OK, this is a spur of the moment reactionary thought. Just read Bob Borson's latest post from his world famous "Life of an Architect" Blog. Bob makes comments about doing the fun stuff "design" versus doing the not so fun stuff "building envelop detailing". This is a common attitude among many architects. Bob as usual, wrote an excellent post and it got me thinking. Through my 35 in the architectural profession, I always heard how "design" was the fun part of architecture and construction documents were the boring part of the profession. I never really separated the two. The design part was just the beginning and the construction drawings were just the ending part of that stage of the project. I consider it just as much of a challenge trying to figure out the specific details of what you want built as struggling to start from ideas and verbiage and create a form on paper. If designing is the fun part, but doing the drawings to put the specific ideas on paper and work out all the details is the undesirable part, how in the world do some architects like to take their design ideas down to the level of creating the furniture that goes into their buildings? Broad swipes of fat pens do not define a chair without the detailed drawings, so I would think you want to show exactly how you want the chair built. Wouldn't that desire also apply to your building or am I just missing something here? I tell clients jokingly, when asked what I do for a living, that I "draw pictures". In reality I build my building in my mind, as I can't draw what I don't know how to build. I would find it embarrassing as an architect to go out in the field and have someone ask me "How the hell am I suppose to build that?" and have my response be "I don't know" I may not draw the best method and I may not draw the fast method, but be sure what I draw can be built. We are always designing from preliminary designs to construction documents. We are problem solvers and regardless of what we are doing we are just solving puzzles, but on many different levels. I really do enjoy doing construction documents. Am I one of the few?
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We as architects think with our creativity that we should be good at a lot of things. I am sure some think they can be master chefs and some think they can be the next picasso, but we know that is not always the case. As an architect it is expected that we can sketch. Sketch I can, sketch well I can not! I am too technical so when lines aren’t just right, it bothers me. I also determined I did not have the patience to sketch, so SketchUp is more to my liking. I know some feel the same way about taking pictures. Some of us think we can “see’ the photos just like a professional and some can not. Probably the best and most impactful comment I heard about photography is that good photographes “Make a good picture, they don’t just take a good picture”. To me this means they conceive the image prior to taking, put themselves in the best position to get the composition they want and post process if necessary to recreate that image they had in their head. I like taking pictures and although I don’t get out enough to do it, I think it is a creative and fun process. Can I take the same quality picture of a building as a professional, probably not, but I can take one good enough I would be proud to show someone. I have more cameras than one should legally be able to keep. In this post I what to show you a few and explain what I use them for and then tell you the camera I think is the best for me, the architect, to have. My first camera is my Canon SD1400 IS. This is a great camera to carry around just to take anytime photos. I use this camera when I go to job sites. It takes really nice pictures and fits in your pocket. I would say this would be the everyday camera people use to carry before they started using their cell phones. When I go to the job site I take many pictures. You never know what your missing until you get back to the office. This camera has never let me down. It takes great pictures and with this SD1400 in your pants pocket you hardly notice it is there. My second camera is my Samsung WB250F. I thought this thing was the “cat’s pajamas” when I bought it. I think I got it off of Woot.com for $99. It has a lot of bells and whistles. It does panoramas, it has built in filters, it even has wifi built in. So you can take pictures with it and connect the camera to a wifi service (starbucks or McDonalds) and send pictures directly to the internet, no PC required. You can wirelessly send pictures directly to your android phone too. It is a very nice camera, but the images are “soft”. For taking pictures to put on your website these images are just not sharp enough. I now understand what the reviewer’s meant with they called it a “fun” camera. Having had a 35mm camera in high school and college (a Minolta SRT 101) I knew from past experience the lens I would need to take pictures of buildings. The lens you need is a wide angle lens, so having a camera that allows you to swap lens is a big plus. So I purchased an Olympus PEN E-PL1, which is a micro 4/3 camera, and you can get different lens for it. I didn't feel I was up to a DSLR and this camera cost much less. There is a wide angle adaptor for the stock lens that you can purchase and it does well enough that It serves me well. I never take this adaptor off and use it frequently. I got a bug up my fanny and made an impulse buy to purchase a DSLR. I wanted one mainly to do HDRs. (see about HDRs here). The more frames you can take for your HDRs the better you image may turn out (but not necessarily). Most cameras take 3 brackets per snapshot. 3 images automatically with 3 different settings. The DSLR, Pentax K-10, will take 5 images automatically. I have had this for a while, but only taken test shots with it. So what I wanted in a camera was one that would take a great quality picture, unlike the Samsung. I wanted one that would take AEB (Automatic Exposure Bracketing) for HDRs, unlike the SD 1400. I finally wanted something that was pocketable, unlike the Olympus and Pentax. What I finally settled on after a great amount of research was a Canon S110. This camera takes great quality images. It has AEB for my HDRs and it’s size is inbetween my SD1400 and the Samsung. This camera give me manual control and has specs that will let you take great low level light pictures. By far it is my favorite camera of the punch. The only drawback is it has a fixed lens, so if I am traveling and think I will need the wide angle lens I just drop this in the camera case with my Olympus and I am good to go! I think it is nice to have a camera on your phone, but I do not think the camera’s can take the same quality of my S110 and it is small enough that it really isn't a burden to carry. Highly recommended. I did buy my S110 on Ebay used. I did not want to spend my money on the latest and greatest, but I did have certain specs that I wanted.
