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Today, Be Your Own Architect November 21, 2009

Posted by randydeutsch in career, change, identity, management.
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Despite alarmingly dwindling reserves of architecture books – not to mention privately owned bookstores – it seems for the past 20 years, no matter where in the country, every Barnes and Noble Architecture and Design book section contains at least one copy of a decades-old book.

This book is invariably entitled, Be Your Own Architect.

The book is no doubt part of the late 80’s or early 90’s DIY movement. Had I ever bothered to look at it, the blurb on the back jacket is sure to ask something along the lines of: Why engage and pay a professional when you can do it yourself? An illustrated guide showing prospective home buyers just how easy it is to design homes to fit their exact needs while saving thousands of dollars in architectural fees…

It’s all part of American’s long held desire for independence. First from the British, more recently from architects.

Besides, who needs design professionals cluttering up their kitchen?

I have never taken a look at this book on any of the hundreds of visits to the bookstores. As an architect, having designed and built my own house, I have already made that rite of passage (and, yes, saved on architectural fees.)

But still, for some reason, the book’s title never ceases to capture my attention. Those four simple words spanning across the book spine subtly means something different every time, depending on the emphasis given to each word:

BE your own architect.

Be YOUR own architect.

Be your OWN architect.

Be your own ARCHITECT.

BE

What is it about the title? Could it be the word “Be” – that faintly Buddhist word, implying what you are – right now – in the here and now, as in another famous book starting with the word “Be,” Ram Dass’s Be Here Now

Or perhaps it’s the directness of the word “Be,” as in the Army’s admonishment, Be All You Can Be.

With this ever-changing, always in flux, mercurial, game-changing, technologically challenging world, the thought of just standing still while the world spins by must be appealing to some.

How appealing it would be to merely Be, allowing everyone else to chase that RFP.

To be, or not to be an architect: that is not the question so much as this:

How can I best use this time to once again be the architect I was meant to be?

YOUR OWN
Your own. As in, not somebody else’s, architect.

Not someone else’s idea of what an architect is – what it means to be an architect.

Nor someone else’s need for whom they need for you to be. Architects are by training – and nature – multifarious when it comes to their interests, abilities and talents. None other than Vitruvius himself expected architects to be creative and apt in the acquisition of knowledge, a good writer, a skillful draftsman, versed in geometry and optics, expert at figures, acquainted with history, informed on the principles of natural and moral philosophy, somewhat of a musician, not ignorant of the law and of physics, nor of the motions, laws, and relations to each other, of the heavenly bodies.

If the architect doesn’t know herself, it is easy to see why.  It may be that going into school architects have an inflated and misguided idea of their own abilities and who they want to be – before reality settles in, and the nefarious need to please professors (before the need arises to please bosses and clients, parents and spouses.) For some, they were last their own architects in school. Or they left their ideal of their own architect soon thereafter, upon entering the workforce, dealing with deadlines and others’ impressions of who they are – or need to be – for the project or for the firm.

When were you last Your Own Architect?

This recession has had a profound effect on many lives for those working in the profession and industry, as well as those who work with, live with and depend upon them. No doubt the effect has been felt as undeniably negative by many, not the least of all economically. But there is at least one way in which the current downturn can be seen on the upside, and that has to do with the opportunity the current situation offers you to come into your own, to touch base again with who you are, the architect.

When work was bountiful and time fleeting with deadlines repeatedly looming, we may have been our teammate’s architects, our manager’s architect or belonged to our bosses and their perhaps understandably narrow idea of who we are and are capable of. We were our colleague’s architects, the profession’s architects, architects belonging to everyone – consultants and clients, regulators and gatekeepers – everyone’s architect, but one: Your Own.

Own it. Take ownership of it. Take custody of it. Be responsible for your own condition.

ARCHITECT

Use this time wisely. Get back in touch with what it once meant for you to be an architect. With who you are, deep down (it’s still there, dormant, latent perhaps, but looming.) Listen to the dictates of your Being – of who you are and have always been.

If not now, when?

For here’s the rub: No matter your financial condition, no matter whether you like the situation that you find yourself in, no matter your outlook on life, the economy or the profession, IT WILL NEVER BE  EASIER TO BE AN ARCHITECT THAN IT IS RIGHT NOW.

Many currently – whether out of frustration, financial demands or both – are considering leaving the profession or jumping ship altogether for safer harbors in other seas. It is widely known that even in good times 50% of those trained as architects wind up successfully working in other fields. But unless your situation is dire, you owe it to yourself, right now – today – to recall, and recollect, who it was you once wanted to be. Because you’ve been so busy for so long being everybody else’s architect you’ve neglected to be the one architect you are and were meant to be.

Today, be your own architect.

Please Consider the Environment before Printing October 3, 2009

Posted by randydeutsch in change, environment, questions, sustainability, transformation.
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I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

Just back from the Design Futures Council’s 8th Annual Leadership Summit on Sustainable Design held Sept 30 –Oct 2 at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago where I served as a delegate, observer, and participant.

