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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).
My head spins these days as I read the pablum being spewed forth about technological or practice methodologies revolutionizing the practice of architecture. BIM, REVIT, IPD, open-sourcing, architect as chief-collaborator, blah, blah, blah.
Enough!
None of that stuff matters unless we have work. And these days there just isn’t enough to go around. Or maybe there is and we just aren’t getting our share. Lord knows we’ve done a good job of bastardizing this profession over the last 30 years, giving away much of the mantel we once claimed as ours. So maybe we need to put the horse back in front of the cart and figure out how to GET more work before we figure out how to DO it.
Nah, that makes too much sense.
Robert Vecchione is an architect/designer and principal of the multidisciplinary firm Cobrooke Ideas-Architecture-Design (www.cobrooke.com).
Does being an architect imply you’re creative?
I had someone remark recently that using the phrase “creative thinking” in my firm description was redundant because being an architect implies creativity.
Is that true?
We’ve all been in and seen our share of uninspired buildings that don’t deserve to be called architecture. A majority of the built environment is comprised of buildings. How can we all be so creative and wind up with the built environment we do? Isn’t there a distinction among architectural firms, those who fall in the more creative side of the spectrum (think Gehry, Hadid) and nuts and bolts production firms?
Doesn’t a market exist for both buildings and architecture?
If so, are there creative and non-creative architects?
Can creativity and creative thinking be quantified and marketed as a service?
Or is being an architect enough?
Robert Vecchione is an architect/designer and principal of the multidisciplinary firm Cobrooke Ideas-Architecture-Design (www.cobrooke.com)
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Unlike the stock market, which is setting at record highs, the housing market has yet to recover from the depths of the last recession. While real estate sales and prices are trending higher and are clearly better off than they were a few years (or even months) ago, a full recovery is still far off.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since it gives more people more time to take advantage of still low prices and interest rates. Nor is it a good thing, since it means as much as one-third of current homeowners are still underwater with their mortgages (eg. they owe more than the property is worth).
But with prices up, inquiries on the rise, and the spring selling season in full gear, it remains to be seen how this uptrend will play out.
For this installment of Investing 101, Shari Olefson, noted real estate attorney and author of the new book Financial Fresh Start, walks us through the basics of renting versus buying when it comes to making the investment of a lifetime.
1) Follow the “Rule of 15”
Before you make the decision to rent or buy, Olefson offers this rule of thumb: “If you can buy a home in your area for less than 15-times what your annual rent is, than financially it makes much more sense to buy than to rent.”
For example, if you pay $2,000 a month in rent (or $24,000 a year), she says the basic buy-rent cutoff price would be $360,000.
However, she warns that if rental rates in your area are abnormally high or the home you are looking at will need repairs, you must factor that in. Of course, she says “this is only one of several factors to consider,” but adds it is still “a great line in the sand” for narrowing down your initial search.
2) Determine What You Can Afford
Olefson says affordability is another key variable to consider. As a rough guideline, she suggests looking at properties that cost no more than 2.5 to 3 times your annual income on housing.
More…Even if you wanted to spend more, she says the mortgage market has changed drastically and financing requirements are much more strict.
“How you look on paper, what your credit looks like, and do you have the 20% down payment,” are also going to be factors of affordability to consider, as will your employment history.
3) Market Conditions
Whether you rent or buy, the laws of supply and demand certainly apply to housing prices. Right now, Olefson says for a number of reasons, there are simply fewer houses for sale than usual.
“We have four months worth of inventory right now, normally we have over six months,” she says, “that’s about a 25% decrease from this time last year, which is huge and what is driving those prices up.”
To be fair, she conceded part of the reason there are so few listings is because so many sellers are unsure about the market right now and whether or not they want to be in it. Still you have to be careful since national statistics smooth over some of the big statistical differences that vary from market to market, such as foreclosure and unemployment rates.
4) When to Become a Tenant Again
“The same formulas apply,” Olefson says, but that is really “a lifestyle feature” type of question; such as whether or not you may be moving or retiring in the near future. Even so, she says it’s a good idea to look at the local market and familiarize yourself with prices and rents and then run the numbers to see if ”it makes more sense to rent or to own your own home.”
Watch video at source Yahoo Finance
Online job ads for architects up 20% over year
Online job advertisements for architects rose 20 percent during the last 90 days compared to the same time period in 2012, according to Wanted Analytics, a firm that tracks online job ads. There were a total of more than 16,000 architect jobs advertised in the past 90 days.
New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., San Francisco and Houston topped the list of metropolitan areas with the most job ads for architects.