After a very slow start to the year, I needed to rethink about getting some new clients in my office. I have never really thought of my website as a “client getter”, to me it was more of a resume online. I have always thought of myself as a tech savvy person, but I am no coder. I had a website in the past that was hosted by a local friend and I used Microsoft Frontpage. I always struggled with it, as I could never get things to look like I wanted. I had published a newsletter for our local AutoCAD user’s group many years earlier using Publisher. I was looking for something as simple as Publisher and Frontpage wasn’t it. I was informed by my local host that the “frames” in Frontpage were no longer going to be supported, so I needed to find another Web Site program. Frames just set up a grid on the web page for me that allowed me to place text or pictures in a organized manner. It was the compromise I had found that allowed me to use Frontpage. I looked for a long time, but never really found a replacement.
I follow many technology people on the web. Most are survivors of “The Screen Savers” from the old Tech TV. Many have gone on to work for big name companies and some ended up starting new internet networks, such as Revision 3 and TWiT.tv. These new site got advertisers to support their new networks and Squarespace (http://www.squarespace.com/) was one of the sponsers. I had a squarespace account for about 12 months and never put up a site. I tried, but I must have had a mental block because for an easy “drop and drag” / no coding required site, I never could figure it out. I think I got an account for about $8 / month. At the time they were a brand new service and I got an offer code from TWiT. Unfortunately it was a waste of my time and money. I know they advertise big time on many of the tech sites I visit and sponsor many of the videos I watch. I really don’t have anything bad to say, but I didn't get it. While reading my late and great Google Reader feeds (I have moved on to Feedly.com - Highly recommended) one day I saw an article on Weebly (www.weebly.com). Strange name - "weeblies wobble, but they don’t fall down" (I know it's really weebles). They give you two free sites with certain limitations. I played with it for a week or two and decided to joined. It may not be robust enough for some, but it was easy enough for me to use. I needed to have a presences on the web and this site would allow me to do have one. I signed up for a Pro account, which gives me 10 websites. I only need one, but given the availability of ten sites I am sure I can figure out something to do with the rest of them. I paid $71.80 for 24 months or $3 / month for all 10 potential sites. I need the Pro account so I could use my own domain name, www.barch.com, otherwise it would have been www.barch.weebly.com. I gave one site to my son, www.arphotecture.com (architecture + photography). I came up with that name because I have used arcadtect (architect + CAD) for a long time. I have the domain names www.arcadtect.com and www.arcadtecture.com, the latter I use for this blog site, which is also a weebly site. Weebly has a template for blogging sites. I use one for the duplex that we now rent, but lived in for 14 years. www.929shadylawnroad.com. I don’t do much bid work, but within the last 12 months I was taking the bids on a project for one of the developers I work for and it got to be a pain the butt answer the phone for all the subcontractors who wanted the bid list of GCs. So I set a site up with the bid list. I then left a voicemail message that included “if you are calling for a bid list for the project please go to www.bidlist.weebly.com. The subs would call once and then they stopped calling a second, third, fourth, and fifth time desperate to get the names of the GCs prior to the bid deadline. I thought it was a pretty good specific use of a web site. I could do multiple bid lists on the site because you can password protect the access to each web page. I recently have met with some potential new clients and realized that I have been in business for over 25 years and my site didn't represent nearly enough of my projects. There are no award winners in there, but It is nice to let people know what you have done. So as I write this I am trying to make a major push to add more projects. It can be a pain the behind having to go back through all the pictures I have and to find decent pictures to post. Sometimes it gets a bit overwhelming and I need to take a step away. I realize if I am going to make a push to get new clients that filling the webpage with projects is a priority. Weebly lets me do everything I need to do for my site. Like all sites they have pre-built, but modifiable templates. If you can code you can add it to your site. They have a fairly large selections of templates and one of the nice things is you can create a site with one template and then choose another to see what your site would look like in that template. It automatically transfers the information. You do not have to start over if you change a template. Weebly handles text, photos, and videos without any problems. It has a pre-built contact form. It can handle ecommerce if you want to sells something (books and such). You can add scrollable forms, so you could put a template of your contract on there for just viewing or downloading. I obviously really like the site. The only other web site service I have seen some good press on is www.Wix.com . I really don’t know much about it but I did find an article that compared Wix and Weebly (http://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/wix-vs-weebly-which-website-builder-is-better/) If you need to set up a website and you want something that is easy and will give you a professional looking site, but you don’t want to spend a lot of money. One other thing is Weebly will give you statistics of the number of page views and the number of uniques views which is something we are all interested in. It nice to know if someone has looked at your site. I personally recommend Weebly. Each week the weekend comes and I have to decide on something to write about. I don’t have a list or an agenda. I rarely write in the beginning of the week. Maybe it is procrastination and maybe not, but if something moves me enough I will immediately write about it. Having been in the profession for so long sometime I write about the opinions it has taken me years to form and sometimes I write about something that has affected me that week. So I am not trying to give step by step instructions on how to be an architect. What I write about are the things I deal with while being an architect.
I sound like a buddhist monk to myself when I think about my current opinion about anger. Anger is a harmful thing. It disrupts the soul and the flow of your life. I find that I repeat certain phrases all the time and they may sound trite, but I use them because they are true. “Don’t worry about the things you have no control over”. How does this apply to anger? When you get screwed over by a client, usually you don’t see it coming. “I can’t fix problems that I don’t know exist”. You have done the work and are expecting payment, but then it just doesn’t happen. You ask politely and when that fails you ask more sternly. Most of the time that also seems to have no affect, so you can beg and plead if you want, but sometimes you are still sitting there waiting for your money. That is when most people get angry. “How could that SOB treat me like that?”. Well bad news, those people exists and you will run into them your entire life. I hope that in the end you get your money, but I hope at least you have learned a lesson. How does it go “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.” I have tried to protect myself by asking for a deposit and then asking for the balance once I had over the drawings for new clients on small to medium size projects. This has worked well for me in the past. I would say that about 90% of the people I ask have no problems. If they ask if I don’t trust them I tell them that I have been bitten too many times in the past and that I am too old to chase my money. “I have delivered drawings and not been paid, but I have never been paid and not delivered drawings”. I have worked for some real scum in the past, but my standards exceeded theirs so I delivered what I promised. Yes, when you get screwed you have a tendency to get mad as hell, and rightly your should be, but the only person that may benefit from your anger is the guy who pissed you off. It is kind of a win / win for them. They treated you like dirt and then they get to gloat in it. Life will never be a easy street, so we know we will hit some bumps in the road. Just so happens that client was one of those bumps. Getting angry does nothing to the bad client. If they had half a conscience they would feel bad and pay you, but they don’t. So demanding or begging typically won't help. When you get angry it affects you and those around you, so the impact of being mad is like the ripple in the pond. Maybe your fellow workers notice your shortness. Maybe your wife and kids who need your hugs stay away to give you “your space”. All because this client has treated you unfairly. That is a huge impact and I decide I would not give anyone that ability to impact my life that way or the satisfaction of disrupting my life like that. When I get shafted, I just chalk it off to the learning experience. I will go through the process of trying to get my money, but without all the emotional stress behind it. I will demand and I will plead, but only as a process, not with emotions tied into it. If push comes to shove I will take them to small claims court. I don’t want to knock them out or wish bad things on them. All I want is to get my money and get away from this client. I will take the reasonable and logical steps to try to obtain my money and once those options run out I move on. I want to get this person out of my life and move on to people and clients who do appreciate what I do for them. I use to get angry, but then I got mad at myself because I got angry. I realized in the past that certain clients had no intentions of paying me and that it didn't bother them nor did they really care. I also thought that he probably enjoyed the frustration he was adding to my life over my constantly harassing him to pay. As a friend had told me, trying to get money from that client was like trying to teach a pig to sing “It is a waste of your time and it annoys the pig”. I have been taken in the past and I am sure it will happen in the future, but just not as often. I understand that it “Takes all types to fill the freeway” and those crappy clients are some of those out there driving. I just hope not to run into any of them. I have learned not to get angry, but to get those type of people out of my life and move on as quickly as possible. Anger eats at you from the inside out and affect everything you do. I decided a long time ago that I would not give them the satisfaction of having their rude treatment affect me like that. “Any more questions Grasshopper?” As I was trying to decide on what to write about this week I ran across this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lomOGZPTZTs Like architecture, photography is a subjective and creative process, so I was interested in what this photographer had to say. The part that hit home for me was at the end when she said “I do not ever let a client dictate my price”. That is how is should be in architecture. I remember years ago having a conversation with some fellow employees about what the value of a job is worth. You would typically get a question like “I am thinking about interviewing for a job with ABC architects, they need a (fill in the blank), what do you think the job is worth and how much should I ask for?”. So there would always be the long debates about how somebody else in a similar position is making a certain amount of money or maybe listed in some document somebody is looking for a similar position to be filled that offers a salary range between $xxxxxx - $YYYYYY. After thinking about it for what felt like a long time, I came to the conclusion that you are worth what you will work for. It sounds vague and maybe a bit simplistic, but it is actually a very true statement. I have told my kids on many occasions this same statement. I always try to explain my ideas to help them understand how I came to my conclusions. I tell them everyone has a minimum price they will work for. If someone wants a job and the median pay is $35,000, what should a person ask for? There is no question that experience and character will play a big part, but determining what they are worth is more important to the person applying for the job than the person hiring. Why? Because the person applying for the job has to determine and believe in the value that they place on themselves. Most people I have talked to have used the salary listed as a starting point and then added or deducted monies based on how bad they want the job or how bad they need the job. Using those two criteria it is very hard to assess a true value. I have asked my kids if the job says it will pay up to $35,000 would you take the job for $5,000, to which they reply, NOOOOO! I ask how little would you take under that $35,000 to accept the job? This is much more difficult to determine. You have to decide first, what do I need to maintain the quality of life you have or want.. Then you have to determine what you think your value is based on your experience and character. Will you go into this new job , if offered, with your feet on the ground and running full speed or will it be on the job training for you? Are you dependable? Will you always be there on time and be a team member to help the office, not just yourself? You know the answers, but you potential new employer does not and will not have a decent idea until some time after you start working. So this is where is comes down to you knowing your value and what you will work for. I have used the example with my kids, that if you accept that potential $35,000 a year job for $29,500 and then they hire another person for a second position similar to the one you are working for $37,000, don’t get mad at the new employee or company. Apparently your value is $29,500 and the new employee is $37,000. Apparently he would work for $29,500, but you will. Maybe if you set you low bar at $37,000 and you decided that you couldn’t take any less, you may also be working for $37,000 instead of the $29,500? There are certain low ball numbers that are no brainers, I would just walk away if those numbers were offered. Then there are numbers that are in that gray, “well maybe”, range that you internally debate over. The difference between $500 and $29,500 is easy to determine, but not so for $33,000 and $35,000. It does come down to how you believe in yourself and value yourself. This mindset also comes down to how we set our fees. Just like the job scenario above, you have to determine what you think the value of your services are worth, regardless of what the client thinks. We have all been in that situation where we think the value should be one number and the client lowballs us with another number. We don’t feel comfortable with his humber and we get a bit queasy in the stomach trying to justify to ourselves how we can make the number work out. My suggestion to you is just walk away. I truly understand the NEED for work and I think all we architects do, but I just don’t see it as a winning proposition when you get tremendously underpaid and over worked. Double your efforts trying to find new jobs rather get torn up internally struggling through a “not so good” project. Determining a fair fee is hard. Most other architects I talk to about fee usually look at three different methods and then use some kind of magic to try to meld the three. They use percentage of construction, estimated hours, and a rough cost per SF for determining the fee. After a fair amount of mental anguish we usually come up with a number that we think is fair. I submit this fee to the client and many times put in the email something to the effect of “ Here is our number and if not selected thanks for the opportunity”. What I am trying to convey is here is my fair number and don’t call me to try to beat me down, so if this number doesn’t work for you I understand if you pursue a less expensive solution, but please call again with any other opportunity you might have. I have told several clients and potential clients, “I can’t do it for that fee”. I even had several call back and ask me to reconsider. On on project the contractor / owner of the project called back three months later to say his site plan had been approved and he had two other architects that would do it for his fee, but he would rather work with me. I didn’t take this as leveraging move as I had told him months earlier that I couldn’t do it for that little a fee. He knew I didn’t need his work, so I took his second offer at face value. I didn’t do the project, but it was designed and built and I hope somewhere down the line I get to work with this contractor again. He was assertive, but a nice and fun guy to work with on projects. So as the photographer stated, you should never let a client dictate your fee. She brings up so many good points in her talk, but I think one strong point is that a lot of photographer (just like architectects) undervalue themselves. I have been very guilty of this myself, but these kind of issues are something we, the architects, must resolve and it is not something that clients, external forces, should not be able to influence. The photographer points out that people who appreciate value are willing to pay for services they think are important Our services are important so we must either find those clients who value them or educate some potential clients so they understand. The people who think we are just a plan mill, well don’t waste your time because as I have been told trying to convince them of our value is “It’s like trying to teach a pig to sing, It’s a waste of your time and it annoys the pig” I have watched the movie "Sketches Of Frank Gehry". I really enjoyed the movie and it took me back to my design lab days. I liked it so much, that I have watched it a couple of times. I am more of a conservative / nuts and bolts type architect, so the buildings designed by Frank Gehry tend to register on the far end of my spectrum! The Walt Disney Concert Hall I like, I don't understand the outside, but I like it. The Lou Ruvo Center, I may never understand that one. After watching the movie, I think I would really like Frank if I were to socialize with him. He seems to be a nice guy, but we don't always know how people are behind the scenes. I am more of a form follows function type of guy, so I design from the inside out. Franks seems to design from the inside out, then just an outside and then puts them together. So his architectural skins don't necessarily jive with his inside (well it seems that way to me?). I don't quite get Zaha Hadid either, but I enjoy looking at her free flowing buildings. As I was told a long time ago, "It takes all types to fill the freeways." I guess Frank and Zaha are just driving in a different lane?
Note this is not the most glamorous part of my job, but I deal with existing buildings on a regular basis. Most of the time there are no existing plans available so I have to go field measure to construct a base plan I have been doing this for over 25 years and I have established a certain method that I would like to share. The first thing you need is the correct mindset. It can either be considered a boring nightmare you HAVE to do, or it is just a puzzle that you have to put the pieces together. You have to understand before you even leave the office that it has to be done and there is no turning back. Accept your challenge and move on. Accept that it is going to take time and that you are task oriented and not time oriented, so get over trying to estimate how long it will take, as you never get it right. The second thing you need to have is good background music. It has to be music you enjoy, but not something you have to listen to with a lot of focus, so even things like audio books are out. . The noise has to fade away into the background once you start concentrating on the task at hand. If you start to get into the music, soon after you pull the measurement and before you write it down you will start questioning yourself. “Was that 38 ¼” or 14 ⅜” inches?”. I recently measured for four hours listening to the same 10 songs (thank you Florida Georgia Line), but I only heard about every fifth song so I never got tired of the music. It beats the heck out of four hours of listening to creaking and cracking sounds made by the building. I use a $10 Polaroid mp3 player I got from Office Depot and some mini speakers I got from Dick's Sporting Goods. I think they cost about $12. The speakers have a hard plastic clip, but it is to hard to get on my belt loop so I use a carabiner to act as the middle man. I start my tunes and slap it on to my left side, because I hook my tape measure to my right. I sometimes use ear buds, but I wanted to be able to hear in this large building while I measured. No one is going to be sneaking up behind me! :-) The building I am measuring by myself is a 56,000 warehouse. Without the invention of the laser measurer there is no way I could measure this building by myself. It is real nice not to have to have someone hold the dummy end of the tape. The first unit I got was a Flat Max by Stanley, it will measure up to 100’ with an ⅛” accuracy. It originally cost about $100. I then bought an additional measure made by Bosch. I thought Bosch made spark plugs, or dish washers? The Bosch is a model GLR225 and it will measure 225’ with a 1/16” accuracy. Did I mention this warehouse is 250’ in one direction? Fortunately I can stand about midway and measure from an existing masonry wall in both directions. Both Stanley and Bosch make laser measure devices that will go over 300' for around $200. I have even seen a bosch that will measure up to 825'. I also have my trusty 25’ long by 1” wide tape measure I got from Walmart. I don’t remember the cost, but it does have magnets on the end which has come in very handy when measuring where there are steel studs, beams, and columns. I can’t seem to get all the light to come on in this building. It is dark in some places and maybe I just haven’t found the right breaker box yet? So flashlights are another very important item. I was given, as a present, an energizer head flashlight. It has the band that goes around your head, but instead of being elastic mind has a velcro strap in the back. Also in the back it the battery compartment for one AA battery. It is nice to use as it keeps your hands free. I also wanted a fairly potent flashlight for those dark back corners and recently purchased a - Coast PX45. It supposedly produces 212 lumens, where I think the output on any of my other flashlights is less than 100 lumens. Over the years I have a specific routine for taking measurements that I think is the most effective. The first thing I do is sketch up the space. Secondly I draw only the dimension lines I want to measure and then the last thing is to measure. This method works best with two people because when you get to step three one person is calling out dimensions and the other is writing them down. Even with one person it goes extremely fast, trust me. To take the time to draw the plan, then measure and then mark up only that one dimension and repeat is an extremely slow and painful process. I know I have done it enough times. Once you get the right mindset and the right tunes, it is time to “rock and roll”. I find measuring between two and four hours at a time works well for me. After about four hours all I want is OUT! The fun part starts when you return to the office and try to figure out why none of the dimensions work? I have alway told people I meet while measuring, “I’ll be back tomorrow, because nobody gets it all the first time.” Next measurement playlist - Zac Brown Band!
Normally I get an idea and write about it. As an architect, just like in a design process, you start going down one path and hit multiple forks in the road and have a tendency to go off on a tangent. At the end of your journey you’re not in the place you intended when you began. Today will be a short post with some random thoughts. I am a one man office and locally I really don’t have other local architects that are in a similar situation that I can share thoughts with and bounce off ideas, so I started looking on the web. I am not a big Facebook fan, although I do have a personal presence there for family purposes. I do like twitter, but I got on twitter about a year after it started. I had the concept that I should not have just one twitter account, but individual twitter accounts based on my interest. I love technology and that is who I mainly followed in the beginning, but I am also a big Hokie fan (Virginia Tech for those of you not familiar with the Hokie Nation). I follow techie people on twitter as “arcadtect”, but just didn’t think it made sense to post “Yea, Hokies over Hoos, another good football game!” on twitter for those people who may have started following me because of my tech comments. For sports I have set up “79hokie” and that is where I follow sports people and my fellow Hokies. Then I set up “barch” for architecture and that is where I follow people in the design professions. Being Barber Architects, barch made sense, but being architects we all know what a “B of Arch” is, so it has a double meaning. I also got www.barch.com as a domain name for my firm, but really wonder how many people are searching for information about a bachelor of architecture when I see how many hits my site gets? Then there is Google Plus which is my favorite social site. I just like the way they have it set up where I can follow who I want and don’t have to deal with accepting people who want to follow me. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I never just blindly follow someone because they have started following me. I alway look at their profile and see if there is any common interest. If we have something in common I will follow them back. I have never understood the mindset of “he who has the most followers wins”. I consider it more of a quality over quantity issue. I would rather follow a limited few who have something I want to read and learn from than just start mass following people and constantly click past their post because I am not interested. In turn, I would hope that people follow me because they are interested in what I may have to say. I know I have no control over that, so I have no issues who ever decides to add me whether it be for content or body count. I am also on Linkedin, but I consider that a Facebook for business. Again I look at every request I get to see if I know the person or we have a common interest or friend before I accept. I only invite people who I have had contact with in the past. I get, as I am sure most of you do, invites from people halfway around the world, who are in a profession that has nothing to do with architecture. I just don’t understand? It seems the architects I follow the closest on Google Plus are typically residential architects. Their practices and mindsets seem to be a lot different than mine, but I do appreciate what they share and it has made me take a new look at the way I do business and think about architecture. I don’t always agree with their concepts or practices, but as a one man shop, I understand we all have to march to the beat of our own drum. I find the interactions refreshing. I want to give a shout out to Marica Mckeel, Mark R Lepage, Jes Stafford, and the boys at Archispeak Podcast. They make Google Plus a better place to visit. The master of the architectural blog is of course Bob Borson of “Life of an Architect”. Always entertaining and informative. I realized that to mature my posts I need to incorporate some visual items. Bob and Marica do this very well. I like out Bob disperses them at several points in his blog and somewhere down the road I will try to incorporate them too. My last random thought of the day is about photography. I love photography and don’t devote enough time to it, but I think it can be a tremendous benefit to architects. You don’t have to commit a lot of time to it to get some great results. My oldest son Michael is a part time professional photographer. His site is www.Arphotecture.com and he started doing HDRs (High Dynamic Range) images. These are very easy to do and I think are extremely impressive compared to normal photographs. Yes, you still need to have some kind of photographic eye to get good composition, but by increasing the dynamic range just makes the pictures pop. Your eyes have a much large exposure range than your camera, so by taking multiple pictures in different exposure ranges and merging them, you get the nice photos. A lot of cameras have a function called AEB (Automatic Exposure Bracketing) built in. This will allow your camera to take multiple pictures at different exposure setting with a single press of the shutter release. Here is a website that will let you check if your camera has that capability. http://www.hdr-photography.com/aeb.html I believe that photoshop can merge photos for HDRs and I use a program called Photomatix, which I think cost me about $100. Attached are some HDRs of a building that I will soon be working on in Washington, NC Since I have worked in North Carolina my entire post-College career, I am not sure how it works in other municipalities. We have a form in our Administrative Code called “The Building Code Summary”, which is really a very useful form. It is several 8 ½ x 11 pages and I have incorporated it on my cover sheet. What this particular form does is spell out all the information about the building and project area so the plans reviewer has some basis to start his review. In the good ole days we would submit a plan and the plans review would have to go through the entire set to understand the mindset of the designer and see what the designer was doing was allowed by code.
A simple example, on the building code summary form list, the occupancy type and construction type are indicated. Presented with that basic information it is easy for the reviewer to know whether the area and height of the building are permitted under the code. He doesn’t have to go looking through the drawings to try to determine what type of construction or even if it is several types of construction. We have been using the building code summary in North Carolina for so long, I really can’t imagine trying to review a set of plans without it. I do not know if other states use such a form. I know Virginia does not, as one of my fellow Hokies is an administrator in the plans, permits and inspection department in Virginia and she had not seen one before I sent her the one from North Carolina. For those of you unfamiliar with the North Carolina State Building Code, it is the International Building Code with North Carolina amendments. My understanding is we have a more rigid structural section because we have these things called “Hurricanes” over here, something I am sure people in South Dakota have read about. As stated before, the Building Code Summary is in our Administrative Code, so I am not sure if other states have a similar document.. Now strange as it is, the city of Raleigh will not accept the state building code summary form. You must download and use Raleigh’s form or they will not accept your drawings. I find that hard to imagine, so one day I asked the “gate keeper” as they call her, as she is the one who accepts the drawings for submittal, why we can not use the state’s form? She talked to one of the senior plans reviewers, someone who I always had a difficult time communicating with, and she pass down this explanation, “I was told that Raleigh had created the building code summary first and that the state had copied Raleigh’s AND Raleigh thought theirs was better. How do you argue with that. I do mostly commercial work. Free standing building and upfits. If you have the word “upfit” on your title block, the city of Raleigh will not accept your drawings for review. On the building code summary I typically check one of two boxes on the Raleigh form. These options don’t exist on the state form and they are “shell alteration” or “tenant completion”. Ironically “upfit” is an option on the state form. I understand the concept of what Raleigh is trying to do. They are trying to control what occupancy goes into a spaced that has been issued a Certificate of Occupancy. The example I typically use is if a small strip center is designed and built and was classified as mercantile, that is what the expected use should be for that building. I have seen several situations where the a couple of bays have been leased out to an emerging church that is looking for a place to call their own. Many times they used rooms in school or municipal gathering spaces and that leaves them at the mercy of the primary use of that space, so they may not be able to get it for their intended schedule. These churches want to rent a small space they have control over. The problem is that a church is an assembly occupancy not a mercantile occupancy, which may cause a situation where an hourly separation is required. If the city issues a CO for the mercantile space then the realtor can then give the key to the potential tenant and then move on. The city want to control this by issuing a “Certificate of Compliance” for the modified shell space and wait until you have a actual tenant to issue the “Certificate of Completion”. So in some cases I have issued the exact sames drawings I did for the “Shell Alteration”, but with a tenant name in the title block so the City can issue a second permit and a CO. More recently I did the same types of drawings in Durham where I knew of no issues with upfit and shell alterations. To my surprise I was informed by the contractor that we needed to resubmit with tenant names on the drawings. I had to make several trips to the inspection department to finally grasp what I was being told. I was informed that if the drawings had - shell, vanilla box, upfit or something similar that they would only issue a Certificate of Compliance. I asked specifically what if the space was 100% complete and all that was need was for the realtor to hand over the key and the tenant could move in a desk and be ready for business, what then? Again I was told that if it had vanilla box or something similar they could not issue a CO. So regardless of how complete the drawings are, the title determines whether I can get a CO.. I asked do I need to specify a tenant name on the title block and the answer was “No”. So after a brief discussion it was determined that if I put “for occupancy, 100 Main Street, Suite 100, Durham, NC” then I could be issued a CO regardless if there was a tenant or not? I asked so what happens if the CO is issued and a different occupancy moves it? I was told then the new occupant would be noncompliant. So apparently it is all about the verbiage, not about the drawings. I am still trying to absorb this one? I recently had a meeting with my weight loss doctor, yes I’m a little short for my weight. We had been discussing the things that could affect your weight loss and besides what you eat, how much you eat, and when you eat, there are other items such as how much you exercise and how much you sleep. I’ve told him in the past that if I didn’t have to sleep I wouldn’t. There are just too many things I would like to do. So the subject of lack of sleep comes up often in our meetings, once every two months. He told me he had a friend who’s son was an architect and about the late hours he had been working. People always look at you when you’re an architect and just assume you work late hours, but never understand why.
I told him how my dad had informed me that he would never take a subjective major only an objective major in college. So I pointed out that a subjective project is never really finished. I asked the doctor when he thought an architectural project was finished and he responded “when it is done?”. I told him I had learned, in about my fourth or fifth year of college, a project is done when you quit working on it. In reality there are really two answers. When you quit working on it or when the deadline hits. I informed him that we are typically task oriented, not time oriented. The doctor said he was time oriented and that there was only so much time allotted per patient and then he had to move on. I told him that when you’re designing and you think you’re finished, you have a tendency to sit back to look at your product and start thinking, “What if”. So you start rethinking about certain details. This goes on until you finally pull the plug on your self. This process happens no matter what creative discipline you are in. If you are a writer and you finish your paper, you go back and read it again always thinking about how to reword something. If you are a photographer how many times to you post process and image until you get just the right picture you wanted? When we design buildings everything in interactive, so everything we adjust affects something else in the design. As you get your plan laid out to a point where you think everything flows and works well, you get one of those “what if” ideas and change something. If you like the internal change you made then you have to change the exterior to make sure it is coordinated. The exterior change may not be anything major, but as you look at the new elevation and see the configuration and spacing, you get another one of those “what if” thoughts, so you change the windows spacing and then you have to go back and see how it affects the interior. This process goes on and on until finally you stop. Many times we just step away from it to give our poor brains a rest, but eventually you have to let it go. Time may have run out or there is a new project requiring your attention. When in college we had design labs. Each year the starting time changed, but the format did not. We had three, four-hour labs three times a week. An example is my freshman year, we had design lab Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 8am till noon. You soon learned that you would also be spending Monday through Friday evenings there too! Sometimes Saturdays snuck in and soon Sunday evenings became a regular. People couldn’t understand why we were there all the time. I could only imagine what is was like being able to come back to my dorm room in the evening, do a specific number of math problems, read a certain chapter, and answer some questions then being done for the evening. If all we had to do in architecture was design a square box 3” x 3” x 3” we architecture students could have been done for the night too. When you are given a project, like my first project “Design a beautiful cube” it makes it a whole other story. It is one thing to design something, it is another to try to figure out what you are suppose to design. So that is where the process started. We all designed something within those first four hours of design lab, but our project wasn’t due until 8 AM the next morning. Being more scared than curious, we all showed up that night trying to refine our designs. It started that way and then continued through five years of college. By the time we got to fifth year, we weren’t so scared anymore, but had the desire to make the best project we could. “Think out side the box” they would tell us, so after your initial design you started that “what if”process. Some of those alternate idea would lead you to a dead end. Some of those solutions would lead you to a place that was worse than where you had started. Every now and then you hit a home run. For every problem there are multiple solutions and that is why the design process is ever so long. There is only one solution to 2 + 2 as my father, the engineering graduate, use to point out. Maybe he was right about those objective majors, but for some of us it just wasn’t the way to go. |
AuthorA self employed architect. Office of one. Archives
February 2017
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