Why I Hate Building Booms
by Duo Dickinson
We are now in the midst of a national building boom. You can’t find gypsum board. Signs are set up at building sites asking for help. General contractors look harried and stressed and subcontractors are driving new trucks. Architects are frustrated with dealing with disinterested builders. Their clients are angry at the inevitable budget increases and the realization that a project that was slated for next year might not be completed until the year after next year. But these are not the reasons why I hate building booms. The critical reason is that bad buildings get built. By “bad” I don’t only mean ugly, I also mean buildings that have no ethical underpinnings.
You might ask how buildings can have ethics. In truth they don’t, but their designers and builders should, and when those ethics are predicated on the “make hay while the sun shines” morality of maximizing profit, the buildings that are produced are as shortsighted as their makers. When architects are overcommitted, they opt for easy answers. When availability of materials means more than their quality or appropriateness, buildings suffer. Whether cheaply rendered, predictably designed, or gratuitously expeditious in material choice, buildings suffer in times of over-the-top demand. In an effort to contain these excesses suburban zoning boards are jumping in to impose moral standards on a free-market situation via more and more restrictive covenants.
But when “cash is king” the subtexts of durability, usefulness, and, yes, even art, are inevitably left by the roadside for the quickest, easiest and most superficially responsive answers. This has been made painfully clear to me over the last couple of years as I do all the site observation work at my architectural office and we typically have between 10-15 jobs under construction at any given time. Given our clientele I drive over 30,000 miles a year throughout the greater New York area. Not only do I visit my own sites, but I visually absorb the frenzied level of construction that I see all about me. When “time is money” and there is a lot of money out there quality suffers to get things done on time.
You can see this mindset in residential details that should be on warehouses, building plans designed for flat sites that end up having to straddle a 15 foot drop over their 40 foot length, window swap-outs that transform a cottage into a box with holes cut into it, and on and on. Classic examples of this “quick and dirty” approach to building are the 8,000 sq.ft. “Bloatburger” houses that have a 4” Colonial Ogee gutter as its sole eave overhang, or better yet cheap vinyl siding on a $600,000 “Estate Home”, or the classic in every building boom since World War II, the Center Hall Colonial that is too wide to fit the width of the available infill lot so its oblong form is twisted to set the gaping maw of the garage doors facing the street while it’s centered formal front door faces into somebody else’s kitchen window. Perfectly useful, and sometimes even beautiful homes become “tear-downs” to facilitate new bulkier construction – a phenomenon that used to be limited to coastal communities or dense urban situations.
A great architect, Charles Moore, once said, “Care is the natural enemy of stereotype, and stereotype of care” in this boom time its translation is simply “haste makes waste”. It should also be noted that builders and architects only respond to existing socio-economic conditions and a recent New York Times article noted that the most prestigious feature of expensive homes in Greenwich, Connecticut, the one status symbol most sought after most by people with unlimited means was the full size dumpster sitting in their driveway, awaiting construction.
The National Association of Home Builders’ statistics tell an interesting story. In 1991, single-family house starts dropped to 840,000, down from over 1,000,000 for each year in the previous decade. 1998 saw that total climb to its highest level (1,200,000 units) since 1978, and 1999 projections stand at over 1,300,000. What industry can absorb 50% growth in 7 years without costs skyrocketing? Beyond the explosion of costs a supply-and-demand economy imposes on consumers during feeding frenzies such as this, quality suffers as just about anyone who has a little experience in construction jumps in to cash in. If you are available and have a sign, you’ll be asked by someone to look at a job or two. Again availability is valued more than performance or cost.
I find a rising portion of my time is spent telling clients why a budget that was good for 1998 simply doesn’t hold water in 2000, and why a project that should take 6 months to build will now take 18 months as subcontractors who were signed up early on simply don’t show up and “better deal” the general contractors for fast cash. All of this will pass, and those who do this work solely for the money will simply leave when there is not enough of it to be had and go to someplace else that, seemingly, has more to offer them.
My only solace is that having entered the profession in 1978, I have been through two full-blown recessions and two recoveries and I know the next recession is going to happen. Then those shiny trucks will be dented and scratched and have “for sale” signs on them. The section of the local newspaper which now has a full page of “Home Improvement” ads will go down to a dozen small entries in the right hand corner they occupied in the early 90’s.
I also know good buildings are being built amid all the cacophonous background noise, but it’s hard to see the quality when the quantity is so overwhelming. I know that good people are often underemployed even during “average” times, and families truly suffer during “busts”. But no one is well served when poor design, incompetent craftsmanship and high costs create the grotesqueries that now abound.
Yes, my firm does have more money, but it’s spent to upgrade the hardware in our office and pay some overdue raises and bonuses to loyal employees. As the principal I am more liquid, but not greatly enriched. All the general contractors and architects I know are in a similar situation. Since I am not Webb Hubble, I only bill when I am actually working on a project and I can only work so many hours in a day. Since I don’t want to have partners, my firm can only be as big as I can manage. Accordingly, we have a cap on what we can earn and, in truth, I have resisted raising my rates for the last five years, as I don’t think it is fair to take advantage of a situation that I know is transitory.
So, as you look out onto the sea of new pickups and backhoes and instantly deforested lots that sprout arbitrary building masses, as you listen to pretentious 20-something-year-old architects say how everything is going “Just great!” and see the frowns on all of our clients’ faces, realize that if your heart is in the right place, your business will be in the right place once all of this is over. It’s nothing that a good 2000-point drop in the Dow or a 3-point rise in interest rates won’t cure in a few months.
