“We Really Do Offer The Freedom To Design”

The entire CFA team and I are pleased to announce the completion of the rebranding of our company, social sites, and website.  We wanted a fresh new look that better reflects our times and services in a constantly changing world and the professionals we represent.  I described CFA to as a 29 year old “start-up” because we have always reacted well to change and our brand should reflect our unique ability and staying power.  CFA was successful the year it was created, 1984, and has never looked back.

Special thanks and acknowledgement goes out to our designer Ryan Kovich. Ryan devoted several months of his valuable time and energy studying the creative world of architecture and design and contemplating our brand identity.  He took that knowledge and his creative energy to bring us this great new brand.  Find Ryan Here.

We would also like to thank our creative editor David Gibbons.  David did a tremendous job taking our ideas, filtering out the rhetoric, and providing rock solid content that expresses our brand perfectly. Find David Here.

Finally, we would like to thank our consultants and clients who gave us their valuable input throughout this process.  Our rebranding efforts success would not be possible without them.

Would you like to evaluate our new Website? Evaluation Form.

The original creative thinkers

It’s hard to miss the chatter these days about creative thinking and it’s importance going forward in the new ideas based, connected economy.

Richard Florida says creativity drives theeconomy (http://zite.to/11HzQyZ). Peter Arvai calls it the “Frictionless Economy (http://zite.to/11Wsa2b) where he states;

“Companies that are succeeding rely on creative thinking to consistently produce new ideas”

More Arvai;

“Creativity is becoming the single most defining characteristic of an organization’s ability to survive. We’ve moved into an idea economy where success can be very profitable and short at the same time. To be a contender, companies have to be built around idea production and guided by an actual purpose for existing.”

Hey, I get it. The business world is constantly in flux and adaptability and innovation are the keys to success. So who is better suited to guide business through innovation and idea production than the original creative thinkers?

You guessed it, architects and designers. We ARE the original creative (design) thinkers. It’s what we’ve been trained to do. Trained to dissect problems, assimilate information, connect dots and see patterns before anyone else sees them. Trained to innovate as we strive to create a better built environment. Trained to ask why and find a better way.  We think, creatively all the time. So my question is:

What took the business world so long to catch up?

Architects and designers have always know there is only one way to think.

Creatively.

Our way.

So if you see a forlorn businessperson muttering to themselves about how to compete in today’s business world throw an arm over their shoulder, smile and say it’s going to be okay.

The thinkers are here.

Robert Vecchione is an original thinker. Architect/designer, principal at Cobrooke Creative, a multidisciplinary firm generating ideas for business to help them sharpen and define their purpose. www.cobrooke.com

Zero, Zip, Nada.

My work doesn’t get built.

There, I said it.  Nothing I’ve designed as Cobrooke in the last five years has gotten built.

Zero, zip, nada.

Not the concierge ALF in Tampa, the new campus plan for a developmentally disabled service provider, a new technology center or the performing arts center addition or the school for victims of human trafficking in Africa. By my count that makes me 0 for 5, batting a perfect zero. Recently, we were executive architects for a fairly large church addition that did get built but that doesn’t count. It’s like being a car passenger, along for the ride with your feet hanging out the window enjoying the view.

And yet here I am, still standing in the batter’s box, bat in hand waiting to take a swing. Hey, I’m an architect, it’s what we do.

We dream, we hope (these days pray, a lot) that the next one is the big one. Until that happens we forage, like survivors in a post-apocalyptic world, for nuts, berries and insects to keep ourselves alive and hopeful.

Today it’s a new competition that occupies my time and keeps me from wondering if today’s the day that a proposal submitted two months ago for a small project with a whopping three grand fee gets green lighted, or the even smaller proposal for half that amount goes through. Hey, it’s all nuts and berries remember?

Until then I work on my competition winning acceptance speech and hang my hat on the adage that “architecture is an old man’s profession”.

Problem is, depending on who you ask, I am already an old man.

Robert Vecchione is an architect/designer and principal of the multidisciplinary firm Cobrooke Ideas-Architecture-Design (www.cobrooke.com).