“Autodesk AutoCAD” was the most commonly required skill in architect jobs. In the past 90 days, 5,500 jobs required CAD skills, representing about 35 percent of all hiring demand.
The most commonly required skills in architecture jobs include:
Autodesk REVIT Architecture
Oral and written communication skills
Detail oriented
Self-starting/self-motivated
Project management
Organizational skills
Bentley MicroStation
Microsoft Office
Adobe Photoshop
Watch a new CCTV America video from the AIA.org website that highlights 7 consecutive months of gains in the industry
Temporary hiring takes center stage
U.S. temporary employment jumped by 20,300 jobs in March, compared with the previous month, and the year-over-year growth rate ticked up, according to seasonally adjusted numbers released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition, the number of temp jobs added in February was revised upward by 22,000 jobs.
Year-over-year growth in temp jobs had been decelerating since November. However, the number of temp jobs rose by 6.4 percent year over year in March, up from the 5.3 percent increase in February.
Further, the U.S. temp penetration rate rose to 1.94 percent in March from 1.93 percent in February.
However, the U.S. added fewer jobs overall in March than February. Total non-farm employment rose by 88,000 jobs in March compared with an increase of 218,000 in February – Sending a clear signal that firms are exercising caution, temporary hires outpaced permanent hires for the same period.
The U.S. unemployment rate still fell to 7.6 percent in March from 7.7 percent in February. The college-level unemployment rate, which can serve as a proxy for professional employment, was unchanged from February at 3.8 percent.
In other industries, construction added 18,000 jobs in March. The BLS reported construction has added 169,000 jobs since September.
Click on the chart below to enlarge.
Click on the chart below to enlarge.
This post is a composite of articles from Staffing Industry Analysts and AIA.org websites
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One of my passions in life (besides design) is motorcycle riding. It’s my muse, my creative spark. When I tell people I ride you usually get one of the following replies:
“You must be crazy”
“I know someone who was killed in a motorcycle accident”
They don’t get it; don’t understand how something perceived to be dangerous could be so enjoyable.
When I tell people I’m an architect I usually get one of the following responses:
“You build buildings”
“You must be good at math”
Sometimes someone will say you “design buildings”. But very few non-architects get it, understanding that, at our core, we’re creative forces with the ability to see the invisible, connect dots no one else sees, to “create” something from nothing.
And the creative process that’s fuels our work more often than not sets the tone for the way we live our life. Searching, questioning, dreaming.
How lucky are we?
In the “old days,” a firm might turn down a project because it didn’t have the necessary staff to handle it properly. Today, firms can maintain a lean staff in lean times and hire freelance consultants when business picks up. In the process they can hire people with the particular skills needed for particular jobs.
Architecture is not the only profession turning more and more to freelance employment. One study finds the number of temporary hires almost doubled in a recent four-year period – over 10 percent of them skilled technicians or professionals.
In fact, a growing number of young architects see freelancing as a fast-track means to getting ahead.
Instead of working on just one type of project or one aspect of design, freelancers acquire varied experience. The goal is to land permanent positions at a higher level more quickly than by remaining on one job for a given period of time.
Assuming that architectural firms will become accustomed to the freelance concept, this type of employment will grow as the demand for new projects returns to pre-recession levels.
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The pace of purchased new homes fell to a 313,000 annual pace, the slowest since October. Though an analyst says there are signs of life in some regions, “we’re not seeing a broad-based recovery.”
(Bloomberg) – Purchases of new homes in the U.S. unexpectedly fell in February for a second month, a sign the recovery in the housing market may be uneven.
Sales dropped 1.6% to a 313,000 annual pace, the slowest since October, from a 318,000 rate in January that was weaker than previously reported, figures from the Commerce Department showed Friday in Washington. The median estimate of 78 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for 325,000.
Sales of new homes are struggling to gain momentum amid increasing competition from foreclosures, which are hurting all property values. Nonetheless, a pickup in hiring, growing incomes and mortgage rates near a record low are making all houses more affordable, which may help underpin the market.
“There are signs of life in the market in certain regions, but we’re not seeing a broad-based recovery,” said Michelle Meyer, a senior U.S. economist at Bank of America Corp. in New York, who forecast a 310,000 sales pace. “Builders are still competing with existing inventories. The spring selling season should show some modest improvement, but it will be limited.”
Economists’ estimates ranged from 310,000 to 350,000. The rate for January was previously reported at 321,000.
The recent slowdown in demand has pushed up the amount of time it takes to sell a new house. There were 150,000 new houses on the market at the end of February, matching the prior month’s record low. The supply of homes at the current sales rate climbed to 5.8 months’ worth from 5.7 months in January.
