are somehow beneath him.

The most interesting thing about Andrew though is that he always seems to have people granting him all kinds of favors, or doing something on his behalf, or giving him something. Even me!. The lesson of Andrew is that he was never afraid to ask for help or for anything. In fact he was downright shameless about it. It would not matter if you were laughing with him or arguing with him, there was no wrong time to ask in his view. If he needed help with anything he would just come right out and ask. If you just bought the latest CD, he would ask if he could copy it. If you just bought the latest gadget, he would ask if he could borrow it. If a starchitect was teaching the course, or visiting for a lecture, and he wanted a job at that office, he just went right ahead and asked.

I remembered Andrew because I had a realization just the other day, and that realization this:

Famous Architects are unashamed to ask for things.

They are not afraid to pick up the phone and ask. They ask of their employees, they ask of their colleagues, they ask of their friends, they ask whoever they see fit and they do it all the time. They do not hesitate, they do not waste time agonizing over it, they just do it. When ever they need something, they make decisions quickly, pick up the phone and get on with it.

So you might say “oh, they are used to it, because they have many people working for them so its just something they got used to doing”.
Well, I am not so sure about that. In fact, I don’t think so. I think they got an office, and employees, and became famous because they had no issues with asking for help or for anything.

I had the great fortune (or great misfortune, depending on how you look at it) of either being taught by or working with quite a few famous architects. I also know quite a few rising stars.

I can say with complete certainty that this is one of the few traits that connects all of them, no matter how different their works or philosophies.

One friend of mine whom I worked with on a project some time ago is a rising star. For reasons of privacy I will simply refer to him as Joe. Joe learned through a friend we have in common that I was working on a project that was potentially beneficial to his office and would give him some free promotion. Immediately he contacted me:

“Hey Conrad, how is it going?

I had a conversation with Jenny, she said you guys are working on this project... bla bla bla bla ...

Of course I suggested my office could be involved as a participant.

She suggested I talk to you.

Maybe you could work out something for us?

And here is how it could benefit you too... bla bla bla ...

What do you think?”

“Yeah, sure” I answered,

“I will just suggest it to the rest of the guys on the team and see what happens”

Reflecting on the conversation some time later, I thought about how it would be if it were the other way around? What if Joe was working on a high profile project and I saw that there could be some free publicity in there for me? What would I do?

Well before I figured out how to ask, before I learned what I am about to tell you, my train of thought would have looked something like this:

Oh, I wouldn’t want to be a bother or impose on him.
I wouldn’t want to be patronized, I don’t need that, if I want publicity I will get it when I need it, on my own.
He is probably not going to do it anyway, so why bother?
That might be too much to ask... I don’t want to put him in an awkward position.
What’s this going to cost me? Am I going to be indebted to him... I don't want that.
If I ask him, it may seem like I am begging and gosh I don’t want to come off as weak or needy or even worse: desperate.
I am a giver; I am a kind giving person and I would much rather give to others than to go around begging and leaning on other people.

In short, I probably would have talked my self out of doing it. I think most of us would too. I think most people simply don’t know how to ask and that’s a problem. We don’t want to be demanding or leaching like Andrew on one hand and on the other we don’t want to appear weak, especially guys; you know the proud smart self-reliant type that drives around in circles and would not ask for directions because they don't want to come off as incompetent or stupid. I don’t know about you, but driving around in circles with your head stuck up your ass is not exactly my idea of strength, competence or self reliance. From where I stand, it looks more like an image of insecurity and cowardliness, not to mention stupidity. Yet we do this with our careers, and worse we do this with our lives.

But I have news for you. There is a vast difference between people like Andrew who goes around and take, take, take and never give back and the so-called proud-independent who drives around in circles for hours afraid to ask for help. There is a middle ground between these two extremes.

Joe is a good example. I learned a lot during the short time I worked with him. Like any emerging firms we usually worked very long hours. Joe would spend the better part of the days on the phone making calls negotiating with people (That's archispeak for asking for help). He did this constantly for hours and hours, it was only later in the evenings that he would seriously switch his focus on to architecture. The other thing that really surprised me was that for a relatively young guy who have worked for some of the most celebrated starchitect offices around the world, he did not have some basic skills that you would expect from a person with that caliber of experience. For example, he did not know how to render and his photo-shop skills were a bit shabby. But that did not seem to get in his way. He was adept at delegating and readily acknowledged when he did not know something instead of pretending to be an expert. He was driven and motivated and when things got tough he asked for help right away.

What Joe lacked in photo-shop and rendering skills he more than made up for in asking skills. This is the single most important skill I learned from him and I would like to share it with you. You can look at that conversation I mentioned I had with him earlier as a case in point. It has all the ingredients of a good way to ask for help.

Firstly, make sure the person you ask is actually in a position to help you.
I had a project that could give him publicity and I had some influence over who could be involved in it. So naturally Joe came to me.

Secondly, Be confident and straightforward
No I did not say cocky. You should not go around expecting people to do you a favor or help you no matter how much you have helped them before or how good a friend they are or for any reason. Remember you are asking not demanding. At the same time don’t grovel or be wimpy about it. If you go and ask in the tone of voice of Doubtful Tom: “uhm... ahh... you wouldn’t want to help me on this would you?”
That’s not asking for help, that's a weak prayer or kind of a little psychological trick to prove to yourself that at least you tried. That is not a sincere effort, that’s a cop out. If you are going to do it half assed don’t bother wasting your time. Neither should you try to drop hints and expect the other person to kind of read between the lines. Then what you are doing is trying to make the person you are asking feel guilty and help you out of pity. That’s just lame and manipulative.
Just get to the point and state in no uncertain terms what you are asking for. You can explain why or argue your case later in the conversation as necessary.
When Joe asked me, he simply and directly stated what he wanted “could you work out a deal where my office is a participant in your project” no demanding, no guilt trip hints, no groveling, just a clean, clear, honest question. Then he went on to explain how it could benefit me, in other words how this could be a win-win situation. This brings me to the third point.

Look for ways to reciprocate: read the tone of voice and body language of the person you are asking. Is there a hesitation or reluctance in their answer? If so respond accordingly, remember you are really negotiating a win-win situation. You want to come out with an amicable outcome for yourself and the person you are asking whether you come away with a yes or no or a counter offer.

Of course there will be occasions where there is no point in offering something in return. Now at the risk of sounding superstitious, I will say this: what goes around comes around. You will find that people will come to you to ask for favors too; maybe not that same person that helped you, but someone else. Help them. Get in the habit of helping other people. Not because you want to build good karma or because you expect something back, but because it is fun. Do it to train your brain that its about giving and receiving. Develop that reputation. Think about the kindest, most helpful or generous person you know. How would you respond if they came to you for a favor?

Recalling the days I was working with Joe and hearing him “negotiate” on the phone, these three principles were always present in those conversations, whether he was talking to a potential client, another firm he was seeking to partner with on a competition, a contractor, or student he was asking to intern for him.

And by the way, when the time came that I needed a favor from him and I asked, he was very accommodating and even went out of his way to make sure I got the proper help that I asked for. In fact this is what defines our relationship. Even though we live in different countries now and we don't see or hear from each other for long periods of time, I have no reservations about picking up the phone and asking him for help and he of-course doesn't either.

Anyway, I will leave you with the final scene from one of my favorite movies: My Cousin Viney. Its about an inexperienced lawyer who has a lot of raw talent but wanted to win his first trial on his own; without asking for help from anybody. In short he wanted to do things the hard way, and unnecessarily hard it was. In the end he begrudgingly received a lot help along the way from his fiancée and others to win his first trial case.

Conrad Newel

NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT
Liberating Minds Since August 2007

68. Take a lesson from SANAA

2010-04-08T01:19:00.016+02:00

cartoon credit: http://klaustoon.wordpress.com/category/pritzker-prize/

First let me extend my sincere congratulations to SANAA on the announcement that they will recieve the Pritzker.
One of the first things I did after I learned the news was to type in SANAA into Google to find out something more about them. I already know their work very well, but what about Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa? how did they become so famous? How did they do it? One thing I knew was that success leaves clues and I was intent on finding out.

My guiding question: what can we learn from these two?