It’s All About Gaudi…

As you are climbing uphill; what seems like a continuous climb throughout the many hills of Parc Guell, you bravely steel a glance or two downwards and think that this is it.  This must be one of the more beautiful experiences of your life.  Gingerly you take each step with your camera in hand, careful not to drop the camera or anything else as you find yourself looking at, well, everything.  It’s an overwhelming experience, and in a good way.  Earlier in the year, my dad passed away, thereby making this my first vacation in a decade where I did not suffer from any family distractions.  No worries, but did I ever miss him!  I still do.  But it was one less thing to ponder as I was transversing uneven stone steps with nary a handrail in sight.  But I was just starting to speak of the beauty about this park, a must-see for anyone who travels to Barcelona, when I hit a few detours.  Count Guell was a prominent businessman in Barcelona at the early part of the last century.  He engaged a prominent architect, Antoni Gaudi, to design a garden city with sixty houses on a hill called Montana Pelada.  The venture was not successful and only two houses were built.  But an unsuccessful venture led way to one of the more beautiful parks you will ever see.  At the entrance, you will find the main staircase with a dragon fountain made of broken bits of glazed ceramic tile, a signature style for Gaudi.  This leads to the Salon of a Hundred Columns which really number eighty-four, but who cares?  The ceiling of the salon has more tiled mosaics.  In fact, they’re everywhere in sight.  The on-site museum contains splendid furniture that Gaudi designed.  And so it goes; you’ve walked for three hours, and have a big smile on your face.  You can’t wait to tell the story to all you know.

You’ve planned a week in Barcelona because you are wise and know that you will not be bored for a second.  You will want to come back.  As you continue drinking in the various Gaudi shrines throughout this beautiful city, you get to understand a bit more about the architect with each building.  Casa Batllo is truly amazing and I would suggest to go early in the day to avoid crowds.  The details on the doorknobs and locks; the center court and other means of ventilation were ahead of their time.  The rooftop dragon is not to be believed.  Next up is Casa Mila, his iconic monument to the Modernist movement.  It does not seem very livable, but once again, it’s all in the details.  The Sagrada Familia is no problem for anyone familiar with waiting on lines at Disney.  Wear comfortable shoes!  If you are able to go to the top of the towers, then you are lucky for you will view this beautiful city in the most unique way and it is breathtaking.

Okay, I lied.  It’s not all about Gaudi.  It’s also about the food.  As I’m re-reading my diary, the secondary descriptions that do constant battle with architecture are of the fantastic food.  As I read about the various meals of fish, meats and risotto, my mouth waters and I desire to savor them all over again.  Since we are incapable of dining at 10:00 PM, we chose instead to have our main meals of the day at lunch and have a more casual al fresco experience in the evening.

I lied some more.  It’s all about the walk.  Ever since I was twenty and I traveled to San Francisco with friends, I have always made note of how compatible I am with the place I am visiting.  San Francisco was fine but I quickly realized I couldn’t live with Californians.  In Barcelona, at some point we stopped and thought, “could I live here?”  Yes was the answer.  It is walkable; it is friendly; it is safe and clean; it is modern; it is old.  Barcelona is ideal.  The week was brimming over with a travelogue of lists consisting of everywhere we ambled and places we didn’t quite get to at this time.  Maybe, next time?  Because there was so much good stuff that really good architects had the sense to design and get built all in walking distance of each other.  More Gaudi, so much to see in the Gothic Quarter as you walk past what is left of a Roman aqueduct, the Picasso Museum and the Palau de la Musica Catalana (a music hall with a gorgeous stained glass ceiling).  And then there’s Gehry’s Fish.  Barcelona’s golden fish sculpture sits in Port Olimpic at the base of one of the tallest buildings in the city.  Frank Gehry was commissioned to build the piece for the 1992 Summer Olympics and brought the city to the attention of the world!  Wow!

Chicago design firm OWP/P merging with Cannon Design of New York

The deal would make it the nation’s 11th largest architectural firm

By Blair Kamin | Tribune critic

One of Chicago’s largest architectural and engineering firms, OWP/P, is merging with Cannon Design, an even larger design firm based in upstate New York, the firms will announce Thursday. Terms of the deal, a complex cash and stock transaction, were not disclosed.

The new firm, which largely will operate under the Cannon brand, will be one of the nation’s largest. Its combined 2007 revenues of $158.3 million would make it the nation’s 11th biggest architectural firm, according to a survey that the trade journal Architectural Record published last year.

John Syvertsen, OWP/P’s president, acknowledged that the recent construction downturn has forced his firm, like many in Chicago, to lay off architects. But he denied that the merger is recession-related and said it would not lead to a fresh round of layoffs in the Chicago office.

“We started our conversations when the stock market was at 13,000,” he said in a telephone interview. “For us, it means we will be part of a national and international network of offices. Basically, our platform will expand.”

Meanwhile, the deal gives Cannon, which has a small office in Chicago, a much larger presence in one of the nation’s top markets.

Headed by co-chairman and CEO Gary Miller, Cannon Design, with 800 architects and staff, has offices in several U.S. and Canadian cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Toronto. Like OWP/P, it has a health-care specialty.

OWP/P has offices in Chicago and Phoenix.

OWP/P, which specializes in elementary schools, colleges and universities, health-care and commercial work, ranked 52nd in the Architectural Record survey, with $52.9 million in revenue. Cannon, based in Grand Island, N.Y., near Buffalo, ranked 19th, with $95.4 million.

Cross posted from Chicago Tribune