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The Architecture Thread

evilWagon

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Mario Kogan? I'm certainly not him, but I certainly like his houses. I actually hate showing people my [terrible] work, so you'll never find me doing that unless you're in a very small group of people I would show things to. I'm far too young to build anything anyway, as are all designers under thirty I guess.

I hear you about being self conscious about your designs, when I was starting in this Industry I'd feel less personally violated if they'd seen me naked instead. That starts to fade quickly though, and after a few successful projects your confidence level goes way up.

I'm one of those geeky kids that as soon as I knew what an Architect was that was what I was telling people I wanted to be when I grew up. I think I was 6 or 7 when I designed my first house, obviously it wasn't built and was childishly crude but it wasn't bad for a kid. Did my first scaled working drawings (dimensioned etc) and scale model when I was 11, did an unpaid internship with a residential Architect in high school, got my first commission at 18 (that was built, I paid for licensed Architects/Engineers to review and stamp it), First Award for Architecture at 19 and I opened my own firm (employing licensed Architects under contract). Did that for a few years mostly on the side while I worked for a much larger firm (non-residential, international projects couldn't turn it down). And basically burnt out by the time I was 24, I never did get licensed or a degree, I couldn't afford the time away from work to go to school to learn about what I was already doing. Likely short sighted at the time, but try telling that to a 22-23 year old living on his own in a penthouse condo and racing Porsche Turbo's on the weekend. Eventually the work consumed me and I took to sleeping only every other night and sometimes working for 72 hours straight. I was possessive of my projects and had a hard time letting them go, and a harder time trusting them to someone else. I could put out some good work but it was costing me too much (figuratively speaking).

So I quit, took a month off to get my head right, work out and bike every day, gave up the condo and sold or gave away most my of my possessions and then took a month traveling Europe, just a week in each of four cities, lots of time wandering the cities, sitting in parks and cafe's, museums, art galleries etc falling back in love with Architecture (in the broader sense). And then came back home and figured out what to do next, I tried a couple of things (Industrial Design, Marketing) which didn't satisfy me, but after two years had the 'aha' moment where I decided to pick a peripheral profession and monopolize on my strengths while not working as an Architect. Considering my pact to not have work consume me again, and only putting out my best work when it did, I decided I'd rather be a midwife for others genius rather than an evangelist of my own mediocrity.

Sorry that was rather long, but comes back to what I said before about the honesty that anonymity affords.

Anyhow it was on that trip to Europe that I came to realize that to truly appreciate Architecture it had to be experienced in person, and not in a touristy, walk in and look around sort of way. But in the quiet contemplation of passing time, the way the light travels over the surface, the minute details that you only see when looking for the 100th time, there in lies the true genius and the product of the most effort. It's an intimate experience, a tumultuous birth. Every so often, on the way back from a meeting if I'm not pressed for time I'll make a detour past one of my former projects and sit and enjoy the building in it's use, like a proud parent. And like picking up a letter your wrote to yourself years ago and sealed you remember things that you forgot you knew, and it's always a surprising experience.

Anyhow I've finished my pot of coffee and that's all the self reflection I'll allow myself this morning. Please keep posting; I keep myself from spending too much time looking into Architecture outside of my own scope of work, but I'm sure I'll stumble in here again.
 
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SkinnyGoomba

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So, what's so awful about our discussing famous works?

People of varying backgrounds with more than passing interest in the work makes for an interesting discussion. The sort of discussion that would normally only take place amongst industry professionals outside of the board, as, how often do you meet people who work outside of the field and have anything more than a passing interest?
 
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Piobaire

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Finn, seeing the mini-van parked at that house put a smile on my face.
 

evilWagon

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So, what's so awful about our discussing famous works?

People of varying backgrounds with more than passing interest in the work makes for an interesting discussion. The sort of discussion that would normally only take place amongst industry professionals outside of the board, as, how often do you meet people who work outside of the field and have anything more than a passing interest?
There's nothing awful about it, I think you misunderstood me, perhaps I came off sounding more harsh than inquisitive.