Here is what I found:

1. Ryue will be only 44 years old when he receives the Pritzker. That's perhaps the youngest to ever receive the prize. He has beaten out some of the heavy weights who have been around on the waiting list for a long time, including Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind, Steven Holl, and even his former boss Toyo Ito. How did he do it?

First he worked for a famous architect while he was in school. An invaluable credential needed to become a famous architect yourself. Almost every famous architects have learned the trade under a master. Ryue did this early in his academic career. Both he and Kazuyo apprenticed under Toyo Ito. When Kazuyo started up her own firm, he had the good sense to go off and work for her too. Another good reason to work for a famous architect; You will meet people who could become your future partner there.

Secondly he read my blog and took it to heart. When he felt the need to break out on his own he was able to be open and coachable. He must have understood at some point in his decision making process that to unite & conquer was better the one man against the world philosophy. He accepted the offer to partner up with Kazuyo where they were able to achieve much more together than apart.

2. We can see that there is some truth to Jeffery Kipnis' observation on the development stages of a famous architect. SANAA's history is but a variation on it.

STAGE ONE [unbuilt break through projects]: Although SANAA's break through came with multiple projects that were actually all built. They definitely had a break through stage where they were getting published a lot and it attracted the attention of just the architectural community.
STAGE TWO [Exhibitions]: we can see after 1993 the office was inundated with not just exhibitions but also awards. I would argue that stage two is as much about awards as it is about exhibition. Largely speaking, its about being recognized by outside entities: amassing symbolic capital. You will see that this also includes invitations to lecture and/or teach at renowned collages and universities as well. An invitation to teach at Harvard is pretty much a status symbol that every famous architect receives when they near or cross the line into fame.
STAGE THREE [a seminal built project]: Again, SANAA were never paper architects at any points in their careers unlike Peter Eisenman, or Zaha Hadid, so their work has always combined artistic, pragmatic and intellectual elements from the very beginning and then matured over time. However, one could point to the O-museum as a significant commission that gave them the opportunity to develop these elements in their work more freely.

3. SANAA remained true to themselves. In a climate where most firms kind of rush to follow the latest fad, they rely focused on becoming experts on their own way of doing things. Now that the climate is such that bombastic architecture is associated with the greed and excess that caused the financial crisis, the Pritzker committee is now turning its focus in the opposite direction which is just where SANAA happens to be.

4. And most importantly did you check out Kazuyo Sejima's eye wear. This lady paid attention to her glasses and her clothes and that's no joke.

Conrad Newel

NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT
Liberating Minds Since August 2007

------------------------------------------------------
Road Map to Fame : SANAA Architects
KEY:
BLACK-BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
BLUE- COMISSIONS
RED- SYMBOLIC CAPITAL: AWARDS, EXHIBITIONS & PROFESSORSHIPS

1956
KAZUYO SEJIMA born in Ibaraki prefecture, Japan

1966
RYUE NISHIZAWA Born in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan

1981
KAZUYO graduates from Japan Women's University with a Masters Degree in Architecture & starts working in Toyo Ito's office

1987
KAZUYO Established Kazuyo Sejima & Associates and hires RYUE as one of her first staffers

1988
Kazuyo Sejima & Associates receives their first major award: Project selected for the Kajima Award - MCH House Kajima Prize

1990
RYUE Graduated from Yokohama National University with a Masters Degree in Architecture
More accolades pour in as the office's work is selected for the exhibition "Last Scene in Architecture" (Touko Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo) and receives an Honorable Mention for the SD Award for La Maison de la Culture de Japon, Paris, SD Review

1992
Awarded JIA Prize for Best Young Architect

1993
The Office now begins to gain momentum in its popularity as they recognized for several awards and exhibitions: LABYRINTH New Generation in Japanese Architecture (Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, Hyogo)
KAZUYO SEJIMA 12 PROJECTS (Gallery-MA, Tokyo)
Japanese Contemporary Design (National Museum of Modern Art, Seoul)
Third prize, Yokohama International Port Terminal Design Competition
Grand Prize, Commercial Space Design Award '94 for "Pachinko Parlour I & II"

1995
Ryue Nishizawa expresses that he wants to go off and establish his own office. Kazuyo convinces him to stay and offers him partnership. Kazuyo closed Kazuyo Sejima & Associates and the two established a new office with the name SANAA [an acronym derived from the names of both partners.]
SANAA = Sejima + And + Nishizawa + And + Associates

Recieves the Kenneth F. Brown Asia Pacific Culture and Architecture Design Award
University of Hawaii for "Saishunkan Seiyaku Women's Dormitory"
Construction begins on the O Museum - 1995 to 1999 - Nagano, Japan

1997
KAZUYO becomes Visiting professor at Japan Women's University, at Tokyo Institute of Technology, at Tokyo Science University

RYUE Established his own office [Ryue Nishizawa architect] for doing small scale works [private houses, etc] but still remains partner at SANAA

Wins the "International Competition for the World Buildings" in Salerno
K-Building, Ibaraki, Japan
N-Museum, Wakayama, Japan
M-House, Tokyo, Japan

1998
De Kunstlinie Theater & Cultural Center - 1998 to Present - Almere, Netherlands

1999
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art - 1999 to 2004 - Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan

2000
Both are invited to become visiting Professor at Harvard GSD, Cambridge, USA

Erich Schelling Architekturpreis
Work was included in the exhibition "City of Girls" in the Japanese Pavilion at the 2000 Venice Biennale

Work exhibited in the Garden Cafe at the 7th International Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul, Turkey

2001
KAZUYO accepts Professorship at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan & Visiting professor at ETH in Zurich

La Biennale di Venezia, 7th International Architecture Exhibition"City of girls" Japanese Pavilion, Exhibition Design, Arsenale, Venice, Italy
PRADA Beauty ISETAN, Tokyo, Japan (until 2002)

2003
The New Museum of Contemporary Art - 2003 to 2007 - New York City, New York
Zollverein School of Design - 2003 to 2006 - Essen, Germany
Christian Dior Building, Omotesando COMPLETED \ Tokyo, Japan
Naoshima Ferry Terminal - 2003 to 2006 - Kagawa, Japan

2004
Awarded the Golden Lion for the most remarkable work in the exhibition Metamorph in the 9th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia in 2004

2005
Rolf Schock Prize in the visual arts
Recieved the 46th Mainichi Shinbun Arts Award (Architecture Category)

2009
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion - 2009 - London, England
Rolex Learning Center at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne - 2004 to 2010 - Lausanne, Switzerland
kazuyo sejima appointed director of the venice architecture biennale 2010

2010
Awarded the Pritzker Prize

67. all you need is a piece of paper, a pencil and a desire to make architecture

2010-03-09T00:36:00.003+01:00

Architect Raimund Abraham, widely known as an inspiring educator among architects and former students fortunate to have been taught by him, was killed in a car crash in downtown Los Angeles early Thursday morning.[March 3, 2010]

"Earlier in the evening Raimund delivered a powerful lecture at SCI-Arc, re-stating his enduring love for architecture and his willingness to fight for the design discourse as he defined it," reported Eric Owen Moss.

Below are a few statements from that lecture:

R.I.P Raimund Abraham 1933-2010

architecture does not have to be built; it can be written, it can be drawn, it can put in model form
what happens when you build, you enter a domain which forces you to defend your ideas against unlimited number of hostile forces
When I talk about providing an alternative way to making architecture, what I means is you don't have to be a slave in a corporate office, or a groupie of a celebrity architect because all you need is a piece of paper a pencil and a desire to make architecture

66. Seven ways to [verb] the Starchitect System

2009-11-24T17:24:00.011+01:00

While doing research for one of my posts, I came across this very interesting synopsis of the starchitect system, made by a commenter on archinet. I thought it was a particularly insightful observation and could not resist posting it here.

Th starchitect system [a working and evolving description]:

Architect makes a new form and discovers innovative way to build it
The form-building gets press
The architect becomes a pseudo-celebrity and the building becomes a "style"
The architect starts using the same bag of (increasingly superficial) formal tricks in all consequent projects.
The press (including architectural) give up really engaging criticism and if said architect does anything, it is celebrated as the coming of the messiah for a city, building type, etc...
The public come to think of that "style" as architecture
Lesser known architects follow the public's new tastes
"Architecture" loses yet another battle.