 Why did I attend this conference and not the BIM Forum in Phili, or the AIA’s Changing Times|Time for Change conference just down the block? I suppose that I went for a number of reasons: the promise of stimulating and challenging discussions between thoughtful professionals, out of curiosity and plain flattered for having been invited. 

But most of all I attended the Summit because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of sustainable design, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach me, and not, when I came to return to work on Monday, discover that I had not learned.

I came to kick-start and reboot something in me that had – despite my LEED –AP cred, become dormant. For me, the Summit was a reboot camp for the soul.

So, at conference’s end, two weeks into a 21 day detox – having voluntarily (some would say foolishly) given up caffeine, sugar, alcohol and gluten in addition to meat and dairy that I abandoned long ago in becoming a vegan – I make the following observations. I don’t pretend that they’re definitive or objective – this is a blog after all. Nor are they entirely representative of what went on at the Summit. Think of these as things to think about if we are to remain relevant for a while:

  • Our charge as designers, to do more with less. As poets have for millennia

 

  • What was particularly moving about Adrian Smith’s presentation is that he didn’t talk about himself or even his work. (A first for an architect?) In presenting AS+GG’s self-funded, in-progress Chicago Central Area De-Carbonization Plan, one soon comes to the realization that even if the entire city went carbon-neutral overnight it wouldn’t be enough to meet the 2030 challenge let alone offset the onslaught of global warming. We must look elsewhere to meet this challenge.

 

  • Self-guided tour of the new Renzo Piano designed Modern Wing is just a fancy way of saying walk around the museum for an hour

 

  • Art/design and sustainability are mutually supportive, mutually beneficial

 

  • We were wisely encouraged by Greenway founder and author Jim Cramer to look at the presentation subjects and data with a “constructive paranoia,” not with myopia or blind optimism

 

  • Our goal: to minimize the impact of climate change on the city

 

  • A realist defines sustainable development as that which meets all the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. An optimist defines sustainable development as that which meets all the needs of the present while improving the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

 

  • A pessimist asks: What future generations?

 

  • Raising animals in order to eat them leads to land degradation, climate change, air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and the consumption of 760 million tons of grain – to animals – that could otherwise help feed the starving.

 

  • And so: The wisdom of serving steak at a sustainability conference?

 

  • Not convinced? The amount of feed it takes to feed an animal to create one 8-oz steak could fill 50 bowls with cooked grain.

 

  • Veganism is the new Prius

 

  • Autonomy is the enemy of collaboration

 

  • Unless its an autonomous team 

 

  • We all know the benefits by now. Let’s move onto co-benefits.

 

  • Someone ought to revise Maslow’s hierarchy pyramid to reflect the fact that people don’t care about climate and the environment until their basic needs are met

 

  • We ought to first focus on meeting people’s basic needs (and fast)

 

  • Dfn. Sustainability: not cheating on  the grandkids – David Adamson

 

  • There are metrics available that can put hard numbers on soft effects

 

  • “We’re just about Burnhamed-out.” – Wellington “Duke” Reiter

 

  • People are not excited by charts. People aren’t motivated by statistics. They’re motivated by statistics they can feel. Challenge: How to make the message compelling?

 

  • We need to talk about what we know in a way that people can understand

 

  • Problems growing faster than the solutions

 

  • U.S.’s #1 export: suburbia

 

  • We don’t have to be experts in each of these subjects. The beauty of design is to be the catalyst

 

  • Developers are motivated by money, fear and guilt. The rest of us by money, fear and consciousness

 

  • Guilt is Jewish/Catholic consciousness

 

  • The essence of religion is faith. The essence of science is doubt. – Richard Feynman

 

  • Our #3 problem: How to reach out beyond the design community? How to get the message about global warming and sustainability out to people who will be impacted by it?

 

  • Our #2 problem: Nobody wants to hear it from an architect. Architects cannot come across that they have the answers.

 

  • Our #1 problem: Architects are implying that they have the answers.

 

  • Recognize what it is we do have

 

  • Architects ought to borrow a page from doctors and – in building on this planet –  strive first and foremost to do no harm

 

  • Learning is remembering what you are interested in. – Richard Saul Wurman

 

  • You have to have a purpose bigger than your product

 

  • So we resorted to focus-group brainstorming sessions arriving at advertising-like taglines in time for lunch

 

  • Please Consider the Environment before Printing

 

  • What the design community needs to do. What people need to do.

 

  • You get the sense that we’re waiting for someone to step up. A hero, someone to champion the cause. To provide hope. To provide direction.

 

  • FedEx days: when you have to deliver something – at work – overnight.  – Dan Pink

 

  • “The Sentence comes from a story Clare Boothe Luce told about a conversation she had in 1962 in the White House with her old friend John F. Kennedy. She told him, she said, that “a great man is one sentence.” His leadership can be so well summed up in a single sentence that you don’t have to hear his name to know who’s being talked about. “He preserved the union and freed the slaves,” or, “He lifted us out of a great depression and helped to win a World War.” You didn’t have to be told “Lincoln” or “FDR.”  – Peggy Noonan

 

  • What is your sentence?

 

  • “Make sure what you do doesn’t turn around to bite you in the ass.”

The real value for having attended something as rich and diverse as a Summit cannot be summarized in a sentence (not even The Sentence.) What resonates after the last session is over are the relationships and friendships that were made, the meeting of minds and hearts, and the knowledge that there is a community of likeminded individuals that is greater than the sum of its however impressive parts. And for that reason alone the Summit ought to live on as long as the planet is able to support it. I came away from this event recharged, and yes, remembering what I am interested in.

On the New Pragmatism September 13, 2009

Posted by randydeutsch in architect, architect types, fiction, function, pragmatism, transformation, transition.
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poetrynews

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)

 

With summer unofficially over, school back in session, and the light of day dwindling we find that we have to be all the more observant of how we spend our time. We tell ourselves that we have to make everything we do, every activity, every task, matter – or it is out of our regiment, we don’t have time for it.

The marketing and advertising world has picked-up on this rather 21st century tick of ours – call it multi-tasking, call it our striving for meaning-over-money – by renaming otherwise familiar products in the name of function.

One example are the so-called functional­ foods  or “smart” foods and beverages that line grocery shelves containing “functional” ingredients touted to help protect your heart and vision, keep our gastrointestinal tract healthy, and even boost our immune system. Sales of these foods topped $25 billion last year despite not all health claims being substantiated.

Another example has crept up on the job hunters who are being forced to recreate their resumes. The functional resume format – one of several resume layouts including reverse chronological (listing all your experience from most to least recent) and functional, which lists experience in skills clusters. For those finding that they need to update their old resume – including those with very diverse experiences that don’t add up to a clear-cut career path – a functional format could be considered.

Form Follows Function

Ever since Louis Sullivan touted these words, architects have by turns been instructed to design buildings in the name of function [and of late finance.] We’ve been told that if you give your form – however subjective and intuitive, discretionary or ill-conceived – a purpose, a justification, a use – you can sell it and see it built. Whether real or fictional, function has been top of mind for architects – at least in their social interactions – for well over 100 years.

On this anniversary of 9/11 we recall a time soon after the attacks when irony was pronounced dead and fiction reading has dropped by double digits while nonfiction hung tough. People wanted their information and they wanted it straight. Sales of fiction suffered almost immediately after the attacks. Escapism and entertainment were thought to be secondary if not unnecessary distractions. We were living in a time of war and information was at a premium.

After 9/11 those who associated fiction with the frivolous fueled a unexpected resurgence for poems.   Readers still wanted their nonfiction piled on but kept Auden’s September 1, 1939 or Wislawa Szymberska’s Poems New and Collected by their night stand. Poetry was one exception for it soothed the soul and, perhaps ironically, kept us rooted in the moment.

If they read fiction at all – novels, short stories, drama – it had to be informative, informational, instructive in some way,. For our time was short at hand and the end perhaps all too near. Call it “functional fiction” –fiction that is useful – fiction you can use. Stories that if they entertained did so while providing nuggets of truths or at least truisms we could take with us to work in the morning. Tales, if they carried us away to distant lands, did so clearly spelling out the lay of the land, recommending places to stay and sights to see: novel as travelogue.

And poetry? Not just for your nightstand anymore, Poem in your Pocket – a book of 200 poems you can tear out one at a time and put in your pocket – is available for those who need the feeling of inner security not found in the outside world.  They’re available in bite size poems for your kids  as well.

NonfictionFiction

Which takes us to two novels – both current bestsellers – to help to illustrate this point.

In Nicholson Baker’s latest novel, The Anthologist, we meet Paul Chowder at a rather tough time in his life as he shares – in an often very funny stream of consciousness – his woes and his knowledge of poetry. While you are being amused and entertained – watch out – you will be left by book’s end with a veritable college education in poets, contemporary and classical, poetry writing and appreciation. The book will have you compulsively seeking out poets and poems as a music review has you do for songs on iTunes. While thoroughly enjoying yourself you will acquire an expert and splendid education in poetry writing and reading.

Such is also the case in fiction writer Lorrie Moore’s just-released novel, A Gate at the Stairs. One of the few short story and novel writers that continuously keeps readers in stitches, here she seems to have a keen sense of the need for fiction to function beyond the tasks of storytelling. As pointed out in a recent review in the New York Times, while the book has been called “heartbreaking” and her “masterpiece,” and while it is every bit as punny and funny as her other fictions, the intrusion of the real world – and by that I mean international affairs, wars and real-time events – leaves one with the feeling that in order too stay relevant – and read – the work had to allow nonfiction in. Strike it up to another example of NonfictionFiction.

How to Decide

It is hard not to feel that something has been lost in the translation – from a more or less pure fiction that purported to carry us away, to involve our imagination and fantasies and, yes, at times, allow us escape from the humdrum or overly demanding worlds we have come to know and be a part of. That everything must mean, and teach, and instruct, and deliver – puts not only an unnecessary demand on authors but on readers as well. It is as though too often fun has been left out of the stuff of fiction and been replaced by the news.

So how to decide – not only what to read – but what to include in your already overly crammed life and what to exclude? In lieu of function I suggest we turn to pragmatism. An enlightened Pragmatism. By asking yourself three inimitably essential questions of the choices you confront on a daily basis, you will find in time that your life is filled – not with trivia and facts – but with activities, occasions and opportunities that are physically, mentally and spiritually uplifting, supportive of who you are and want to become and life-enhancing.

These simple questions are potentially life-changing – so do add them to your arsenal now but only use them when you are ready to move forward with your life:

1. Is it nurturing?

2. Is it growth-promoting?

3. Does it work for me?

These three simple inquiries – when answered – have worked for me every time for well over twenty years. Do you have questions you ask yourself to help you make important decisions in your life?

How Little the Future is Focused on the Future August 30, 2009

Posted by randydeutsch in architect, change, technology, transformation.
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“This new generation does not waste time speculating about the future.  Its attitude seems to be: Who needs the future? The present is plenty interesting on its own.”

The most striking thing about the best technology writing of 2009 is how little of it focuses on the future.

So opens the introduction of The Best Technology Writing 2009, as in the past made up of short articles from periodicals, blogs, newspapers. And how refreshing to discover a technology reader that continually returns us – neither to the foreseeable future nor the recent past – but to the eternal now. Readers and writers both were invited by the Yale University Press to nominate pieces, and even self-nominations are encouraged, with a preference for “profiles, policy, and Big Think pieces including blog posts, features, and investigative reporting; human interest, humor, business and gadgetry.”

In other words, the usual geeky fair with the ideal submissions being engagingly written for a mass audience, no longer than 5,000 words and published in 2008 (explaining how the 2009 collection – though with an official publishing date in October, can be had in August.)

Guest edited (given their quality it would be more accurate to say curated collection of essays) by Steven Johnson author of Everything Bad Is Good for You, it turns out that the criteria for inclusion in the collection is as creative and open-sourced as the content within.

Some of Johnson’s favorite passages in this collection “have this introspective quality: the mind examining its own strange adaption to a world that has been transformed by information technology.”

With our preoccupation with all things online we may have inadvertently missed a remarkable streak of emotive writing when learning of the previous collections: last year’s The Best of Technology Writing 2008, Sherry Turkle, Director, MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, and author of my current favorite read Simulation and Its Discontents (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life), wrote “reading this collection, one suspects he is right—it sparkles with beautifully written narratives not only about what technology can do for us but what it does to us as people, to our ways of thinking about ourselves, our relationships, and how we envisage our world.” The human element in this collection looms large.

There has been much written in the past about “High Tech, High Touch,” the balancing and rebalancing of the cool innovations of technology with the all-too-human interface. The essays selected for The Best Technology Writing 2009 take “touch” to another plane altogether when you consider how in touch they are with our feelings about our current – and human – condition.

The Best of Technology Writing 2007 also touched on the human element (social networking, “crowdsourcing” and the online habits of urban moms, amongst others) and the changes that connected computers have brought to this aspect of human behavior.

The current collection contains essays by Nicholas Carr [worrying that Google is making us stupid,] Dana Goodyear [heartbreakingly chronicling the renaissance of the cell phone novel,] Andrew Sullivan [on why he blogs,] Dalton Conley [on how the wealthy overwork in the information age,] and a particularly incisive essay by Clay Shirky marveling at the “cognitive surplus” unleashed by the decline of the TV sitcom, resulting in Wikipedia and perhaps the saving of the earth, amongst many others.

So why should architects of all stripes bother with this annual collection of well-wrought wisdom? For many reasons – not the least of which being that architects – whether building or software – can get pretty wrapped-up in the latest technology and software only to be reminded that it is people that count. People – who use the buildings or programs, people who we are designing for. A simple message perhaps – but one we need reminding of each day as we sit before the monitor and design.

Something that says a great deal about technology today is that I discovered the book at my local bookstore and shamelessly ordered it from Amazon at 7:30PM that weekday evening only for it to arrive – free of charge – at 3PM the next afternoon. That’s technology for you – but also excellent customer service. The “get it in two-day” delivery option under-promised and over-performed – what any self-respecting service provider (including architect) would strive to do. Needless to say, with an official release date still months away, let it be acknowledged that this is the book’s first review.

As Johnson concludes in his introduction, “sometimes, when the future finally arrives, the most surprising thing you discover is that things aren’t that different after all.” Bless this realization.

Returning Home to What we Are August 18, 2009

Posted by randydeutsch in change, optimism, possibility, questions, the economy, transformation.
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We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.                                                             T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Amongst several other projects, in the past year as an architect I have worked on the design of a 180 story super-tall high rise and designed a mile long retail spine. It’s easy to understand with projects such as these how architects can get it in their minds that what they do has cosmic importance and is on some level even heroic.

Many of these largest projects were designed and destined for countries expanding at a fast clip, often found abroad. We would find ourselves setting off for distant lands to compete and conquer and reap our rewards by garnering yet another commission.

We’ve been on many voyages – professional, family, artistic – all involving great effort and many sacrifices on our part. And on the part of others.

The past several years has led us on a journey to many foreign – and some not so foreign – destinations and here we find ourselves, back where we started.

All of that was – as we know too well – a lifetime ago. Here we are today, summer winding down, sailing home. Today we find ourselves on the most unusual destination of all: home, returning to the place where we started. If anything, the economic headwinds have brought each of us back into our own. Reintroduced us to ourselves as though we had been away from ourselves and are only now returning and getting reacquainted.

Many architects with our long hours and near obsession with our craft and calling, are using this newfound land of time to readjust and reprioritize. The Odyssey is over – it is time to return home.

Or so writes Norman Fischer in his profoundly beautiful Sailing Home: Using Homer’s Odyssey to Navigate Life’s Perils and Pitfalls.  Comparing Odysseus’s journey to our own, Fischer asserts that this book “will help you appreciate the shape and feeling for the journey, will give you the reflections to keep you company and perhaps also steady your step as you walk forward into the darkness.” For those trying to make their way back from your own 10-years wars with our own personal Troys in these challenging times, it is a book I cannot recommend enough. As much as any book that has come before, because it is inspired by and based on a living classic that has been with us for thousands of years, the book is about you and your life, right now.

So why do I recommend this book to architects? For the very reason that architects (of all stripes) are strivers, journeymen and women, fighting daily battles inside and outside the office to overcome divine and earthly obstacles, in search of a promised (but little seen) heroism. Odysseus and his wanderings are certainly relevant to architect’s own heroic journey – wherever you find yourself on your own. The book will help you to yield personal revelations, make sense of your past journeys, elucidate their outcomes and show you the way to greater purpose and meaning in your own life.

Additionally, one of the books messages will stand out for many architects: namely, to resist novelty and instead replace it with repetition (practice) which will lead in time to Mastery. Certainly this is a welcome message after so many years of one-upmanship of taller, bigger, longer. Likewise, Fischer advises that we stop criticizing the state of things and instead accept “all that is  messy, inexact, troublesome and uncontrollable in human life.” A relief for the perfectionists in us all in these all-too messy times.

So where does he suggest we go from here? As though speaking directly to the architect in all of us, Fischer surmises “Perhaps we are living in a post-heroic age. Maybe the human race, so full of promise, bright ideas, and hubris, is finally weary of the toxic idealisms and thoughtless excesses of power that has been so destructive and so exhausting for so long. We have seen and done so much, and it has left us dazed and confused. Maybe, like Odysseus, we are finally ready simply to return home to what we are, to our beauty and strength as well as our limitations…”

Could this be enough?

Regaining a Sense of Self August 9, 2009

Posted by randydeutsch in Ambiguity, architect, change, identity, the economy, transformation.
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Today’s New York Times has a front page story on the science of identity that has me thinking about how easy it is to lose a sense of yourself at this time – in summer but also in history. When it comes to identity the media has been focused almost exclusively on identity theft and much less so on the subject of our social identity – the roles we play and how we see ourselves in relation to others. In the midst of August – especially this particular August – with a recession reversing gears and uncertain signs of recovery ahead, it is easy to consider the possibility of an identity crisis.

 

Summer months in particular often relieve us of the social roles that we play: we shed our work clothes as we do our social identity or cultural identity. Just think of Congress or the Supreme Court justices on summer recess, donning swimsuits in lieu of robes and dress suits. Summer challenges our social and cultural identities – our professional identities – at a time when we are already feeling the stress and strain of reduced hours – or relief altogether of our workday duties.

 

As for myself, I have been spending most of my waking hours this summer – when not at the office – writing my book, “BIM and Integrated Design” (Wiley, 2011) and besides the isolated sustainable hotel design or infrequent master plan, not designing as much as I might. An architect is someone who designs buildings, right? Is an architect an architect when they are writing? Or going to the movies?

 

Aspiring Architect

 

It seems that even in the media architects are in a perpetual state of becoming. A recent article noted “When screenwriters give a hero a career, it’s often architecture. Think Walter Pidgeon in Mrs. Miniver and Adam Sandler in Click. When Matt Dillon attempts to impress Cameron Diaz in There’s Something About Mary, he pretends to be an architect.” More recently we’ve seen several trailers for upcoming films with an architect in the lead role, not to mention the current hit in theaters, “(500) Days of Summer,” where Tom is an aspiring architect with a day job writing copy for greeting cards. “The public perceives architecture as a career for creative, free spirits who nonetheless earn good money while designing cool new buildings,” and yet the article concludes that “there’s a Grand Canyon of difference between the screen and reality.” This gulf is the very same one we ourselves feel – between architects portrayed on screen and the architects we are. Take that even further – architects we aren’t when we’re on vacation, on furlough or not practicing due to unemployment or by choice.

 

By the time they graduate from college, architects should be well-prepared for the identity challenges of multiple role-playing. The AIA’s Richard Hobbs believes that as many as 50 percent of the nation’s architectural graduates now work, or soon will, outside the profession. Consider this: Half of your classmates are doing something else entirely. It’s no wonder that for the 50% that stick with it and practice architecture within the profession must from time to time regain a sense of who they are – in terms of what they do. So to answer the question “When is an architect not an architect?” the best answer is probably one that finds the architect isolated from colleagues, not attending conferences and social gatherings, working alone or not working at all; going after work that doesn’t match their profile and tap into their core competencies; with each passing day living without the small but vital reminders – a coworker passing along an image found online, seeing a building that touches you somewhere deep down, an article that connects with you on some level that you can identify with – of who we are and why we do what we do. That is when an architect is least of all an architect. It is then that you know that you need to return – as so many are returning right now to school or to work – in order to regain a sense of self so that we might help others – through the work we do and the buildings we design and build – do the same for themselves. What are you doing right now to regain and strengthen your sense of self?

 

Architecting a Brighter Future July 14, 2009

Posted by randydeutsch in Ambiguity, creativity, problem solving, the economy.
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Faced with difficulties too many to enumerate, it’s easy in times like these to give up, to disregard the wisdom proffered by our “Big A” Architect higher selves and fall back on old attitudes and mindsets of our “little a” selves. And yet architects are gifted with attributes, abilities, insights and competencies that help them turn the dourest site or least inspiring program into a mercurial work of art. Abilities such as seeing the big picture and granular detail at the same time; comfort with ambiguity, flexibility and creative problem solving come to mind. So why is it then that we cannot apply these traits to the seemingly insurmountable problems at hand? For certainly there is no impediment, hurdle, roadblock, trend or threat that the architect can’t handle. To name only a few:

CLIENTS EXPECT DISCOUNTS OR FREE WORK

Little a architect, out of fear, complies.

Big A Architect proposes a win-win should the project move forward.

CLIENT HAS NO PARTICULAR URGENCY (“Banks aren’t loaning anytime soon…”)

Little a architect responds to assignment status quo.

Big A Architect offers client services, seeks out and connects client with credible, freely flowing lines of credit, treating every assignment as though it would be built tomorrow.

OLD CLIENTS ARE NEW AGAIN

Big A Architect treats past clients with same respect and attention as new (if you can remember what those were like.) They are after all the ones we nurtured and worked so hard to retain and repeat. It’s only natural that they’d think of us in times like these, when so little loyalty can be found.

Little a architects pull out the accounts receivable and stew.

COMPETITORS ARE DISCOUNTING THEIR SERVICES

Big A Architect treats this as an opportunity to evaluate her work processes and acquired inefficiencies – to be honest with herself and her staff – to keep and reinforce what’s working and rid of what’s not.

Little a architect cries foul.

COMPETITORS EATING DOWN THE FOOD CHAIN

Little a architect says: Look who’s shown up for lunch!

Big A Architect accepts this as all part of the process, welcomes their peers and looks for opportunities to collaborate. And admits that they are doing the same – taking-on projects outside their area of interest and expertise. “Out of our strike zone.” Heck, the partners are doing the very same thing within their own offices! Working down the food chain, taking-on assignments that they used to delegate to others, working their way down the org chart. Big A stands for Abundance – and the Big A Architect knows that there’s enough to go around for everyone.

CONSTRUCTION COSTS ARE DOWN

Big A Architects call clients whose projects have stalled due to costs and inquires as to whether they would like to reevaluate given the circumstances – material costs are down 10-15% in some areas, even if labor remains out of touch. Maybe your project is financeable, more palatable to the developer, the owner – and the bank.

Little a architects wonder why their clients aren’t calling them.

NEW MARKETS WILL BE FUELED BY NEW PLAYERS

Little a architects see this is a euphemism for unemployed architects.

While Big A Architects mimic their tendency to be agile, flexible and open to possibilities – scrappy even – open to everything that comes their way. We used to offer steak and potatoes – today it’s tapas. It’s all a la carte – “additional services” are now our bread and butter.) If no one needs what we have to offer (tapas) we recalibrate, fine tune, retrain and offer what is needed. We approach any client willing to listen (listening is free) what it is that they didn’t realize they needed because they didn’t know it existed or that anybody did that – especially you, whom they thought they knew like the back of their hand. If it’s no longer a product that you offer – or even a service – then it’s something altogether new and different and remarkably beneficial for all involved: we offer “process.” We’re experts at process – because we know how.

Little a architect, uncertain of recovery, wonders where’s the bottom?

Little a architect sees the huge surplus in housing, retail, commercial, hotel and says: We’re toast. Obsolete, redundant, inconsequential.

Big A Architect looks out the window and sees a world of possibility. Buildings crying out for reuse; clients in need of their creativity, insights, point of view, experience, tenacity that they heroically exhibit every day they come into the office. Here’s to the roll-up-your-sleeve, scrappy tenacity of you, the Big A Architect.

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Summer June 28, 2009

Posted by randydeutsch in architect types, career, change, employment, survival, the economy.
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One of the best books I have ever read, fiction or non-fiction, is Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work writes Steve_Denning author of award-winning books The Secret Language of Leadership and The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling

Summer’s officially here – with recession in full swing – and so this would seem like the unlikeliest of times to be considering the subject of work. But work is the subject of this post – for I’m about to embark on a one month long voluntary furlough to help the firm make payroll for the remaining architects back in the office. I face the coming month with a mixture of curiosity, ennui and oddly, relief. Relief because up until now I have miraculously managed to be employed or self-employed continuously for 25 consecutive years and I am looking forward to doing many things with this newfound time: writing my book, biking with the kids, training in new technology, and perhaps as great as any of these, doing some much needed mid-career exploration of the very notion of work. And despite the furlough probably some work as well.

Do you live to work or work to live?

With so many out of work right now it would seem like a luxury to spend valuable sun-soaked hours pondering the meaning of work: what it means to individuals and society, who ultimately benefits from it and what it takes for it to be considered meaningful. It’s not as though work is an option – for most, it’s a necessity, and for others, a necessary evil. Few have the metaphysical disposition to question “to work or not to work?” That is certainly not the question, for work we must.

Who better to guide us on this exploration than Alain de Botton, author of The_Architecture_of_Happiness and this summer’s runaway nonfiction bestseller, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, an examination  of 10 professions and industries in 10 chapters covering the one thing most of us devote the greater part of our lives to. Specifically, de Botton writes cleverly and entertainingly about the

  • specialization of labor,
  • production of superfluous goods,
  • our removal from the sources of what we consume,
  • detachment of meaning from work, and
  • elusiveness of self-fulfillment.

What work?

As reviewers, commenters and de Botton himself points out – most of us entered our chosen field by way of decisions made when we were unthinking students looking for something to earn us spending or rent money without really giving it much thought. Our careers chose us by paying well or being conveniently located to our homes, we didn’t choose our careers. This lull in summer affords us the opportunity to consider – or reconsider – this choice. To take ownership of it. To make it our choice – rather than one that happened to us, as though from some source outside ourselves.

Identity

We all know what we do for a living. But what exactly is it? Work is the thing, says de_Botton, alongside love and perhaps children, from which we derive our identities. All societies have had work at their center, but modern Western culture, he says, is the first to assume that a “meaningful existence must invariably pass through the gate of remunerative employment.” In a time when we’re all just trying to make our mortgage payments – let alone enjoy some of the fringe benefits of summer in the city – is it too much of a burden put upon ourselves to ask of work to be anything more than a means to a paycheck?

As one commenter put it, “There is a nobility in simply arriving home at the end of a day having secured the resources sufficient to meet one’s needs.” And so again we ask: is this enough?

Questions

Along the way de Botton tries to answer some of the most urgent questions we ask about work:

  • Why do we do it?
  • What makes it pleasurable?
  • What is its meaning? And
  • Why do we daily exhaust not only ourselves but also the planet?

To look at work and life through a wider lens

Summer ought to be about pleasure pure and simple – not sorrow. A season not meant to be fraught with the burden of finding employment, meaningful or otherwise. This delightful book, dressed for summer release in sand colored sleeve, is a light read in a heavy book, as much photo essay as word painting, and the perfect accompaniment to your own explorations into the travails and pleasures of work.

Author Steve_Denning recommends Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (Penguin, 2009) strongly: “provided you understand his mindset and appreciate finely crafted prose, you will find this one of the funniest and wisest books you will ever read,” Denning concludes in his own review of this worthwhile and enjoyable book.

Read or Perish: A Summer Top 10 List June 11, 2009

Posted by randydeutsch in integrative thinking, management, software architects.
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I recently discovered a new section of the bookstore and my life has been all the more enriched for it. For all the time I’ve spent amongst the shelves I somehow overlooked a veritable treasure trove of bounded and unbounded delights. Today I am going to share this life-changing discovery with you.

Computer books are to bookstores as milk is to grocers: you have to walk past everything else in the store to get there. Past fiction, history, gardening and cooking – you’ll inevitably find them in the farthest reaches of the store, the most distant point from the store entrance.

I’ve visited the section before – to brush up on Excel, to learn some software tips and tricks. On this one occasion there was something else that had drawn me to the computer technology book section. A book I had been looking for – on project management – suddenly appeared on a shelf near the geographic center of the long expanse of computer books: Making Things Happen by Scott Berkun. Not just any book on managing people, one’s self, clients, time, work processes, schedules and budgets – written by the Microsoft alumnus and program manager of Internet Explorer – this book has gone on to be my all-time favorite book on the subject. I’ve returned to this shelf in computer sections of new and used bookstores on several occasions in the months since and have been rewarded every time by fabulous titles with evocative cover art. None of these are dry technology doorstoppers – but instead they’re each in their own right works of art and pleasures to behold. They’re each entertaining, deep and rewarding reads. They’ll teach you something you didn’t know – not about software or programming – but about the work you love, the work you’re passionate about, the work you do day in day out. You’ll come away from these books richer, larger, more expansive – and more interesting. For each serves as a metaphor applicable to what you’re already doing and the time invested will be rewarded a hundredfold.

Many of these books are published by Tim O’Reilly (his Twitter tweets are some of the best, most informative, authoritative and most followed http://twitter.com/timoreilly). Although his more familiar and most popular books, updated hourly, can be found here, some of his lesser known titles have made my Top 10 including 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know; and the urgent and important Devices of the Soul. The “beautiful” series cannot be missed, with such tantalizing titles as Beautiful Security, Beautiful Code, and Beautiful Architecture: Leading Thinkers Reveal the Hidden Beauty in Software Design by Diomidis Spinellis and Georgios Gousios. The all-time favorite among pleasure-seeking adventuresome readers, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, comes as close to seductive non-fiction as any book you might come across at the beach. If there is a more enjoyable summer read than Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (Second Edition) I have not found it.  In addition to the previously mentioned Making Things Happen, Scott Berkun has written a wonderful book on the creative mind, the myths of innovation. Microsoft Press’s near-perfect Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction tops-off the list.

Lastly, I would be remiss in not mentioning the self-explanatory and hilarious underground cult classic The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. No beach bag should be without it.

 

Summer Top 10 Lists

Nonfiction

Making Things Happen

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

the myths of innovation

Beautiful Code

Devices of the Soul

97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know

Subject To Change : Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World: Adaptive Path on Design

Code Complete

 

Fiction*

At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz  

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Then We Came to the End: A Novel by Joshua Ferris

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz  

*You thought you were going to make it through summer without reading any fiction? Guess again!

The Receptionist’s Candy Bowl as Economic Indicator June 7, 2009

Posted by randydeutsch in Ambiguity, architect, career, change, employment, survival, the economy.
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It’s official. You no longer recognize your life.

Things you’ve seen over the past few months you can’t quite place. Often, you don’t have a name for them. And if it weren’t for your spouse, no one would believe that they’re happening to you.

It’s as though you’re living in some kind of simulacrum of someone else’s existence, only for about half the salary. Without matching funds. And the candy bowl is empty.

Your company mobile phones are long gone. You can no longer print in color. Just the sound of the office printer – inexplicably stocked only with resume paper – raises eyebrows.

The company printer is no longer for printing. It is for emailing. You use it to email things to yourself. Otherwise your mail box would be empty. This is now what you do for a living.

Working part time, if they want you to work a full week (and legally they can’t ask you to do that) they assign you to kitchen clean-up duty at 4:30PM on Fridays, a day you haven’t worked in 6 months. Not cleaning the kitchen at 4:30PM on Fridays is grounds for dismissal, so you show up for work on Friday at 4:30PM, clean the kitchen and leave fifteen minutes later.

You’ve cracked the code. This is the new win-win. And the kitchen is clean come Monday morning.

Renting available cubicle real-estate, your former clients now sit amongst you. They use the company bathroom, not the bathroom for company.

Going after work you normally don’t go after, you inevitably run into the same firms, going after work they normally don’t go after. Those that normally went after this work aren’t anywhere to be found.

The receptionist’s candy bowl as economic indicator. Completely empty in March, the bowl is now filled each morning with candy leftover from Halloween. Even so, it empties before noon.

You wonder if eating stale candy means things are improving.

In order to network effectively, you attend afterhours events featuring presentations on quarter sawn lumber, rooftop mounted wind-turbines, and the future of the city. All in the same day.

You no longer know who you are. You find yourself frequently referencing your business card to remind yourself who you are.

You need to order more business cards, but are afraid to ask.

Meanwhile, you find yourself considering whether quarter sawn wind-turbines might save our cities?

Attending webinars in conference rooms. Muted. Phoning-in to RFP Q&As. Disembodied voices.

Owners, recognizing the feeding frenzy, suddenly put out their projects in hopes of attracting the lowest bidder.

Can you be furloughed from a furlough? During your furlough, you’re needed at the office. Then, inexplicably, the client stops calling. You no longer know where you should be.

You find yourself offering weird services for which you know you are not qualified. Building commissioning in foreign countries. 3D laser scanning of entire cities. Quarter-sawing lumber.

People you haven’t spoken to in 20 years suddenly “friend” you online. Eleven seconds later they request an introduction. Wham Bam, Recommend Me Man.

Former colleagues, unemployed, quizzically seem better off than you. You run into one at the gym. They look at you like recession, what recession?

You know you should have taken their job offer.

Former donors to social service organizations are now recipients of their services.

You consider temporarily living away from your spouse, children and dog. You wonder how the dog will handle it.

Not knowing what to do with the accumulated pile of once vital information on living in Dubai.

Former classmates – now semi-famous politicians, actors and actresses – find you on social networking sites. Just at the one time in the past 20 years when you have nothing to brag about, you’re needy, and for all your former success the best you can offer when they suggest meeting for drinks is going Dutch.

You feel like you’re 16 again on Facebook because you are 16 again.

You’re making what you made in 1989 but the world, uncooperatively, costs 2009.

New technologies keep popping up, you wonder – with every passing day hovering ever closer to retirement – whether you’ll need to learn them. Or can take a pass. You wait and see.

The irony that you need to belong to organizations and attend networking events in order to find the kind of job where you make the kind of money to pay for these organizations and networking events.

No longer contributing to your 401K while watching the market climb. Afraid that contributing will trigger something that causes the market to stop climbing.

When your business cards finally run out, is that your last day?

You remind yourself that a watched receptionist’s candy bowl never fills.