Glancing back through some of the other posts it does seem like a more knowledgeable group than I first thought. Also the level of enthusiasm is usually much higher amongst passionate amateurs, the young or the very experienced. There's some jaded close minded comments but we're all entitled to those; I can't very well tell a client or a colleague that their design is utter tripe, as much as I'd want to, and quite often a bad experience or the Architects Ego overshadows a design that if approached objectively might have been accepted in a more positive light.

There's always the crippling situation, and I'm sure Stephen or anyone else in the industry knows the feeling, where the client insists on some element or another that might not fit with your overall vision, and won't let you change the design to better incorporate it and won't be talked out of it.

Then there's the situation where the beautiful vision in your head, is corrupted by budget or time limitations or just plain poor workmanship, in a few cases, I've had a client loose the will to get things corrected, so they are permanently flawed for no good reason. Those are the projects where you have to detach yourself from them, try not to take it personally and move on this tend to happens less at the scale that Stephen (from what I gather) and I are working at now.

Then on the flip side there's the arrogant architects that insist on their vision for the space and brush aside the clients input. On one of our projects, an internationally acclaimed Architect, knighted etc told the client that (in response to their objection to one horrendously impractical and expensive design element) 'I'm only going to do X number of buildings in my career, be grateful you're getting one of them. I admired that they had the cojones to fire him in response, as it was quite the coup that they landed him in the first place.
 

Find Finn

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There's nothing awful about it, I think you misunderstood me, perhaps I came off sounding more harsh than inquisitive.

Glancing back through some of the other posts it does seem like a more knowledgeable group than I first thought. Also the level of enthusiasm is usually much higher amongst passionate amateurs, the young or the very experienced. There's some jaded close minded comments but we're all entitled to those; I can't very well tell a client or a colleague that their design is utter tripe, as much as I'd want to, and quite often a bad experience or the Architects Ego overshadows a design that if approached objectively might have been accepted in a more positive light.

There's always the crippling situation, and I'm sure Stephen or anyone else in the industry knows the feeling, where the client insists on some element or another that might not fit with your overall vision, and won't let you change the design to better incorporate it and won't be talked out of it.

Then there's the situation where the beautiful vision in your head, is corrupted by budget or time limitations or just plain poor workmanship, in a few cases, I've had a client loose the will to get things corrected, so they are permanently flawed for no good reason. Those are the projects where you have to detach yourself from them, try not to take it personally and move on this tend to happens less at the scale that Stephen (from what I gather) and I are working at now.

Then on the flip side there's the arrogant architects that insist on their vision for the space and brush aside the clients input. On one of our projects, an internationally acclaimed Architect, knighted etc told the client that (in response to their objection to one horrendously impractical and expensive design element) 'I'm only going to do X number of buildings in my career, be grateful you're getting one of them. I admired that they had the cojones to fire him in response, as it was quite the coup that they landed him in the first place.


I'm not an architect, but I do deal with property developers and architects daily, so I can relate to what you are saying.

Property developers piss me of regularly, as some of their decisions are completely marsupialed and makes no sense.
 

Piobaire

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sugarbutch

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Not at all. Minivans are well suited to the purpose of moving people around.
 

Piobaire

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SkinnyGoomba

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I thought it was odd and hysterical. There is a couple local to me that live in a multi-milliondollar custom built house and drive.....a purple minivan. Apparently reverse-chic is a global phenomenon.
 
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Find Finn

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I thought it was odd and hysterical. There is a couple local to me that live in a multi-milliondollar custom built house and drive.....a purple minivan. Apparently reverse-chic is a global phenomenon.


There's an area here where all the houses are +10 million dollars and 90% of the cars, are what most car guys would **** boxes.
 

sugarbutch

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If you don't like driving, "nice" cars are a complete waste of money. I love cars, but I completely understand why someone might have an architect-designed home and a generic Toyota.
 

Piobaire

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I think this might demonstrate even folks that live in these fantastic homes, that paid probably far above what is necessary for housing, might not be 100% awesome and settle for the practical in other areas of their lives. Seeing the ugly, pragmatic pregnant guppy of a vehicle parked there put a smile on my face for exactly that reason.
 

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