Mary

--> Mary

02/24/2018

After work yesterday evening Angela and I were taking a short walk in our neighborhood. After two blocks we saw an elderly woman, probably in her early 80s, attempting to cross the street perpendicular to our direction. She was having a difficult time stepping off the curb with her walker and instinctively we crossed the street to help her.

Mary (her name written on a strip of paper taped to her walker) was wearing pajama bottoms, a tee shirt, sneakers, and a long but thin sweater. Although it was still sunny, the temperature was in the low to mid 50s and there was a little wind blowing which made it feel cooler. I commented on how lightly she was dressed for such a cold day and she mentioned that she didn’t need to go too far, “just down the block”. Mary walked with some difficulty so we asked if we could walk with her to make sure she arrived safely. She was very thankful and accepted, but when we asked what her address was she said she didn’t remember, only that her house was yellow. What street was it on, I asked. She didn’t remember that either but said that if we walked far enough she’d know it when we got there.

But one more block was the end of the street, and we pointed that out to her. She was a bit confused and was getting agitated. “What street are we on?”, “What city is this?” She asked. My answers only seemed to confound her more. We asked her if there was someone we could call for her, but Mary didn’t remember any phone numbers. Or names. Or how far she’d walked that afternoon. She was weak and tired and thirsty. “Maybe it’s a good time to call the police” she said, but I was already dialing. As I stepped away to talk to the operator I over heard her say “I don’t want to go back to the nursing home” to Angela.

While dispatch put me on hold I knocked on a neighbor’s door and asked permission to have Mary sit on a chair in their porch. Instead they kindly let her in the house, helped her sit on the sofa, and gave her water and a warm blanket while waiting for the police to arrive. I had to leave but the owner of the house told me not to worry, that she’d make sure Mary was in good hands.

If, as Mahatma Ghandi said, “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members”, then we are pitifully inferior. We don’t provide adequate housing, medical care, and social services the elderly need for their survival let alone for a dignified retirement. We warehouse them in god-awful places where all they do is sit, hoping death comes quickly; or worse, we put them out into the street to fend for themselves.

Meanwhile, the government is itching to privatize (i.e. pillage) what’s left of Social Security, the insurance companies and their cronies in government fight tooth-and-nail to prevent a single-payer healthcare system and destroy what’s left of the Affordable Care Act, the pharmaceutical companies take every opportunity to raise prices as high as the market will bear. In short, a concerted effort to pry the last dime off the hands of the elderly, the sick, the disabled, the poor, the veterans, the mentally ill.

What a shame, on all of us!

Carlos Ovalle

Gentrificación - Chusmatizacion

Hoy durante la cena Angela y yo hablábamos acerca del termino "gentrification" y tratábamos de encontrar una traducción correcta al español. Al no conseguirlo buscamos en el internet y descubrimos que se dice "gentrificación", un neologismo. Existen otras traducciones que se han considerado o utilizado pero sin ser tan apropiados como gentrificación, tal como elitización, la cual nos gusto a ambos.

Luego de leer, en español, un resumen del termino, Angela comento que la inversa había pasado en nuestro vecindario cuando compramos nuestra casa. En ese entonces estábamos rodeados principalmente de gente de raza blanca y de mayores ingresos. Nosotros logramos comprar la casa debido a que había estado abandonada por mas de un año y estaba en condiciones de ruina. De no ser así no hubiésemos podido. Pero, al mudarnos, el vecino mas antagonista y racista le comento a los otros vecinos, "when those Mexicans move in, there goes the neighborhood" (cuando se mudan aquí esos Mexicanos se arruina el vecindario).  Entonces, pregunto Angela, ¿cual es el antónimo de gentrificación? Chusmatizacion, conteste yo.

Thoughts on the California drought emergency.

I belong to the American Water Works Association online group in which I am an active participant. In response to a current hot issue, the severe drought in California, I posted something about global climate change having an impact on the drought. Seemed like a no-brainer to me, but not to others. One response was "the issue here was "Water emergency in California due to record drought." 
Why are you discussing global warming?." My response follows:

It is disingenuous to address the issue of drought in California without addressing everything that impacts the drought, and without addressing the entire region's drought crisis. Nothing exists in isolation. The drought is not just an issue of lack of water, it's also about politics, money, and climate change. 

Certainly, as mentioned before, long-ago deceased political and financial wheeler-dealers were a factor in creating the mess we're in. To my knowledge no one here disagrees with that. However, politicians being what they are, they continue to cater to the whims of the business sector (agribusiness, sprawling home developments), common sense not withstanding. Hence the recent back room deals that allow almond and pistachio farmers (big business really) to have a permanent water supply, whereas vegetable farmers do not. Guess what, money crops win and politician's pockets are lined. Such is the state of affairs in this state, and without hesitation I can tell you that it's the status quo in every state of the union. Here it's water, there it's coal, over there it's oil. It's always something, and the crisis du jour happens to be the drought in the southwest. 

Conservation costs money. Once upon a time farming was a mom and pop operation with very little mechanization, thus labor intensive. Profits required larger tracts of land, mechanization, fewer laborers, and a larger planting season. The southwest (and that includes other states than CA) proved the ideal conditions for industrial farming. Industrial farming (or agribusiness) carries a lot of weight financially and politically, hence special deals for this kind of business. But folk snowed in elsewhere in our nation enjoy produce grown in CA, hence our plight is not just CA's plight, it's the plight of the nation as a whole. To believe otherwise is not to be in sync with reality. 

What are Californians to say? 'Mea culpa' and thump our chest in repentance for the crimes others in times past? I certainly won't. My family and I have done our utmost to promote responsible development, including water conservation measures that in our area mean essentially that we do not need Mulholland's aqueduct. For now we're essentially isolated because 99% of the folk I speak with immediately accuse me of being everything from a tree-hugging liberal to a Water Nazi. These folk cry about concern of their manicured lawns as a constitutional right akin to the First Amendment. Same thing when I talk to them about prohibiting special water rights to cash crops (almonds, pistachios). Same thing when I tell them farmers are going to have to start paying the real cost of water, which means substantially higher prices at the market because conservation costs money. It's not just politicians who are living from election to election, thus their myopic view of things. It's all of us really, and that includes EVERYONE in the U.S. who enjoys relatively and artificially low priced produce from CA. 

Change requires not just exhuming Mulholland and his ilk (Eaton, Lippincott, et al), and of course Theodore Roosevelt, and whipping them back to hell for their sins, but also every politician from the 1890s to this very day. More importantly, it means reeducating everyone so that this sh*t isn't allowed to happen again. Wishful thinking on my part, I know. So what will happen in reality? Some dumb politician of whatever inclination is blamed, his butt is thrown out of office and a new one takes his place. And the cycle starts all over again. Without a quantum leap in understanding that everything is interrelated (politics, money, climate change, globalization) all we will do is jump from one scapegoat to another.

It's been over a year since the last post, lots has happened in that time, I will post an update on what has transpired towards the end of April. In the meantime, a link related to the theme of Smart Apartments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZSdrtEqcHU&feature=player_embedded

llamarada de tusas - rebuilding Haiti

There is a saying in Spanish, "llamarada de tusas" (corn husk flame), which alludes to the initial hype... and then we forget.

What worries me most is that there is always a flurry of activity, ideas, money, etc. during a short period of time after a catastrophic event such as with Haiti. The long term consequence of all our well-intentioned albeit short-sighted help is that Haiti will be left with nothing to show except millions of empty plastic water bottles and not much else. Eventually reconstruction will happen, as it always happens in these cases, in anarchist fashion. The debris from the quake will be cleaned up a little, the bricks or concrete blocks trimmed of excess grout and reused with nary a piece of reinforcing steel, the foundation will be the ground trampled under foot, the sewers will be open trenches on the street. History repeats itself. I assure you however, that the national palace and the cathedral will be rebuilt stronger, and likely grander, than before.

All that said, there is a ray of hope with organizations like Architecture for Humanity. Rebuilding Port-au-Price will require a concerted effort that will pay significant attention to a sustainable infrastructure. It's not as glamorous as say, carting a bunch of FEMA trailers and setting them up on blocks as some have suggested in other venues. More importantly, rebuilding will require local participation; we must not, under any circumstances, foster the paternalistic tradition of giving handouts. Public participation is essential at all levels. Not just in regards to the urban planning aspects but also in the creation of cooperatives and micro-enterprises for the actual rebuilding. In the end, it will give Hatians a sense of ownership and the result will be the rebuilding not just of the city, but of the spirit.

Poetry by Pablo Neruda - standard oil co.

The big green picture

I had lunch the other day with a friend and a good part of the conversation centered around urban planning, European city design, Los Angeles, public transportation, the L.A. River, urban infill, and other such issues. When I got back to the office I started a LEED checklist for a new project for which the owner intends to achieve Gold certification. While doing this I started to think again about my Smart Apartments idea and it occurred to me that perhaps a Smart Apartment built without any appreciable change in the standard building practice might have a smaller carbon footprint than a large home built with the latest in 'green' technology, perhaps even if this large home has a LEED certification.

How do we, in the U.S., look at sustainability? I suspect that in many ways we see it as some kind of redemption for our conspicuous consumption. Do we feel much better living in a MacMansion because it is  certified by LEED or any other 'green' entity? Of course, but we haven't made the quantum leap away from conspicuous consumption, we've only sugar-coated it. My next task is to investigate, at least at a conceptual level, what impact does it have on the carbon footprint to reduce the size of a home or office by 10% using standard construction practices Vs. a space with the same programmatic requirements but with a LEED rating. What impact does a smaller car with a standard combustion engine Vs. a hybrid SUV? On a grander scale, what impact on the environment does a compact and efficient city have Vs. a series of independent green developments?

A new year

What a year. Six months ago I joined the ranks of the new world order. The world of consulting instead of commitment, the world of pajama commuting instead of pressed slacks and crisp shirts, the virtual office Vs. Dilbert's cubicle, the birth of perpetual connectivity. These days one doesn't go home after work… work is always with us on the cell, the laptop, and what home isn't wired to the Internet these days? This is the new world order, one that many say enslaves us to our work.

We long for the days gone by when we went home at 6:00 PM to plant our behinds in front of the TV or took off for the weekend, or went on a two week vacation. The fact is that this period of relative leisure that for the most part we, our parents and grandparents enjoyed, existed in a relatively short span in the history of civilization. Our recent generations are a spoiled lot. Before that golden age of relative leisure, the artisan, the craftsman, the laborer and most professionals for that matter lived in a state not unlike our current condition. Of course there were no computers, cell phones or internet; but the iron smith, the taylor and the baker all plied their trade in their home… rarely was there ever a distinction between work and home. One could say they were enslaved to their work, but in fact their life was inseparable from their work, to the point that more often than not they were born into their trade, inherited their their tools and even the name of their trade from their father and passed it down to their offspring.

Thus the new world order is really the old world order, with a twist, because it will not be in a Neo-Luddite kind of way, rather, we will take the best of the old world by embracing craftsmanship and living our chosen trade, and we will take the best of the new world and embrace the best that technology has to offer.

When the economic downturn began I knew losing my job was a possibility. One year ago that became a probability. Six months ago it was fait accompli, and I was prepared. I made a commitment that I would work on my venture until the end of the year, if I survived I would push forward. It is now the end of the year and I report to you that not only did I survive, I thrived. There were three things that made possible this success. First and foremost, as the saying goes, "behind every successful man stands a wise woman", Angela has supported me, guided me, and raised my level of confidence. Second, I was armed with the tools of hard work and dedication inherited from my mom and dad. Mom would have been proud. Third, I had the support of all my friends and family.

This coming year will be better, I know so. There will be challenges but they will be surmounted. The biggest challenge will be to put into practice what I've been preaching, that is, to change the practice of architecture as we know it. That last bit is not a short-term endeavor, nor is it something I can do on my own. I will rely on all of you in big and in small ways, directly and indirectly, to help me mold, refine, polish, and finally achieve those goals.

Happy New Year!

Looking forward: Hidden Sources of Income

Following is a list of services for any office to generate additional sources of revenue. I started generating this list a few years ago and have brought it up in different ways at previous firms I worked for. These ideas might be helpful for any architectural firm.

Specifications

A good spec service costs about $15,000, most of the time this is contracted by the client although sometimes it's a part of the architectural contract. Even wen paid directly by the client, in addition to the direct cost to the client, architects have to spend a substantial amount of time coordinating with the spec writer. I've estimated this cost at about $5,000. By writing the specs in house an architect can capture the profit of writing the specs as well as the cost of the coordination. There are good internet-based spec writing services that costs about $3,000 per year, these offer unlimited spec writing ability and ensure that all references are coordinated, including testing standards. It also checks on a continual basis that all products specified are up to date. The spec writing can be handled by a project manager or a very good job captain. Estimated labor cost to an office is 40 hrs x 120/hr (estimated billable rate for a PM) = $4,800 + 10 hrs x 185/hr (estimated billable rate for a principal or senior associate to review the work) = $1,850 for a total of $6,650 resulting in a profit of approximately $8,000 per set of specifications.

It should be noted that the 40 hours is estimated for someone with only a very basic idea about specification writing. A second set of specs should take half the time.

Interior Design

The interior design services are often contracted separately by the owner, but like specifications they require a substantial amount of coordination by the architect. By offering interior design services the architect collects the fees and pockets the portion of labor that goes for coordination.

Marketing Graphics

Same as interior design and specifications.

Tenant Improvement for downsizing

As companies downsize in this economy they look for firms to handle tenant improvement in their reduced spaces. In many cases these firms relocate to more affordable parts of town. In some cases they do downsize. In some its both. Architects have the capability to handle this job for them, including not just space planning but interior design as well. If architects want to expand their services they could offer a turn-key option including coordinating the entire move or downsize event.

LEED and Green Building consulting

As more clients become aware that going green saves green, architects can offer ways of cost reduction for utilities that also have the side-benefit of increasing productivity of their staff.

Smart Apartments (see my other blog posting about this)

Borrowing the name from the European Smart Cars, the objective is to offer developer clients innovative compact and intelligent Smart apartments that occupy a small footprint while giving the appearance of larger areas. These apartments will encompass green principles and should be designed to easily meet the requirements of LEED Gold Certification.

Innovation

We can, but don't have to, reinvent the wheel. There are plenty of little products or methods of construction that architects could be helping design better. How many times have we heard out in the construction site or from the drafting room "someone should invent a way to..."? We should become that someone. I read about a small firm in Barcelona, Spain, that "has only three completed buildings to its name but holds nine patents for building technology", according to an article in Hanley Woods' Modern Materials supplement. With all the creative talent most architectural firms have, why aren't we innovators? Why don't we lead instead of follow? Why do it? not only does this get us notoriety but also residuals. We don't actually have to physically invent a material like the ETFE that clads the Water Cube of the Beijing Olympics, it can but doesn't have to be that forward-looking, but we can write about methods to simplify existing technology. We can also be innovators in the sense that we can be the first, or one of the first, to apply an innovative technology; then we milk the heck out of the publicity.

A firm is born

It's been a little over three months since I was laid off from WMA on June 30, 2009

When I was first informed, three weeks prior to that date, I braced myself for an adjustment, although "brace" is probably too strong of a word in this instance. I'd been preparing myself for almost a year. I knew that it was only a matter of time, and I had told this to my peers on various occasions. There was no way that WMA could survive with it's upper management team intact and at least two senior associates would have to go, and it was natural (as I saw it) that the two most junior associates (myself included) would be chosen.

When the time came to pack up and leave I had it all planned out and I wasn't in any way depressed or upset. I'd created the concept for three businesses only marginally architecture related that I wanted to start up if I wasn't successful at finding a job. Understanding that the search for a job would take a while and that starting up even the most realistic of my business ventures would also not come quickly, I fancied myself putting in at the very least a couple of months of leisurely bike rides, catching up on a backlog of reading, and completing a long list of DIY things around the house.

As it turns out, that leisure lasted about a week. Immediately an old client whom I'd brought into WMA gave me a small project, followed by one of my former WMA clients who dropped a big project on my lap with the promise of others. One job offer and an interview offer also came my way, both unrequested. In addition, I received leads on various other small projects ranging from painting a house for a famous political figure to designing a bicycling museum. So many choices when I didn't expect any, and there went my plans for my businesses.

I've now made the decision that if there is work to be had in this economic climate then there will certainly be plenty of work when the economy picks up; I've officially started my architecture practice. For now it's called Ovalle & Associates, although that name is subject to change. This is a great opportunity to put into practice all the ideas that I had for WMA and for previous firms. I will have no excuses not to implement the ideas and I will have no one to blame if they fail.

Santa Cruz, Bolivia

We're home, after a nearly 19 hour trip.

They say a liberal is a liberal until he gets mugged. I guess the problem is that neither Angela and I consider ourselves liberal to begin with so the saying doesn´t apply to us.

During the entire trip we've been staying in less-than-stellar parts of town. Not to say that we've been asking for trouble, I mean, we don't stay in the skanky rooming houses next to the train stations or bus terminals, but we do stay in pretty inexpensive hostels. The problem is that we are overly curious and walk everywhere instead of taking taxis or renting cars because we don't want to miss anything, we want to fill our senses with everything that one can only experience on foot and sometimes I suppose we let our curiosity get the best of us, despite that sixth sense telling us 'don't go there'. Three days ago was one of those days. I knew we shouldn't have gone there ('there' is a hill in the center of Cochabamba with a monument to the woman heroes of the independence movement "Heroinas de la Coronilla") but I didn't say anything. Angela did say that she had a bad feeling but we agreed to keep going. It was all fine until we started to head down the deserted hilltop monument. All of a sudden we were surrounded by three young guys with long butcher knives yelling at us to get down and hand over everything. My first thought was anticipating the feeling of the cold blade entering my stomach, a feeling that the leader of the gang was threatening to make real. That thought quickly faded when I glanced over at Angela, who wouldn't hand over her bag to the second guy even while the third held a knife to her throat.

In the end we lost all our money, credit cards, Angela's ID, my new camera -the first I've owned in over 20 years- assorted other stuff in our pockets, my prescription glasses. The worst was the loss of the best pictures of the trip, including photos of the ancient colonial cities of Sucre and Potosi with wonderful architectural details, photos and movie clips of indians protesting against discrimination, photos of political graffiti and posters including very refreshing ones from the local Trotskyists, photos of our trip of the salt flats of Uyuni -one of the natural wonders of the world-, and photos of the amazing people we met during the trip -locals as well as from other parts of the world-.

All in all though, we came out physically unscathed. I will have to reserve the feeling of sharp cold steel entering my gut for another occasion. Angela and I both agreed that we came out winners, having come out with our lives, as everything else is replaceable. The pictures of things we can most certainly find in the Internet, the pictures of the people we met would probably bore you. Most importantly, this event could have happened to us anywhere in the world, including right in our front yard in the U.S.

We can't say we're not angry, but we know that crime is a factor of the incredible poverty in this land-locked country. Bolivia's mines have generated amazing amounts of silver, copper and tin for the world, creating wealth for international and local mining interests but nothing for the local population. Now with the green movement and electric and hybrid cars a reality and photovoltaics in everyone's mind... and sometimes on their roof -at least in the industrialized countries-, with the consequent demand for adequate energy storage which only lithium batteries can provide, the greatest reserves of lithium in the world in Bolivia's Uyuni Salt Flats promise to further increase wealth for a few at the expense of many.

Aside from that isolated mugging incident, we found the people of Bolivia to be amazingly warm, friendly, polite, helpful, and many more nice adjectives. Even the ones with decidedly different points of view than ours. The country itself is beautiful despite its extreme poverty, and I would highly recommend it as a travel destination for it's cultural and geographic richness. For those with an interest in politics, the country is in an exciting phase as the indians begin to assert power as a majority under the leadership of Evo Morales, to the chagrin of the mestizo and white ruling classes, who at best make only feeble attempts to disguise their racism. Certainly there are mistakes being made, and the opposition makes great fanfare of these mistakes. But no progress has ever been made without mistakes, and this revolution is irreversible.

Hanging out my shingle

I'm hanging out my shingle!

Why now? Even in these trying times business can be good, under the right conditions. As we come out of this economic slump, as I mentioned in my post titled "quantum leap", the world will be different, and I want to be a part of that. This is my opportunity to begin something during the worst of times because from here there is no way but up. This is my idea of the office I want to create, this is the new face of architectural practice, or any other practice in what we traditionally call an office.

The new office has to be flexible, adaptable, nimble and versatile. It has to be quick on the feet, respond swift and smart, operate lean, and stay on the leading edge of technology.

The new office has to be versatile, with staff capable of working concurrently and at ease on different projects, project types, building types; for this to work the office has to place education at the forefront of it's operation. Education of it's staff will be it's most valuable capitalization cost.

The new office has to operate on a new model with significantly less overhead, taking advantage of technology by way of teleconferencing and working meetings; electronic reviews of drawings with clients, consultants and contractors; cloud storage and computing allowing remote access to office and project data from home, job site, or other remote locations.

The new office will not necessarily have a physical presence in the traditional sense. No cubicles with workstations, everyone will have a laptop and will be able to work from home, job site, Pete's Coffee, the beach. Rather than a grand lobby with pictures of projects and awards, a gallery of the firm's work will appear on a high-quality web site with high-resolution photographs and interactive displays. Rather than make everyone commute, with inherent stress build-up, expense, danger, environmental and physical detriment, the office will allow remote work as much as possible and will get together for face-to-face meetings when appropriate.

The new office will not have a hard and fast work schedule: everyone will have an electronic office calendar with all it's projects and office activity kept current via the Internet. As long as the project deadlines are met, M-F, 9-5 is meaningless. When working from home, social interaction will be maintained via IM and when necessary video-conferencing; we can't escape that medium so we might as well use it to our advantage. On the other hand, Fridays will be reserved as team-building days, office-wide meetings, in person, where we will learn as a group. Anyone will have the opportunity to show and tell about anything they are working on as long as they can make the case that it is related to a creative field. A cool new bicycle design? An innovative textile? A design for a base in Mars? Fridays will also be used for charrettes, design competitions, educational field visits, etc. and as a last resort, work.

Design-build and BIM (Building Information Modeling)

Recently many clients including governmental agencies have begun or are considering moving, away from the traditional public bid for Architects and General Contractors. The trend towards design-build contracts is show in the graph below [not yet posted]. Cost and time the primary reasons for doing away with the traditional design-bid-build system, but in the not too distant future it will not be a choice. 

With the advent of BIM, the traditional relationship between design professional and contractor will necessarily blur to the point where perhaps there little will be left of the architect-contractor relationship as exists today. Already, the primary software systems used as an integral part of BIM require the design professional to be intimately familiar with how a building is put together, as the building has to be built in virtual reality. 

This new paradigm requires close and continuous collaboration among all the participants, including not just the design professionals but the owner, contractor and subcontractors as well, from the early stages of design through construction. The holistic approach made possible and necessary by BIM will render obsolete the need not only of traditional construction administration documents but the traditional design-bid-build method. Ultimately, rolls of plans will disappear as well, at least in the sense with which we are familiar.

Smart Apartments

The trend in the last few decades has been to double the size of the typical American home while the size of the households has been steadily declining. As with the trend against larger gas-guzzling vehicles, there is a nascent trend towards smaller yet more efficient dwellings. Borrowing the name from the European Smart Cars, the objective is to offer to our developer clients innovative compact and intelligent "Smart apartments" that occupy a smaller and well designed footprint while giving the appearance of larger areas. These apartments should encompass green principles and should be designed to easily meet the requirements of LEED Gold Certification, as well as take advantage of innovations in newer methods and materials with an emphasis on prefabrication.

The following video is perhaps a little bit extreme of what I mean, but the concept is there; namely, that it is entirely possible to have a lot in a little space if it is well designed.

The Maelstrom

As a child I spent countless hours reading comic books. One of my favorite characters was the super-hero Thor. In one issue Thor says, and I'm paraphrasing, 

  "Tis not through fear, but by jumping into the maelstrom of life itself that thou shall find thy wisdom"

Caution will keep us safe, but at what cost? We don't have stories to tell our grandchildren, we don't have scars, we spend our precious few years on earth melting into the background as another insignificant statistic.

In the end we live but we're not alive. Progress is owed to the non-conformist, the revolutionary, the inventor who refused to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground, against all odds.

safe is sorry

A long time ago, while standing on the edge of a precipice (figuratively speaking) and about to make a life changing decision, a great friend told me "safe is sorry". I thought about that while reading this quote I'd copied on a post-it note:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." 

-Mark Twain

quantum leap

The economy is in shambles. The jobless rate (including those who have given up the job hunt in desperation) is at or above 10%, and the only thing in people's mind is how deep and how long this recession will be. In the meantime the banks are still holding tight to their dollars that they'd otherwise loan to other banks, so that they in turn could release it to the developers who are our clients. At the office we're tightening our belts, watching every penny that goes out the door, and chasing projects that a couple of years ago we were too busy to pursue.

On the other hand, I see light at the end of the tunnel. I have a feeling that when things pick up again in the economy, as they inevitably do, our future will be different. The process of designing and building with which we're all familiar with will begin to change drastically. The light I see at the end of a tunnel belongs to a locomotive, pulling what for now is a small but powerful train, and those who don't jump on board will be left behind. There are three major things that will impact how we do business. One is the the relationship of our buildings and the environment. the second is the actual process of design, last but not least are the methods and materials that make our designs reality.

Already, environmentally speaking, there are changes happening. Many municipalities, school districts, corporate clients and small independent clients of all types are establishing requirements for LEED certification for their buildings, or at the very least compliance with competing green-building programs. There was a time when green building was associated with liberal, hippie causes; nowadays our capitalist economy is quickly recognizing that green building is good for a few reasons that affect the bottom line through substantial returns on the investment. The first is that green building practice cuts energy consumption and maintenance costs, providing a quantifiable, direct, long-term ROI. The second is that an environmentally conscious building is a healthier building, cutting down absenteeism and sick days as well as making the buildings more humane places to inhabit, resulting in a less direct yet substantial ROI. Also consumers are willing to pay more rent or a higher mortgage for a green building, particularly if it has the LEED plaque on the wall. In recognition of this, we are starting to see green building practices finding their way into the code books and city ordinances, so at some point it won't be a matter of choice.

The way we design things is also starting to undergo substantial changes. The last 20 years saw us quickly go from paper and pencil to systems drafting (remember mylar and register bars?) to computer aided design and drafting. At that point development of our way of doing things pretty much ceased. Sure, the CADD programs developed into the complicated systems that we have now, but the vast majority of architects and engineers continue to use the computer only as a kind of glorified paper and pencil, in fact the unwieldily layering system we all use today is but a child of systems drafting. Essentially we still draft the same way we did 20 years ago, but without the lead stains on our cuffs. The change already on the way has to do with a quantum leap in the way we use the computer. Already there are many companies using exclusively a variety of computer aided design program that allows a structure to be built in virtual reality, where the computer is finally used to its capacity. With these programs we have the capability of building in virtual space the ideas in our mind before the contractor gets it. This allows us to be more creative because we will be able to explain our ideas in a virtual world in a way that can be understood by our clients and the users of the building, not just in aesthetic terms but in ways that have a more direct effect on our clients; the way the building performs, the costs, the codes, etc. It will be difficult for a critic to say "that can't be built" or "that will cost too much". Relatively simple plug-in programs will allow us to quickly and efficiently check for code compliance, LEED certification, and cost estimation. Bidders will be able to quickly produce accurate bids, reducing change orders, RFIs, and finger-pointing. When the buildingn is built the process will continue using the same software in the form of building systems management, energy management, maintenance, etc. One of our engineering consultants is studying a way for one of these new programs to generate structural forces diagrams that will tremendously cut down on the time, tediousness and innacuracies of traditional structural engineering, freeing the engineer to solve the more creative aspects of his profession.

Lastly, the way we build these days is pretty much the way things were built for the last few hundred years, with the only exception that it's gotten more complicated. In the last 40 years we sent a man to the moon, developed a successful personal jet-wing, palm-size computers, credit card size cell phones, etc., how come we're still building the majority of our structures stick-by-stick or brick-by-brick? The building industry appears to be one of the last to embrace the manufacturing processes adapted by most other industries decades ago, and is tremendously slow to accept innovation in materials. We need to explore and take advantage of the advances in manufacturing in terms of automation and quality control, well as the capabilities of current materials. It is unquestionable that this will allow us to build more interesting forms, for less cost and less time. 

More than ever we have the ability to design and build intelligent buildings free from the constraints of antiquated crafts, buildings that are responsive and responsible to the environment, buildings that are modifiable to our changing needs. It's up to us to take advantage of the current lull to prepare for the inevitable quantum leap aboard the train... or risk being left behind collecting dust among the old mechanical pencils and electric erasers.

insensatus vir...

...is Latin for unreasonable man.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man".

-George Bernard Shaw