Value your own work

I got this quote about Operating Systems Linux and Windows from Slashdot:

“Here’s what Compy McNewb sees. He can get both OS’s for free. But one of them is worth over three hundred dollars, while the other one is worth nothing. ‘That’s not true!’ I hear you scream. ‘Linux is worth a lot! It’s just being offered for free!’ I know it’s not true that Linux is worth less than Windows. It’s far more valuable to the end user in terms of getting things done. But that’s not what Average Joe Computer Newbie sees. He sees a free product versus a three-hundred-dollar product he can get free. It’s all about the perception!”

Why is Linux catching up so slowly on Windows as the most popular operating system? According to Vlad Dolezal, the reason is simple; Linux is free, and humans tend not to equate free things with being valuable.

Same goes for air, freedom, democracy, wealth. Same goes also for for your design. If you do your client a pleasure by doing something extra without charging him, he will not value your work. Your market position will idevaluate as a result, which will eventually bring your business into a nose dive. From another perspective, as in a strange paradox, you can value your own work and dictate the client this value. Of course this only works to a certain extend.

Bottomline: allways send your bills.

How to run an architect’s office (2)

In addition to my previous post, here’s a bit more on running an architect’s office. Just pick the version that you find most appealing.

The net/gross factor is important. For the client that is, not for you as an architect. Net/gross factors are based on mediocre standards. Your task is to lift the job from mediocrity. You are paid for excellence. Budgets might seem fixed, but they are not. There is always space for ambition. Generate enthusiasm for your design and the client will be happy to increase your budget.

Discuss. It will make your crew members feel appreciated. But be honest. Don’t protect your brainchildren. Give priority to the product, not to your status. If someone has a better idea, admit it. If your idea cannot stand interaction, it is not a good idea.

Focus. Keep it simple. If it gets too complicated, break it up in chew able chunks. Whatever your concept may look like, make it iconic. The Guggenheim is iconic. CCTV is iconic. Logos are iconic. Simplicity is the language of the masses. Design your building like you would design a logo. Think in slogans.

Use a storyboard for your presentation. it will provide you and your co workers a focus. Moreover, you will be sure you won’t produce too much. Everything you do that won’t used in a presentation, is wasted time and energy.

Above: image of a storyboard borrowed from PingMag.

Using reference projects of other architects in your presentation is a sign of weakness. Using the client’s logo more than once is a sign of weakness. These are compensations to make a weak presentation look interesting. Your design should speak for itself.

Use mood boards. They generate enthusiasm. It will able the client to identify with the design.

Above: image of a mood board borrowed from Eva Artinger.

You need to work on scale, and AutoCad is a useful tool. But print to paper as soon as you have the outlines and start sketching. Sketching is intuitive and liberating and effective. Leave the computer to your draftsmen. You’ll find out they’re not just Cad monkeys and can actually think. Just give them guidelines and they will fill in the rest. They will add value to your design. It is not just an option to give their role more substance and move it to the forefront of the design process. It is a responsibility. If you don’t, they will loose their jobs, because drafts work as we know it will move to India (see here). Moreover, it leaves you more time for the actual design job.

A design team leader is a volleyball player. Every time a request from a client comes in, pass it to your co workers. Delegate. If you don’t, you will loose yourself in details, which will draw your attention away from the overview and the acquisition of new projects.

Planning is most effective when practiced in advance. The equation is simple: budget/salary=available hours. It helps you to get a grip on the project. An AutoCad drawing, a Sketchup model, a Photoshop image, these things just need the time they need. As opposed to design activities, these activities are pure production, predictable and measurable. If you don’t have a clue, start using a stopwatch at what you do. Seriously. It will give you a notion of how long things take. Ultimately you can use these activities like Lego blocks in your planning process. It will avoid stress, tension and exhaustion.

Architecture is management. These suggestions might provide a leverage to lift you out of, or prevent you for mediocrity.

Culture as a design tool

I’ve been writing about Gilberto Gil, Brazilian minister of culture and pop singer before. I love his crystal clear analysis and unconventional approach. Recently I stumbled upon a documentary about him with some interesting quotes:

“There is one priority: to convince government and society that culture is more and more a strategic tool for progress, for development, for power…”

In the context of design, culture would be a design tool. Interestingly, the design approach in the western world is primarily object based. We think objects will change the world, and they do to a certain extend. But more fundamentally, it is ideas, culture, that changes the world. Objects are just results. This also means that everyone with an idea is a designer.

Confronted with a question about his role as minister as being opposed to his former political activities (he was jailed and banned from Brazil for a period of time):

“I’ve been always part of the establishment. There is nothing but the establishment. It’s a dialog, a constant dialog between things that are supposedly out of the system and the system itself…”

In the last few years, under the influence of politics we have become to think about the world as being polarized. Gilberto Gil reminds us of the fact that there is an approach that is fundamentally different, an approach that both Brazil and India understand and put to practice. It is about collaboration. It is about integrated design. It is refreshing.

Unfortunately I cannot show the documentary here, but you can see it on Youtube. Below: Gilberto Gil in his younger years.

Architectural Outsourcing

Lately I’ve been receiving messages via my Orkut account (a Google social network application comparable to MySpace) from Indian architects offering to do my architectural drafts work for me. After accountants, programmers and help-deskers, now architects can outsource to India too.

Some quotes from an article on the Hindu Business Line on the subject:

“The driving force, of course, is the cost, about one-tenth of what it would cost in the US, according to Ms Sujitha Arvind, Lead Architect, Exceed International, India”

“Ms Arvind explained that detailing of projects from the US is simple because all the details are standardized. She said that a fresher could be trained in the details over a period of six months. “

“The real estate division of Exceed’s Chennai branch started two years ago with four employees, and now has about a hundred draughtsmen, architects, engineers and project managers. “And we can expect to grow to around 1,000 in two years,” said Ms Arvind.”

According to Thomas Friedman in his book The World Is Flat, everything that can be outsourced, eventually will be outsourced, and there is no doubt about it that the Indians will succeed. Of course it is exciting to see how the Indians now have the possibility to chase their dreams too, but it is quite scary to realize that someone half a world away is aiming for my job. And knowing the raw reality of poverty, the Indians are highly motivated, and likely to be able to do my job cheaper and faster than I do.

So if we like it or not, Northern hemisphere architects will have to face a new reality. It is time to seriously rethink the organization of the architectural office as we know it. For the last few weeks I have been working on a different design team than i usually do, a team being organized in a way that I think is typical for the common architectural practice. I had to brush up my AutoCad skills, as 90% of the time I had to be involved in digitizing the designs I had made before. Whereas normally I focus on design, I had to focus on production now.

In a competitive environment where innovation and flexibility and speed are essential, production is dead weight. If we can get rid of it, it would help us. In this perspective, outsourcing helps Northern hemisphere architects to sharpen their core competences and focus on innovation, while Southern hemisphere architects focus on production. This way, a possible new balance could be found in collaboration rather than in competition.

Picture: Graphic representation of the capacity of the fibre optic cables that make outsourcing possible.

Leaves me this quote from Friedman’s book of Mayor Xia Deren of Dalian, China (considered to be the outsourcing capital of China):

“It is like building a building. Today, The US, you are the designers, the architects, and the developing countries are the bricklayers form the buildings. But one day I hope we will be the architects”

I derive comfort from the idea that architecture, like politics, is local. I just hope I am right.

More: www.thomaslfriedman.com (see the video that his linked from his site!)

Collaboration and Mediocrity

Even though collaborative design can lead to superior results, like Linux, it certainly has its pitfalls.

Shell was all about consensus. [...] At the oil company important decisions were taken just when all members of the board agreed. This strive for consensus has its pros. Less mistakes for example: when a lot of people are involved in a decision there is a small chance things are overlooked. [...] But not everyone within Shell liked this collegiality. ‘We should finish with this obsessive focus on consensus, the extreme introvercy, the tolerance for inadequacy and the bureaucracy’, Cor Herkstroter said in 1994. Driven by the disappointing results the former CEO organized all kinds of rallies to invoke a culture change.

This quote illustrates that too much a focus on consensus can result in paralysis and mediocre results. That’s why collaboration just can exist in combination with good leadership. There has to be a decision maker. Linux probably would not have been successful at all without Linus Torvalds at its helm.

Integrity is a keyword. Design decisions have to be made on basis of design quality rather than politics. If not, the community will disintegrate, and with it the subject of its collaboration.

Sources:
Magazine: HP/De Tijd 07 December 2007
Book: Just for Fun, Linus Torvalds

Simcity: Simslum

The 1989 version of computer game Simcity has been donated by software developer Electronic Arts to the One Laptop Per Child project. I’ve spend nights upon nights building metropolises with this highly addictive program.

One Laptop Per Child is, as you might know, an attempt to provide the children in 3th world countries with a free laptop to increase their chances and opportunities in order to break out of the cycle of poverty.

It’s an interesting combination: Simcity and One Laptop Per Child. Consider the future laptop owners usually live in slums. As I already mentioned here, slums are built by their inhabitants and therefore represent the ultimate democratization of design. Potentially, the marriage between Simcity and One Laptop Per Child could lead to an awareness that could ultimately improve the living conditions in slums all over the world. Quite exciting.

Imagine these future extensions: combining demographic and geographic data from Google Earth with algorithms like CityEngine and Complexification (see here and here), you could start to simulate and predict the future growth of your city, and anticipate to it. It would be the end of urban planning.

More: TED

Atmosphere and Dedication

I’ve been watching the movie ‘Control’ about Ian Curtis, singer of the band Joy Division. Director of the film is Anton Corbijn, who is known for his black and white portrait photography of celebrities. Not only the use of black and white in combination with the dramatic plot makes the movie intense. Also because the urban setting of sad post-war architecture is being used to stress the zeitgeist, and to emphasize the state of mind of the main character.

At the site of Anton Corbijn, you can see some of his famous pictures, but looking more closely, you can see all these pictures have been made just for kicks or artistic reasons, but also for commercial clients. His pictures appear in books, on posters and on the covers of magazines.

Now that’s interesting, because we architects can learn from that. When working for a client, it is easy to let yourself go and spend more time than your budget allows you to. But innovation is the client’s responsibility too, and both should collaborate in the effort. Just like Anton Corbijn, designers should win the hearts and dedication of their clients.

Brazil Network Society

Brazilians are natural networkers. Brazilians usually know where to find the people that might be able to help them, how to approach them, and how to connect with them. When Brazilians are outside of Brazil, they usually keep track of their compatriots. Not because it is a particular close group, but they need to know just in case.Claudio Prado, coordinator of digital policy of the ministry of culture of Brazil argues this is what Brazil has been for centuries. In his words: “In a Brazilian favela, that’s the way it works. You go and help your neighbor build their house. (…) That’s what you do when you don’t have money. You collaborate.”

It is no coincidence Internet social network service Orkut is mostly a success in Brazil. Orkut was launched on January 22, 2004 by Google. It is named after its creator Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer who developed it as an independent project while working at Google. Orkut was designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships and is similar to Hyves, Friendster and MySpace. Orkut goes a step further by permitting the creation of easy-to-setup simple forums (called “communities”) of users. Of its currently about 60.000.000 users, the number of Brazilians participating is an estimated 55 to 72 percent.
In Brazil, this collaborative aspect of society was intentionally just part of the collective subconsciousness, until it was formalized recently by the decision of the Brazilian federal government to be the first country in the world to use open source software for governmental institutions. Although this decision was partly taken on economic grounds, the real argument was the acceptation of a development model of which a large part of the population can take profit.

As it seems, this decision was nothing more than a logical step in the Brazilian tradition of collaboration.

More:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-brazil-loves-orkut/3082/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut

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