Purchases, tabulated when contracts are signed, fell in two of the four U.S. regions, led by a 7.2% drop in the South. Sales fell 2.4% in the Midwest and rose 14% in the Northeast and 8% in the West.
The regional breakdown affected prices as demand fell in the South and Midwest where homes are less expensive and rose in the Northeast and West where they are costlier.
The median sales price increased 6.2% in February from the same month last year to $233,700, Friday’s report showed.
New-home sales have lost their ability to forecast the broader market as demand shifts to previously owned houses. Purchases of existing homes are calculated when a deal closes about a month or two later. New properties made up almost 7% of the market last year, down from a high of 15% during the last decade’s housing boom.
Existing-home purchases eased to a 4.59 million annual rate last month from a 4.63 million pace in January, the National Association of Realtors reported this week. Even with the decline, January and February sales marked the strongest start to a year since 2007.
Home foreclosures remain a concern for builders. Filings fell 8% in February, the smallest year-over-year decrease since October 2010, as lenders began working through a backlog of seized properties, RealtyTrac Inc. said last week.
“February’s numbers point to a gradually rising foreclosure tide,” Brandon Moore, RealtyTrac’s CEO, said in the statement. “That should result in more states posting annual increases in the coming months.”
To hold down borrowing costs like mortgage rates, Federal Reserve policy makers last week said they will continue to swap $400 billion in short-term securities with long-term debt to lengthen the average maturity of the central bank’s holdings, a move dubbed Operation Twist.
The National Association of Realtors’s affordability index climbed to a record high in January, underpinning demand. That may be why builders are gaining confidence.
Builders this year have broken ground on homes at the fastest pace since October to November 2008, according to Commerce Department figures released this week. Permits for construction climbed to the highest level since 2008, the same report showed.
The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo index of builder confidence in March held at the highest level since June 2007. Sales expectations climbed for a sixth month, according to the March 19 report.
Ryland Group Inc., which builds homes with an average price of $255,000 in 13 states, said it has a positive outlook for 2012.
“We finished the year on a strong note, entered the year optimistic and still feel fairly optimistic today,” Larry Nicholson, president and CEO at the Westlake Village, Calif.-based company, said March 6 at an investor conference. “The good thing about the traffic we are seeing is it’s new traffic. We feel a lot better than we did a year ago. Hopefully, we can keep this trend up.”
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I work as a freelance architect and designer. In this particular instance, I was victim to the ignorance of an uninformed client. When you’re dealing with intellectual property, such as creating a design, it’s important that the client is knowledgeable and has the capacity to understand what they’re actually paying for: your ideas!
While designing Whitehall, located on 19 Greenwich Ave in New York City, I produced construction drawings, digital renderings, hand sketches, filing drawings for building permits, and material call outs. The built space was written about in Vogue magazine, and they not only left out my name but gave the owners the credit for the work, literally stating that the space was designed by Donal Brophy and Brian McGory.
After using all of my ideas, the clients claimed that they were actually the designers. Confused? I was too. After interrogating them, the response was that they had to deal with a lot of questions from the contractor. Has anyone ever worked with a contractor who doesn’t ask questions? If they’re not asking questions, they probably aren’t doing a great job.
In most cases, the client would typically allow the experienced professional to perform what is called Construction Administration. I technically should have been the one who was answering all of the contractor’s questions on this job and would have if the client hadn’t stated that he was also an “experienced” designer and therefore this role would be unnecessary for me to perform. The client asked me to remove that fee from our contract. I agreed to remove the fee and it was made clear that I would not be performing the CA role on this job. This was all agreed upon prior to beginning the work.
Even though I explained this to the client, he told me to take $3,000 in cash (the contract was for $8,000), off the books, and be done with it. I refused on moral grounds as I had clearly already done all of the work. To then be stiffed on top of that was just adding salt to the wound. As a result of this loss, in addition to having gotten short-changed by another client who claims he’s broke, I’ve been forced to give up my studio space.
“After using all of my ideas, the clients claimed that they were actually the designers.”
Freelancers don’t have a financial buffer like corporations do. We’re typically operating month to month and if you don’t have more than one job lined up, you have no leverage in your negotiations. Having worked in this industry for the past seven years, what I can now advise is that it’s not worth it.
If the terms aren’t to your liking and you don’t find yourself personally attached to the work or to the client, then walk away. Otherwise, you’ll always end up with the short end of the stick.
If you freelance in the New York City area, stay away from Donal Brophy and Whitehall. If you do decide to stop in Whitehall for a drink, tell them it’s on me!
Antonio is a freelance architect and designer. (The views and opinions in the posting above do not reflect those of Consulting4architects Blog.)
This story was submitted to the Freelancers Union
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