While the above description is of one person's definition of the starchitecture system, below is a few responses on how to engage it (or apply a verb to it). The comments are from the same archinet thread reacting to Phillip Nobel's article in Metropolis Magazine "Anti-Starchitecture Chic". The original thread has a lot of interesting moments but all in all a chaotic stream of chatter that was difficult to follow. So I have tried to categorize them into some common themes and consensuses, while trying to keep the flavor and flow of the conversation. The assembled responses below has been selected not necessarily because I agree with them but because they are provocative and interesting within themselves. I enjoyed the candidness and [for better or for worse] it is an interesting demonstration of the logic of the collective.

1.FLIP THE SYSTEM - FUCK THE SYSTEM
-I am tired of media hype being the primary goal of starchitects. I rather have social and environmental guru's or genius's like Bill McDonough, Cameron Sinclair, or Ed Mazria getting all the attention, since they are creating the future for our planet. Rem, Gehry and their like won't save the earth or create a better society, but there are architects and designers who will. Lets celebrate them instead.

until then: 'fuck Frank Gehry' and while I'm at it, fuck Zaha

- completely agree, but I also feel like these "gurus" should be built into the code of the profession not the anomalies. The current system would not allow that

-Well, then fuck the system. The only truly credible course may be to reject the very idea of using yourself as a brand, (and) to work and work well...to me that's integrity.

2. DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE SYSTEM

-Isn’t it too easy to say that it doesn’t matter? For example Ghery can write contracts unlike most architects out there. The result is that you and I will never be able to compete with him in control of a project, etc... And at what point does the drive for fame (to be able to write contracts and make money like Ghery) turn into the superficial drive for the next cool form? When is it gimmicky?
I am using Ghery as an example I could say Zaha, Libeskind, OMA,

-Just to mix things up a little, we should also remember that since the Bilbao effect, the marketing and exposure that comes with a "starchitect" translates directly into $$$ to clients and the area. It goes beyond architect/starchitect worship...it's also public/event worship...also, I like to admire talented architects...both starchitects and local unknown architects...I think it's a natural process in our profession.

-The 'average person' is not the average client for a major architectural project. Most corporations, museums, libraries, etc are looking for star power these days.... Chipperfield and Holl's recent museum projects are good examples, as are projects at major universities (Vincent James at Tulane, Rem at IIT, Holl in Iowa) and most of the Asian projects that we hear about over here. You can bet that none of these clients is simply taking proposals and picking the ones they think will be best for the job. They're looking for recognition by association.

-...In general, I think we're painting this picture with a fairly broad brush, basically assuming that clients are lamely saying, "I want a Gehry" or "I want a Meier." On the contrary, most clients are quite savvy about the architect they are selecting. The client that chose Meier for the high-end condos in Chelsea chose him because he knew he could market that name to architecturally-conversant wealthy home buyers. Could he have done the same with Gehry? A museum that selects Holl, let's say Chiasma, knows that Holl will provide a design of a significant quality that will potentially complement the art displayed. moreover, let's be honest, the starchitect 99% of the time is flat-out a better designer than Joe Blow architect. It is more than a name these clients are buying, but clearly the name doesn't hurt either.

3. INFILTRATE THE SYSTEM
-We also must acknowledge that there's often a separation between the fame and the actual design being created by some of these architects we're alluding to.

What I'm getting at is that, for example, the first thing Karim Rashid (Asymptote's Hani Rashid's industrial designer brother) did after graduating school was to hire a PR manager. PR is the name of the game....

...I don't care either way for 'starchitects.' If somebody's doing good work, whether they're a media darling or not, I'm interested. It's easy to criticize those who've risen to fame.... that's the way the game is played right now, and it's not going to change for a little while yet....

-Media and marketing is everywhere today...architects choosing to ignore opportunities for public exposure for a sense of "integritry" just reflects our profession's inability to function in today's world...the starving mysterious missunderstood eccentric artists.

...and except for maybe Phillip Johnson, I doubt any architect or starchitect " seeks fame for fame's sake", they seek fame so they can get commissions with less restrictions than we do. ...
why can't we improve and educate, but also Dazzle!?

-Being an architect, I assume you need to find ways to get your ideas built... star/non starchitect system, whichever ways works for you, I do not see any evil beings in either of the systems. I always think is more efficient to have a PR or agent works for you, so you have more spare time to work on design rather than socialising with the press.
4. ACCEPT THE SYSTEM

- I have no problem with the whole "starchitect" system. We live in an age where media is king. The majority of our thoughts and opinions are based from this. I would rather hear about a designer in the media than another vapid story on Hollywood celebrity. The "starchitecture" system has always filled that media gap no matter if it is sensationalist or not. "No press is bad press" What would Metropolis rather write about?

You need a human face behind the buildings.

5. BEWARE THE DANGERS OF THE SYSTEM

...this is my greatest fear, and Libeskind is a great example of (it): innovation turned to kitsch. Seems like the question that arises is: What is worse for the profession; not playing the PR game, or becoming kitschy?

6. BLAME THE MESSENGERS IN THE SYSTEM
-Architecture business unlike others like fashion designer/hair dresser, mostly clients do not come back for more... therefore exposure is part of the survival tactic to expand the network... some become more "loud or stylistic" in the market and become labeled as star... I wouldn't blame the market nor someone being a star for producing work which I do not like... that's reality!

Its not the architects its the coverage of the architects. Its the misdirected hero worship of the architects. These are not fucking rock stars okay. They are very talented people running businesses that require exposure to be successful. Don't blame them. blame the ridiculous media and the namedropping starfuckers

-Has Rem not worked hard? You think Zaha didn't pay her dues?

-...the burdens may be different. Maybe they don't have to hunt down the work, but they have to pick the projects that will keep them going, maintaining the reputation. They have to make each project measure up to the previous work and the expectations that work has created...

7. DECENTRALIZE THE SYSTEM
...I am proposing that one has to go out there and work with others. Connect in ways that were not possible before, and in that way define how we work. However, I am not advocating for a communal ideal either. What I can see happening is a series of “free agents” coming together for projects with other “free agents” placing the importance on the individual project itself, then moving on and doing other projects. How you would get projects and answer RFP’s, not sure....

-...Exactly! the media as process and method of working, not as glossy images and name dropping.

...But still, it is nice to hold hands and sing kumbaya we are the future, but what are the problems; who signs the drawings? Will there be drawings to sign? Copyrights and intellectual property?as Nobel mentions the starchitect system also works because clients want it, how do you change that economic reality?...

-I agree that the future model of architectural practice lies within open source collaboration, especially within the context of new media technology and building information modeling, but even within this model, I don't think old hierarchies and star-architects will go away unless you look at and address the incentives that perpetuate this system whether economic or the simple desire for fame.

What is the first step? To do away with the pritzker prize?

-Perhaps, but who would turn down the pritzker?

Celebrity isn't going anywhere. In fact it will likely only become more extreme with increased accessibility to media

65.What is Architecture? (Part 2)

2009-11-15T20:21:00.011+01:00

In the previous post in this series What is architecture? we looked at 7 famous architects' take on the subject. In your famous or non famous career as an architect you will have to define what architecture means to you. If you are an architect, you probably have your own definition of it already. If you are any good it will change several times over the course of your career. We continue this series with 7 more ...

Architecture is a pursuit that ought to be seen in a more responsible light than it is. And I think that architects ought to be responsible to society in a number of ways and they need to do that for two reasons: number one is that they’re—presumably—human beings, and secondly, if we don’t do it, who the hell is going to?
-Stanley Tigerman

I like to think of architecture as a very precise discipline. Very different from design and very different from sculpture. At the very basic level you have to deal with developing something with an exterior and an interior. Sculpture does not have that problem. I think that is enabling for architects because it gives us something with a very specific disciplinary rigor that we are required to address. So a lot of our work focus on the relationship between the exterior and the interior and how to create openings between them.
-Gage Clemenceau

Architecture is the mother of the arts, it is the thing that makes all other arts possible like wall paintings and things like that; they have to be in an architectural setting all day.
-Philip Johnson

Architecture as an idea is a little bit like writing as an idea: There are writers that are journalists, there are writers that write business letters, there are writers that write fiction,and there are writers that write great works of literature.
-Jeffrey Kipnis

The way I experience architecture, [is the way] we all experience architecture. How it feels as an atmosphere. The atmosphere we know is composed by light, by shadow, by sound, by tactile qualities. All material qualities, material presence. Nothing new! All the old things, you know! It’s like, all the spaces from our childhood we like, they were like that, if we experience a nice architectural atmosphere, it’s all of that. And some of these sense are maybe, more in foreground, and others, maybe like the sound of the space is more in the background; but nevertheless it’s maybe very important for your absorption of the atmosphere. So I think I’m trying to look, what are the elements, which make my spatial composition rich? I think it’s very normal. At least, everybody experiences architecture like that. There’s no other way. So I think forms are over-rated in talking about architecture, not in experiencing architecture. Forms, are over-rated.
-Peter Zumtor

For me (architecture) is any impact in the built envionment. Its not just a house or a sturcture; its the fabric that you are creating that we as the human spceie live in. So as architects, we have a responsibility not just to the client, but to the community as a whole when we do these projects.

Its not a new practice it is a return to an old practice. Arcitects actually had a lot more respect in years gone by in the centries ago, because we were about growing communitees in ways that improved the livelyhoods, the health, the education of communites. We built structures that improved lives, it doesnt matter if it were a civic structure like a museum or a church...
Now in the last 10-15 years architecture has shifted towards more of a symbolic building. It is more about the form and the structure. We have gone through this incredible computer revolution where we can build anything now. When you get to this point, what is the purpose that we have, if we can push all the boundaries? I think the only boudry that we have is what is the architect's and professon's effect on the community as a whole.

-Cameron Sinclair

Our feellings can be influenced by the form of building - whether or not it looks beautiful, or appropriate, or exciting - whether it seems solid and dependible or flashy and insincere. We can applaud or object to the kinds of things it seems to imply about its place in the world, and our place in the world, and whether it does what we want it to do, or seems to trap and frustrate us. Dwellings are caught up with our lives, and shelter our most intimate moments...

In comparison with the problems set by physicists or logicians, architecture is always complex, with many interesting forces at work on it. The problems posed in architecture can not be solved technically, because there are simply too many interdependent variables, and in practice - since the problems must be solved more or less immediately, are well enough for the time being - various factors are either neglected or else they are taken care of by drawing on the experience offered by tradition and precident. When our ways of doing things are properly engrained, they become habitual and we call them 'common sense'.

-Andrew Ballantyne

64. What is important in STARchitecture school (part 2)

2009-10-29T22:18:00.011+01:00

From: Anonymous
To: architect.journal[at]gmail.com
Sent: Wed, October 28, 2009 6:42:33 AM
Subject: [NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT] New comment on 63. What is important in STARchitecture school.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "63. What is important in STARchitecture school":

I think that it should be made clear that most Bartlett students can do all the rudimentary tasks that you speak of "architects" doing. They are not difficult. Rather than writing an intelligent comparison or analysis, you seem to have only written an article illustrating, perhaps, the mild inferiority you feel. I have not even studied at the Bartlett, and I can clearly see that. Perhaps you should just accept that architecture schools do things differently. Some are creative, others not. Why is the creativity of the Bartlett such a problem for you, you dont have to go and study there. What I find interesting however is that you never find Bartlett or other "creative" students attacking the more plain and normal design schools. I'd be suprised if you even allow this to be shown on your blog, as i know you have to approve this.

Publish this comment.

Reject this comment.

Posted by Anonymous to NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT at October 28, 2009 6:42 AM

Dear Anonymous-defender-of-the-Bartlett-who-have-never-ever-even-attended-there-ever-really,

First of all, take a breather and put a nice little smile on your face.
Have you done that?
good.
I am smiling too.

Let me just explain one thing which I think you might have misinterpreted. The article was not directed at the Bartlett School per-say. I threw a banana cream pie at Starchitecture schools in general and the Bartlett was the closest one in the cross hairs. I have friends who have attended the Bartlett (how do you think I know all this stuff) and I am just poking fun at them and the rest of the Bartlett as well.

Okay, lets get down to business, so where should we start? How about where we agree?

"I think that it should be made clear that most Bartlett students can do all the rudimentary tasks that you speak of "architects" doing. They are not difficult."

I know, I know, there are lots of Bartlett people who go out and do the "rudamentary" tasks of an architect and more. But between you and I though, did you really have to let the whole freeking world know how easy an architect's job is? There are non-architects reading this blog too you know. Gaad damn you!... I mean, have you ever heard of a magician telling the whole world how easy it is to pull a rabbit out of a hat? That really ticks me off. If I am ever in a dark alley and see an Anonymous-defender-of-the-Bartlett-who-have-never-ever-even-attended-there-ever-really, I am going to take out my pocket knife and cut its little tale off.

"I'd be suprised if you even allow this to be shown on your blog, as i know you have to approve this."

I am surprised too. I thought these Jedi reverse-psychology mind tricks thingies only worked on weak minded people. I really am surprised at how weak minded I am. I am setting up a meditation session with Yoda next week. Use the force Conrad...use the force...

Anyway, where were we....yes!, I am glad we could agree on those two points.
I do however, have some serious disagreements with you though:

Where I disagree with you most is that you somehow think that the inferiority that I feel is mild. Let me tell you, it is vast and it runs deep. Heavens man! I wrote a whole article about this. You don't do this unless you have some serious issues.

You also made the assumption that alternative to writing this article I could have written "an intelligent comparison or analysis". This stipulates that I am capable of writing something intelligent in the first place. ......How little do you know....

You were saying something about the creativity of the Bartlett teaching?...
Fist off, I don't think creativity is something you can teach. Most people are born with it; either you have it or you don't. Some schools nurture this, some schools don't. I think the Bartlett is one that does not....Calm the hell down, let me explain....
First see the definition below:

CREATIVITY: the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.;

The operative word here being meaningful. Creativity thrives within constraints; its about finding novel and thoughtful solutions especially when you have to work around complexities. MacGyver is creative, the team of Apollo 13 was creative (have you seen the movie? check it out it's a nice one), and yes architects working under real world constraints like gravity for instance, contracts, limited budgets, being responsible to society, construction methods etc. A creative person can look at all these constraints and pressures as a challenge and come up with a thoughtful rigorous solution that transcend traditional rules, patterns, etc.

Starchitecture schools by and large removes the constraints of the real world; if your project is too expensive, just imagine that you have unlimited budget, if it cant withstand gravity, just pretend there was less of it, if the forms you come up with doesn't work for human beings just say its a space for cyborgs.
What the Bartlett faculty nurtures is fantasy & imagination. The Random House dictionary defines imagination as follows:

IMAGINATION: the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.
the faculty of producing ideal creations consistent with reality, as in literature,
the product of imagining; a conception or mental creation, often a baseless or fanciful one.

I don't have a problem with a school nurturing imagination we need more of it. Remember it was Einstein who said "Imagination is more important than knowledge", but it is not a substitute for creativity. Just wanted to clarify that, if we are going to be clear on things, lets be clear.

"Why is the creativity of the Bartlett such a problem for you, you dont have to go and study there. What I find interesting however is that you never find Bartlett or other "creative" students attacking the more plain and normal design schools."

Frank Murray who commented before you [see his comment above yours] pointed out an interesting little article written by a Bartlett graduate and made a comment at the bottom. I paste it here, perhaps it might answer some of your questions:

I do think schools like the Bartlett which I think was labeled by Conrad Newel on NOBAFA as Starchitecture schools offer interesting perspectives on architecture and other fields as well. I do however think they have a confused agenda. They seem to want to be an architecture school and a school of alternate visual media culture at the same time. More often than not these agendas work against each other. The discipline of architecture is vast and there is much to learn, so is the research in visual culture. They should make a choice and be clear about it. Are you training students to be architects or something else that has to do with architecture? What should a student expect to learn when they finish school? What are you being prepared for. If bartlett graduates go on to become film-makers, and video game designers, and such, maybe its a good idea to say it is not an architecture school and say it is a school of visual media. Then you will attract students with that goal in mind. It has a lot to do with openness. I believe what frustrates professors such as Patrick Lynch is that he holds his profession very dear and when someone comes along and do something very different and calls it the same thing then it devalues what he does.

Consider, if a school opens up and starts teaching alternative medicine (acupuncture, aromatherapy, Atkins diet, chiropractic medicine, herbalism, breathing meditation, yoga,etc), gives its graduates medical degrees and sent them off to hospitals and emergency rooms to perform surgery, a lot of people would have a problem with that. This is, in effect, what the architectural profession is doing when it allows schools like the Bartlett to give architecture degrees. The medical profession will not allow it but the architectural profession does.

I couldn't have said it better myself. When you do something else and call it architecture, not only do you devalue the profession, you are making a direct attack on its integrity. So when you say that you find it interesting that you never find the Bartlett " attacking the more plain and normal design schools." I say what the hell are you talking about! If they called it the Bartlett School of Alternate Visual Media no one would have a problem.

Get one thing clear, I don't defend mediocrity or the status-quo in architecture. Saying no to blown up post-industrial apocalyptic fantasies is not saying yes to mediocrity. There is a vast world between the two. This is a common fallacy that comes up when Bartlett professors defend their antics. "Oh the only alternative to what we do is plain, normal, boring stuff". Boy they must have some hell of an ego!

From: Anonymous
To: architect.journal[at]gmail.com
Sent: Wed, October 28, 2009 7:39:07 PM
Subject: [NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT] New comment on 63. What is important in STARchitecture school.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "63. What is important in STARchitecture school":

You know, not everyone from the Bartlett can be so easily categorized. It really just comes across as a little bigoted. There really are some who know how to design great buildings, which are not only attractive but also truly function, because they know how to do the typical Bartlett beautiful shit but combine it with intelligent design, merging all the things you claim only "architects" can do. I think its those guys that your mediocrity should be afraid of.

Posted by Anonymous to NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT at October 28, 2009 6:25 AM

Dear Other-Anonymous-defender-of-the-Bartlett

Here we go again with the its-either-Bartlett-or-it's-mediocrity argument. If I had any hair left on my head I would be pulling it out right now!
Pleeeease..... stop it! The arrogance is killing me.
If you continue with this I would be inclined to think that when you said "intelligent design" you really meant it.
Take a look at the last paragraph of my reply above.

If you think I try to categorize Bartlett students or students from any Starchitecture school, read my article again and you will come to the same conclusion as I did; it is a figment of your highly developed imagination. I do not categorize students. I think architecture students, whether they are from the Bartlett or not, come in all different colors, shapes, and sizes.; some smart, some dull, some rich, some poor, some talented some not so talented. Starchitecture School faculty however ...are categorically predictable. They come in one color; BLACK! Black shirts, black pants, black frame glasses, black souls; and I am not talking about shoe parts (which are also black by the way).

The students of these schools are the victims. Get it straight! I draw a line when I throw banana cream pies. I have come to admire architecture students very much. They are the hardest working, most resilient beings I know. Cockroaches have noting on them in a competition of resiliency.

Consider this, a typical student at any starchitecture school will have to put up with a lot of stupid and demeaning shit from faculty members while they are in school. I described this in the article. They come with earnest minds and accounts burdened with student loans. The come to learn architecture, and instead they are demeaned by their starchitecture professors, insulted, stepped on, slighted, compared to monkeys by others etc. (some think this is a right-of-passage, I think it is a-right-of-bullshit) Students are used as guinea-pigs to test and push their professor's agendas. I have even heard that Batrlett students and units are encouraged to compete against each other because they believe "competition is healthy". The result? you have students getting caught between ego wars among professors, you get an ethical and social malaise were students are pitted against each other. The only thing that thrives in this environment is the graphics and presentation in your projects, because this is how the apparent winner is determined. My dear Other-Anonymous-defender-of-the-Bartlett, the measure of an education is not by how pretty your presentation and graphics are. When you do that your project, the process and the research around it (the substance of your education) is held hostage to the tyranny of the graphical presentation. I will say this, a little competition is healthy in academia, but the level of competition that goes on there is destructive and it is ultimately your education that suffers. In reality Architecture is a team sport equivalent to football, not a bloody kill or be killed sport like dog or cock fighting (if you want to call that a sport).

Students are pushed out into the world with very little skills to practice architecture beyond a great imagination and some computer graphics skills. This is why a lot of them don't even bother to peruse a career in architecture after they graduate; they go into the video game industry, they become film makers, animators, etc. That makes sense that they would do that, doesn't it? When you find a graduate from a starciteture school like the Bartlett combining his/her two-dimensional education with the rigor of the architectural world to make great architecture, know this; The didn't learn the bulk of what they are using in starchitecture school. They are thrown out into the world and left to fend for them selves and they still do it. That inspires respect not belittlement. I belittle the professors not the students. Note the difference.

The few that do become the chosen one; the starchitect's prodigy who takes on and defend the position of their dark overlords and mentors, I can empathize with. They are like young Anakin Skywalker slowly being swallowed up by the dark side of the force. They are waiting to become the next Peter Eisenman or Norman Foster. But fair warning, if they use themselves to protect and shield my target, I will not be responsible for any banana cream pie that they may find themselves licking off their faces.

63. What is important in STARchitecture school (part 1)

2009-10-14T19:32:00.046+02:00

Star⋅chi⋅tec⋅ture School stär'kĭ-těk'chər skool

noun

Architecture schools that build their attractiveness, competitiveness or status on the accomplishments & reputation of their starcitecture faculty.

architecture schools that grooms students to become "starchitects"

architecture schools that mimics the teaching practices of starchitecture schools.
When I found myself subtracting or adding columns because it made my rendering look better, then I knew I was in a starchitecture school.

Below are samplings of diploma projects selected from two different schools. As you look at them consider the following questions:

Which ones would you rather live or work in?
Which ones would you choose as the location for an exciting movie or video game?

SAMPLE SET A

SAMPLE SET B

SAMPLE SET A is from Diploma Unit 20 run by Professors Shaun Murray and Marjan Colletti at The Bartlett School in London. One can safely describe this studio if not the entire Bartlett as an architecture school that mimics the teaching practices of starchitecture schools.

SAMPLE SET B is from a Thesis Course run by Professor Lance J. Brown at The City College of New York. Opposed to The Bartlett, The City Collage does not seem to fit the profile of a starchitecture school.

The projects in both sets lack to varying degrees some credibility as a project that is possible to realize. Obviously one much more than the other.

The is because most architecture schools are not set up to teach you how to design a building.
In fact, The point of architecture school is NOT to teach you how to design a building.
Let me say that again.

The point of architecture school is NOT to teach you how to design a building.

Take a moment and meditate on that.

If you want to learn how to design a building you should go and apprentice for an architect or a builder under no false pretense.

Then what's the point of architecture school you ask?

The short answer is that it has many points depending on the school that you go to.

For example most schools share some of these objectives:

How to challenge the boundaries of conventional practice

How to communicate ideas through drawing, model making, writing and speaking

To be socially and ethically engaged in society (a few will do this)

To expose students to the creative and technical aspects of architecture

To equip you with the knowledge required for making architecture

How to be critical of current practice

To bring you abreast with the prevailing issues in current practice

To give you the scholarship to define architecture on your own terms

To give you a rough understanding of building construction and design

and if you are lucky, you might also learn

How to understand & appreciate good craftsmanship in building

or something about building construction methods

You will find some of these same objectives in starchitecture schools but what makes them stand apart from other architecture schools is that they prioritize one objective over all others:

How to create projects that have high entertainment value.

That is, projects that are entertaining to look at (as the images from Bartlett studio above) or entertaining to discuss (because of the ideas that they investigate), or a mixture of the two. These projects aim to stimulate us in a certain way, to make us curious, or interested, because it is new or we have never seen something like that before.

VALUE CLOUD

Because of this emphasis, there is little time left to actually learn about designing a building. Creating entertaining images takes enormous amounts of time and energy, time taken away from seriously engaging in an investigation of your building's craftsmanship, construction methods, or its social or economic viability. God forbid any talk about end-user satisfaction, even plain old common sense is sent to the side lines. These are not so important in the big picture as far as starchitecture schools are concerned. Projects in such schools only need to demonstrate the remote possibility of being credible in the real world that you and I live in. The possibility that just maybe it can withstand the force of gravity, that maybe there is some kind of material on this planet that can do the things you show it doing in your project or perhaps it might be able to keep us relatively dry and warm in tumultuous weather. The term "suspension of disbelief" comes to mind.

I have seen many students walk through the doors of starchitecture school with earnest minds wanting to learn how to design a building. Their attempts at rigor by questioning the viability of their high entertainment value projects in the real world are met with explanations that are lacking in reason, smoothly buttered in archispeak and delicately glazed in the finest snake oil possible.

The ones who quickly realizes that it is not about learning to design buildings and that it is about creating an entertaining project wins the cake. And when I say they win the cake, I mean they win the cake with a capital C. You will get extended one-on-one desk crits with the starchitect or star-minded professor(s) who will design your project with or for you. They will have you make your project based on their own pre-formulated theory and convince you that it really came from you. They will tell you which projects to "reference" and which magazines to find them in. They will help you pick out a sky for your rendering and show you how to tweak the elements in the foreground and background to create depth in your image. They will even advise you on which font to use on your poster. When your project is done, you will get the VIP spot on the wall to hang their/your work and a hearty pat on the back for a job well done. The ones who don't get it are sent packing like a fired Donald Trump apprentice.

Starchitecture teaching methodology focuses on having students create projects based on said professors latest theories that he/she is very excited about. If it seam rolls your education in the process, well so be it. If you demonstrate independent thinking or fail to fall in line behind such theories, prepare to be ignored, disowned or snubbed. Remember your job is to provide fantastic images in the form of a project that celebrates your professors latest theories. How well your project flies is directly connected to starchitect-professor's ego and self worth. It can be extremely stressful, not to mention embarrassing for him/her to invite his colleagues over for a jury to show off his latest ideas....ahem... I mean your project, and have you make a mockery of it.

A major point of STARchitecture school is

to make your professor look good when he/she

brings their coleagues over to see their/your work.

If you are a very successful starchitecture student, not only will you have learned to fall in line, you will have learned to research all your professors projects before-hand. You will not only know what kind of rendering style he likes, you will know how to mimic them as well. When your starchitecture professor brings over his black cloaked star-minded friends for a crit, he will proudly point to your project on the wall and say "Isn't it amazing?" and they will say "yeaaas that's very interesteeeeng" and then another will say "its rear to see a work with such originality and passion". They also love to say stuff like "oh, you have captured the essence of ....bla, bla, bla." At this point try to remain humble. Your clueless classmates are probably scratching their heads and foaming at the mouth at how they managed to look past the gaping holes in your projects plausibility (especially when they were grilled on every undotted "i" and uncrossed "t" in their crits). Don't get me wrong, these guys are capable of criticizing the project of the starchitect's prodigy. They might say "Oh just one minor thing though, I would have liked to see some more orange from the sunset peaking out from behind the building in that image." "yeaaas, yeaaas, that would have nailed it" the others might confirm.

By the time you finish starchitecture school, you should have a portfolio of very interesting and entertaining looking projects thats kind of credible. Don't worry about credibility, a good starchitecture firm will overlook this "hey this is a school project you don't have to worry so much about reality, it is about communicating your vision"

When you bring this to a starchitectre firm, it will remind him of himself as a young man. He will say "wow this kid has passion, he has got imagination, he can render, he has a good eye, he works with photoshop well, he knows about graphic design, he can put a compelling image together. You are hired!"

So why did he hire you when he knows very well that you don't know how to design a building?

Because you are not hired to design buildings stupid! you are hired to provide fantastic images that celebrates your employer's projects, to make good images for the media. You are the office's latest graphics plug-in.

Inside the starchitecture firm you will meet some architects who think about issues like rain, and light, and circulation, and fire safety, and how the components of the building fit together, and such. No it gets even crazier... are you ready for this? They love this stuff. They find it very exciting. They can talk for hours on end about building joints and details. They don't care about poster fonts, or archispeak or what kind of sky, or foreground or background is used in an image. They understand architecture through the notations of plans, sections & elevations. They can imagine how a building looks without the aid of a rendering. Thats right! no renderings. Imagine that. They have no other agenda but to design a functioning building that is well made and pleasant to be in. You will find a few of them in Starchitecture firms.

Say hello to these dullards, they are the people who will teach you how to design a building and make an architect out of you. If they are like any other architects I know in this position (resigned to teaching architecture 101 while trying to deliver a project), they are grumpy as all hell. They will snap at you for not knowing what V.I.F. means on a construction document or for not knowing something that they deem "basic-shit-that-every-dumb-ass-should-know" (what ever that is for them that morning). But never mind, just suck it up, what does he know? He is just an architect. He is no star. He respects plumbing diagrams and toilet bowl specifications, not magazine covers. He will never be famous for anything. Who ever gets famous for designing a building that is just good to live or work in. Ever heard of a reporter asking to publish your building because it performed well under fire. He will never even raise his head from the murky depth of obscurity, not even for 15 minutes. You've got your priorities straight and you are on your way to becoming a Star.

Conrad Newel

NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT
Liberating Minds Since August 2007

64. What is important in STARchitecture school (part 2)

62. Have a little humanity, but not too much...(part 1)

2009-06-18T10:04:00.003+02:00

Last week Foster + Partners launched the design of a school in Sierra Leone at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in London.

The project was developed in cooperation with Save the Children among others, and integrates passive ventilation systems and natural lighting.
Foster argues that it is based on a modular system that can be quickly assembled with conventional stock wood, local brush-sticks, and sheet metal. This gives the project some environmental advantages. Whats more, the modules can also be easily reconfigured to adjust to the specific needs of varying districts in Sierra Leone.
So the project is not only smart, it saves the children and the earth too.
Where I come from we say "thats a lot of bang for your buck right there!"

Starchitects worldwide should take note and follow the lead of Mr Foster. Why? Because this one is a token that comes straight from his heart.

One only has to look around at the current economic and social climate. We are in a financial crisis caused by unregulated greed and excess. Starchitects are seen as part of this piggish, extravagant and irresponsible finical sector or at least a willing accomplice. It has even come to jokes like this one:

Question: What do you call a bunch of CEOs, starchitects and bankers chained together at the bottom of the ocean?
Answer: not enough, lawyers are saints compared to you wretches...

The image is of unrestrained self indulgence... bling bling that is...

To remain respectable and relevant one must change the image from the one above to the one below

In order to understand the utter sophistication in this move I may have to do something completely radical. I will take you on my magic carpet and sweep you off to TV land.

lets go!

The first stop on our journey is the magical cloudy zone called TV phenomenology. We come upon the hip and funky kingdom of the token black guy.

The urban dictionary defines it as:

Any fictional character of African-American descent that has been inconsequentially inserted into the plot a movie or TV show for the express purposes of creating an image of commercially safe, politically correct, and insipid racial harmony. In eras gone by the token black guys would be the first characters to be killed off. This phenomena of commercial cinema and television that would sacrifice the quality of their storytelling for the sake of attempting the impossible act of offending absolutely nobody, is succinctly satirized by the aptly named south park character, Token.

Token from south park, Charley in the TV show Friends.

Any black character in any movie that is neither the protagonist nor antagonist, is unimportant to the plot and does not significantly contribute to it, preferably dies before the end, usually does not end up with the girl. sometimes is the sidekick if the role is unimportant enough, and is very often comic relief (often in stereotype-enforcing manner).

Here the character squarely defines his token role

if the balance gets out of hand then it is swiftly dealt with.

The point of a token project functions amazingly similar to the role of token black guy: it is done more or less for the express purposes of creating an image of a commercially safe, and politically correct starchitecture firm whose radical days are gone (if it ever had one).

If we look at the architect's body of work as a set of characters. We can see the token project is unimportant to the firms portfolio and does not significantly contribute to it; a sidekick really.

A proper starchitect never let the ratio of such projects get out of control. Just a small token is needed. With this project, Norm firmly places a hand over your shoulder and says "hey! I am one of the good guys".

The chart below exhibits a healthy ratio for a thriving starchitect: The irrelevant is limited to a strict minimum. Like the culture necessary to produce a fine cheese, you need just enough to get the job done.

Now lets look at exhibit B. This shows the portfolio of architect Cameron Sinclair.
There is a problem here. Can anyone identify it?

Of course! He got it all backwards; this guy is totally off his rockers.
With a portfolio like this the Pritzker is nowhere in sight for miles and miles.
We will take a closer look at this eccentric next week and learn what NOT to do, in part 2 of this series.

61. Is architecture in your soul?

2009-06-04T21:03:00.001+02:00

We found this curious recording from our friends over at Sheppard Robson and we just could not pass it up. For the sake of clarity we have also posted the definition of ARCHITECTURE + SOUL as defined by The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

ar·chi·tec·ture (är'kĭ-těk'chər) n.

The art and science of designing and erecting buildings.
Buildings and other large structures: the low, brick-and-adobe architecture of the Southwest.
A style and method of design and construction: Byzantine architecture.
Orderly arrangement of parts; structure: the architecture of the federal bureaucracy; the architecture of a novel.

Soul(sōl) n.

The animating and vital principle in humans, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity.
The spiritual nature of humans, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.
The disembodied spirit of a dead human.
A human: "the homes of some nine hundred souls" (Garrison Keillor).
The central or integral part; the vital core: "It saddens me that this network ... may lose its soul, which is after all the quest for news" (Marvin Kalb).
A person considered as the perfect embodiment of an intangible quality; a personification: I am the very soul of discretion.
A person's emotional or moral nature: "An actor is ... often a soul which wishes to reveal itself to the world but dare not" (Alec Guinness).
A sense of ethnic pride among Black people and especially African Americans, expressed in areas such as language, social customs, religion, and music.
A strong, deeply felt emotion conveyed by a speaker, a performer, or an artist.
Soul music.

[Middle English, from Old English sāwol.]

60. Play Peter, the Pritzker Peddling Hermit Genius

2009-05-28T02:09:00.015+02:00

Some years ago, I used to go around thinking of Frank Gehry as a total schmuck. He went around making these wonky absurd things in god-awful materials and calling it architecture. His mantra seemed to be: lets do something totally stupid looking and ask why not? "I am so playful and whimsical" seemed to be the chant behind every spell he casts. The impression I had of him was that he made architecture look way too easy, you just put a newspaper or binoculars down on a model and voila! instant interesting architecture. And if anyone dares to say that they were annoyed by all this, they were labeled as narrow minded or too "hermetic" in their thinking. All of his detractors were put in this same box. His work, especially his early work was meant to be visually disturbing like his contemporary artist friends.

Then some years later, I reluctantly went into the Guggenheim in New York to see a retrospective of his work there. I came away surprisingly with a very different opinion of him and his work. Although I still did not care much for it, I came away with a lot of respect for him and what he was doing. For the first time I saw all the work that went into each project (or at least the story behind them). There were several different studies and experiments leading up to the final built thing. It was very different from the outward branding campaign that was publicly seen in all the media snippets of him telling an assistant to fold a piece of paper and then yeah! that looks so stupid I love it! The exhibition showed a different attitude, it showed an architect testing and trying out different things, looking at how to solve real problems, attentiveness to solving space, light, materials as any and every architect does.

What I realized was that I was so hypnotized by his branding machine that I was not able to tell the difference between the architect and the branding. The exhibition snapped me out of the spell and allowed me to see the difference.

It was then to my surprise some weeks ago when I learned that Peter Zumthor won the Pritzker prize that I thought to my self. "Oh that's so great, Zumthor is one of my favorite architects. I really like his work and I like his demeanor. He doesn't want publicity, he doesn't make an effort to publish his works in the glossy magazines, and finally the Pritzker prize committee selects such a person. It just goes to show, if you just work hard at what you do and don't worry about publicity or being famous you will be recognized, yada, yada, yada."

I heard my self and suddenly snapped out of it.
"Hey wait a minute!" I thought.
"just hold on one second.
stop the music!
That's not true!
THAT'S NOT TRUE!!"

Peter is okay and everything but don't get hypnotized by his branding machine.
Oh...and the Pritzker committee selecting an obscure nobody?...hogwash!

Time for a reality check folks.

Every famous architect whether it is Frank Gehry playing Whimsical Wizard,
Frank Lloyd Wright playing Egotistical Master, or
Rem Koolhaas playing Intellectual Sheep,
all have a branding game-plan that is strategically aimed at getting fame and recognition.
Peter Zumthor playing Hermit Genius is no different.

Fame and recognition does not just happen! you have to work at it! A million dollars will not just fall into your lap if you go to work everyday and do a good job without a plan of how to make it happen, and neither will a Pritzker prize fall into your lap if you just go off deep into the mountains and make good architecture unbeknown to anyone. Fame and recognition like any other career path must be carefully cultivated. Its like the old computer adage "garbage in garbage out": The results that you get are based on what you put in to it.

If you put your energy into making good buildings, sooner or later you will realize a good building.
If you put your energy into getting famous, sooner or later you will be famous.
If you put some energy into making good buildings and some energy into making your self famous, sooner or later you will be a famous architect. It requires a dual effort.
If you find a famous architect who put most of his energy into becoming famous, it will be plain to see that he is famous for being famous. I am sure this is not what most people want.
If you make a balanced effort in both areas, as Zumthor has done, you will see that too.

Besides doing good work, making interesting and/or quality architecture, putting an effort into being famous and getting recognition means publishing, writing, branding, going on the lecture circuit, building symbolic capital, schmoozing, and basically doing whatever you can to be visible in a positive way. The last time I checked Zumthor had close to a dozen books published in several languages, here is a list, just to name a few: Thinking Architecture, Peter Zumthor Therme Vals, Peter Zumthor Works: Buildings Projects, Atmospheres: Architectural Environments - Surrounding Objects, Corps Sonore Suisse (Swiss Sound Box), Architecture in Vorarlberg, Three Concepts: Thermal Bath Vals‎, A+U Extra Edition: Peter Zumthor and this one titled just plain old "Peter Zumthor". This does not include the countless articles, and magazine publications (glossy & non-glossy) that he has personally written or consented to by providing materials (images of the works, press releases, interviews etc).

You will notice that this is not consistent with the part of his ingenious branding strategy/philosophy of "I don't believe in publishing images of the work because architecture must be experienced first hand". He publishes anyway, because he has to. This elaborate brand is shrouded around a hermitesqe-philosopher-monk like mystique: His official press release photos shows him clad in what looks like a priest's shirt minus the neck collar piece, unpretentious, his arms folded, a stoic glare behind a meticulously trimmed white beard and short militarily disciplined hair cut. His writing style is largely phenomenological and reads like a mythology storybook. He touts beliefs like "I am not a networker, I’m not a difficult star. I’m simply someone who wants to do good work". He is eager to talk about how small his firm is and how selective he is with accepting commissions: "I can’t be bought with money" is his attitude towards clients.

If everyone knew how calculated all of this is, they would be astounded. Not just astounded--it would unveil his mystique and wreck his brand.

At this point, I should wave a flaming disclaimer that I don't believe he is insincere for one moment. You have to believe in your mystique whole heartedly before anyone else can believe in you. It has to come from you and resonate with your core beliefs and who you are. That's the first rule in building a brand or mystique. It would appear that the humble-one has deluded himself into believing that all this does not equal promoting himself and his work. Your job as an aspiring great-one, is to not buy into this delusion. Be aware that it is a brand, and that it is part of an elaborate, premeditated, well managed promotional strategy.

Besides the publications and the mystique-branding, he has certainly not shied away from the lecture circuit: Just google "peter+zumthor+lectures" and you will see a"zumthor wuz here" list of places far and wide where this globe trotting mountain hermit has been speaking ( ie. self promoting). If you are not an incredible networker, you can not pull this off. But lets say you are not an incredible networker and you somehow managed to pull this off, you would have to be either brain-dead or extremely socially repulsive not to come away with a network of friends and contacts that reads like a who-is-who-list in the world of architecture and beyond.

If you can ever find a copy of his resume, you will also see that he has built a treasure chest of symbolic capital: connections, awards, prestigious teaching positions, etc. He has taught at renowned schools from SCI-ARC in Los Angeles to the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, (far away from the obscure mountains of Switzerland), where he has no doubt rubbed shoulders and schmoozed with the famous and well connected (even some of the Jurors of the Pritzker prize committee).

