Imagination Art & Architecture

It is a given that success for the average architect necessitates sacrifices. However, Starchitect-level success, the kind that so many ambitiously aspire to (and so few achieve), often requires compromise of an especially perverse nature - namely, of one's manners, ethical standards, objectivity, social propriety, mental faculties, and capacity for reason. As evidenced by the behavior of numerous Starchitects and their suborbital attributes to distract from real investigation into the work itself and undermine the process of design. For those preparing to enter into such and endeavor, we offer the following mission statement, based on years of observation, for achieving success in spite of yourself:

1. Profess a commitment to collaborative design. Proceed by designing what ever you want.

2. Promote employees who excel at flattery.

3. Disappear periodically, leaving your team to work unaided. Upon your return, destroy any progress made. Rinse and repeat.

4. When presented with a superior design not of one’s own making, ignore it. Regurgitate said design weeks later as one’s own- add camouflaging tweaks as necessary.

5. Delegate decision-making authority to the least cooperative member of the team.

6. Keep designers emotionally disengaged from the project by discouraging discovery of their own creative solutions. Rather, instill your leadership with ambiguity keeping designers focused on arguing, worrying, agonizing, and fruitlessly trying to read your mind.

7. Hold a design charrette open to all in the firm. Rule that no presented options suffice.

8. Create a design with great potential. Squander it.

9. Everything is due by the end of today.

10. Cultivate competitive factions within the office and silently watch as they busily undermine one another whilst no work gets done.

11. Model your design based on what someone told you the market wants.

12. Delay decision-making by ordering numerous iterations of superfluous design investigations. Shortly before the deadline, proclaim that, as anticipated, your first design impulse was correct.

13. Pick any employee, and publicly parade them as your exclusive favorite. Share meals, pillow-talk, socialize, and plot the future direction of Architecture together. Inexplicably drop them after six months. Pick another worker and repeat.

14. Cultivate team apathy and low morale by continuing to develop ideas and designs ten-to-thirty years out of fashion.

15. Drive your most intelligent team members off the design team and onto the technical team via wilful, impulsive critiques of their creativity. Proceed to design with an even less creative team.

16. Make your rhetoric not match your actions.

17. Develop multiple personalities. Deploy as needed.

18. Allow your drug, alcohol, or sexual addiction to interfere with your work.

19. When you have attained enough fame, rest on your laurels and lose your interest in architecture altogether. Focus instead on football.

20. Identify an outside person or entity that, due to their continual obstructive behavior, absolves the design worthy of your attention. Delegate the design to subordinates declare the project is “bread and butter” and forever ignore it. Collect fees.

21. Create a police-state within the office. Initiate procedures, audit reported hours, surveil computer screens, question in-out times., spot-check emails, restrict meals, increase workloads, reduce pay, threaten objectors, accuse suspects based on hunches, fire people at will, crush rebellion, and generally make employees think more about their exit strategy than designing buildings.

22. Bring your spouse in to assist in running the office. Watch your workers squirm when they cannot alert you that he/she is undermining the firm with his/her idiocy.

23. If a functional request, city ordinance or building code requirement threatens the viability of a signature design element, do one of the following: question the intelligence of the individual raising the issue, make empty appeals to “higher standards”, dismissively declare”just fix it”, or ignore it until it’s too late. Under no circumstances should you take the issue seriously.

24. Demonstrate your passion for architecture by unashamedly bursting into tears when describing the anticipated transcendent experience of your design. Just assume everyone else feels likewise.

25. