LIVING WITH OURSELVES
by Duo Dickinson, architect
“Residential projects are good fill-in work until real projects come along.” So spoke an unnamed architect in a letter to the editor of the Connecticut Society of Architect’s newsletter during the last recession. That quote captures most architects’ attitude towards residential work.
Unlike prisons, hospitals or laboratories, houses are the one universally understood building type. Everyone has their own absolute druthers about what his or her house should be. For those that think the nature of residential work is demeaned by its conceptual accessibility, and thus our services are devalued by their lack of necessity for the average consumer, a reality check is in order. Clearly, with anecdotally 98% of homes being built without our services we are not needed. But, like clerics and psychotherapists, being wanted is a viable predicate to professional utility.
However to actually be wanted, practitioners of residential architecture need to be relevant to those that may hire them. Obviously those patrons in search of an art object will always find elite practitioners who can fulfil their fantasies and give them a sculpture within which they can reside.
The domestic dreams of most housing consumers are seldom sculptural in nature, but have to do more with affordability, usefulness and capturing a glimmer of heartfelt desire that they have in their eyes.
In order to accept that glimmer architects have to be open to it. Architects must learn to listen and see the world through their clients’ eyes while they are designing their homes.
Traditionally, this has been viewed as a compromised mindset, but when taken to its logical extreme this attitude imbues architects who make houses for any and all comers with a “mission statement” that inspires the deepest sense of trust in their clients. If it is clear that your desire is simply to “do good” (in practical as well as esthetic terms) then clients will see you not as somebody who is selling preconceived notions, but somebody who is working with them to create something that they will live in for a large number of years.
This is a roundabout way of stating that my own practice has aggressively eschewed any sense of elitism in its outlook. I attend no social functions where architects are the dominant social group and avoid social contexts to “network” (i.e. get work). Clearly the AIA and I are a misfit, so I do not belong. I don’t lobby for jobs, but simply work long and hard at creating good work.
The last step of this anti-elitist approach is one that I don’t expect most architects to embrace as it has potentially severe economic consequences. For the last dozen or so years I have been practicing architecture on my own, anywhere from about 10-40% of the work in the office is done for non-for-profit groups. Typically this is done on an at cost or pro bono basis. In fact this work is the extended spectrum of an outlook that declares that what I do is not too good for anyone.
The reality is that if we simply try to sell our services as a fine arts product we limit ourselves to a tiny percentage of one percent of the population who can afford that kind of work. I have been fortunate that approximately 5-10% of the work that I do has, effectively, no budget. This is despite the fact that the equivalent percentage of my work (and sometimes upwards of 20%) has the starkest and most intense budgetary limitations imaginable, (government funded housing) as well as the most stringent and at times absurd governmental overview of the work that we are performing.
In fact this balance is effectively a Robin Hood paradigm. We work for just enough people who can afford to pay full freight for fees (averaging over 15% of construction costs on a percentage of construction costs basis and approximately 10-12% on an hourly basis for projects of lesser complexity or higher owner input) we are effectively able to delete the “cream” off of my own personal income that would be derived from working solely for those of substantial means. Additionally I am able to keep 1-3 people on our staff of 9 to work on projects that have little or no initial funding and highly limited fees for architectural services once governmental funding is achieved. Unlike the unnamed architect who saw residential work as a stopgap during hard times, we’ve never laid anyone off or missed paying our bills.
In truth this means the “profitability” for my firm is relatively low (perhaps 10-20% leftover for me in any given year versus the 30-40% most of my compatriots tell me in private is a reasonable expectation for a firm of my size, with billings under $500,000).
The seminal reality that we may not be needed now or in the future, nor should we be required by some statutory obligation, but that we should live our professional lives in a way that we can be wanted will ultimately serve to blunt the worst aspects of our profession (self serving elitism) and uplift those elements that have always been the best parts of what architects do. It is a way by which we can live with ourselves.