I am sorry, I just don't believe in random luck. There is a saying "the harder you work the luckier you get". Zumthor certainly worked hard at his luck and now it has paid off. He is a brilliant networker, brander, and self-promoter whether he sees himself that way or not! Three cheers to Mr. Zumthor for a Pritzker well earned. Don't envy him, emulate him!

As for the Pritzker prize committee, they have historically given the prize to well established starchitects: Heavyweights in the field who have largely branded themselves as stars. As we have seen in the previous post, the era of the starchitect is over. The committee finds itself in an awkward position. On the one hand they are way too embarrassed to bestow the award on someone who overtly brands himself as starchitect, and on the other hand they are way too parochial to pick someone outside the establishment. So why not choose a starchitect who brands himself as "I am totally not interested in being a starchitect" What other choice did they have? I am really curious to see who the other candidates were.

In the coming days you will see many articles published about the Pritzker prize winner where he will be lauded for operating outside the establishment in a tiny remote village in the Swiss mountains, far removed from the international architecture scene. They will write about how he eschews the publicity and the promotions. They will describe him as the son of a lowly carpenter. Upon being told that he will receive the prize he made this statement:

That a body of work as small as ours is recognized in the professional world makes us feel proud and should give much hope to young professionals that if they strive for quality in their work it might become visible without any special promotion.

Without any special promotion? huh? When you look at the avalanche of these disingenuous statements, I implore you to resist gazing at the swinging pendulum of this hypnotic branding machine. I offer this statement to young professionals instead:

You won't get wise with the sleep still in your eyes, no matter what your dreams might be.

I am happy for Peter Zumthor, I wish him well, he is a good architect, as I said before, I like his work very much, but please don't insult me with the "I just make good work in tiny Swiss mountain" story line. Success leaves clues, and there are there to see, right before our eyes if we only open them and look.
Good work + Good Promotion = Fame & Recognition.

Conrad Newel

NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT
Liberating Minds Since August 2007

59.Take a Lesson from Diller+Scofidio+Renfero

2009-05-20T23:31:00.016+02:00

If you have been paying any attention. you have no doubt seen this interview of Diller+Scofidio+Renfero. I am posting it here...well because I like it. What the hell. It is also relevant to almost everything that has been discussed in this blog. It will aslo serve as a reference and prelude to some of the topics to come. Hint, hint, the recession, the end of the starchitecture era, interdiciplinary practice and ooh ooh faith. So without further adieu, read on.

ON INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE

S:Elizabeth and I started working when there was a recession in architecture. When architecture turned into paper architecture, doing drawings and sketches, showing in galleries...

The only way of building then was to start being involved in performances theaters, out on the beach, art installations, where we could build something and see the reaction from the public

D: the recession was coincidental, I came to architecture really with no intention of being an architect. I studied architecture and I was always interested to be an artist and slowly we started to work around issues of space. We were interested in conventions of the every day, we were interested in domesticity, we were interested in issues of visuality, there were many issues that were of interest, but always in between disciplines.

S: We never said lets start working and develop an office or studio, hire people, lets get jobs. We always found things that interested us and that's where we went.

D:We were always a research studio. We were always interested in research whether the outcome was in the form of an installation, in the form of a book, or ultimately in the from of a building. They were just iterations of different forms of the same ideas.

S: Before Elizabeth and I started working together, I had been at another practice, and I had been really sour with the way the profession of architecture was approaching jobs, work and getting commissions. It had nothing to do with issues of architecture. It had to with: I have to produce an income, I have to get work, I have to stay alive.

D: There was an intellectual bankruptcy at the time in 1979... the discourse was happening only academically there was very little in the profession.

ON THEIR FIRST MAJOR BUILDING

D: Sometimes we were thought of as just wanting to be on the periphery; a decision to want to lob grenades from the periphery at architecture critically...
when we had a chance to do this building, for many people it was a kind of a wake up, for us it was a kind of validation.

S: Before that we did theater, performance, installations, and a lot of architects accuse us of not being able to deal with comprise, not being able to deal with difficult issues of construction. They thought we were taking the easy way out. They kept saying "wait till you do a building... you will see".

CR: And what did you find out when you did a building?

S: The problems are there in everything you do whether you do a drinking glass (which we have done for water), there are complex problems.

ON FAITH

R: We didn't know how to achieve what we wanted to achieve here. We knew that we waned to make the hall an integral part of the performance , we knew that we wanted it to glow but nobody had done that before. We didn't know technically how to achieve it. So it was a process that we embarked on, we didn't know what the end result would be

S: In many of our projects we didn't know how we are going to achieve them. When we did a cloud in Switzerland, we didn't have the slightest idea how we were going to achieve that. So I think that is one of the things that is important to us is taking that leap of faith and believing in yourself that you are going to get there as you have to do it.

D: We usually take that leap of faith off a cliff without a parachute and we figure it out on the way down...

ON THE STARCHITECTURE ERA

R: The era that we have been in is the Starchitecture era.
Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, there are many that probably your average American knows now. In the past 10 years we have been introduced to them where as before no one would have known anyone but Frank Lloyd Wright. There is a coincidence between a booming economy and an interest in architecture and also an align between branding and architecture; that made for very glamorous, very exciting and very iconic buildings. We are no longer in that age. That age cant co-exist with our current economic situation. Nor is it the Obama generation's age of architecture. This age is much more careful, much more thoughtful. We are not not-interested in image but we are also interested in doing the right thing. So we are in a new age of balance.

S: I think you are right in one respect, that there was a moment maybe about 40 years ago when you said "I like Frank Lloyd Wight, I am going to do Frank Lloyd Wright buildings" and you would try to build buildings as close to what Frank Lloyd Wright would build or "I like Mies" and you would defiantly do something that was as Miesian as possible. Then there was a moment when architects began to posses their work, their ideas and say "if I do this, you cant do that"

D:I think starchitcture has began to loose a little bit of the glow. People began to be a little repetitive. There were a lot of people that were important in the field that were called on over and over again. Their brand was desired. It wasn't just the name, it was that image of the work. And that work was rubber stamped over and over again and it didn't allow people to grow.

Bibliography:
The Ciliary Function, Eyebeam Atelier of New Media & Technology: The Charles and Ray Eames Lecture , Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller + Scofidio , Flesh: Architectural Probes , Blur: The Making of Nothing , Back to the Front: Tourisms of War , Wired Magazine, February 2000, Vol. 8, #2 (Cybernetics pioneer, Kevin Warwick. Martin Nisenholtz made headlines by taking The New York Times digital. Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio on Architecture.), Charlie Rose - Liz Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and Charles Renfro (March 31, 2009)

NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT
Liberating Minds Since August 2007

Conrad is comming back

2009-05-17T00:54:00.006+02:00

My hiatus is over.
Stay tuned folks,
Conrad is coming back and will be posting regularly and semi-regularly again.
Thanks for all the letters of support.

I am working on a new post coming in the nest few days.

Regards,
Conrad

NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT
Liberating Minds Since August 2007

58. Know the Development Stages of a Famous Architect

2008-07-20T14:37:00.009+02:00

An analysis of the development stages of a famous architect.

In this post, Jeffrey Kipnis analyzes the career and development of Finnish architect Kivi Sotamaa. He lists these as the general stages of development:

CLICK FOR LARGER VIEW

RANDOM QUOTES:

Architecture as an idea is a little bit like writing as an idea: There are writers that are journalists, there are writers that write business letters, there are writers that write fiction,and there are writers that write great works of literature.

Architecture is probably the one kind of creative form that most people don't understand, because they are around it all the time they kind of think that they get it.
Its creative component works at a more profound level and is a little less detectable.
I like to think of it like the the soundtrack in a movie.
The soundtrack controls the way you feel about the movie although you are never quite paying attention to it. You are always giving credit to the actor or the cinematographer; but It is really the music in the background that tells you how to feel.
That is what architecture at its best can do.

Conrad Newel

NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT
Liberating Minds Since August 2007

muse (mjuːz)

— n
	a goddess that inspires a creative artist, esp a poet

[C14: from Old French, from Latin Mūsa, from Greek Mousa aMuse]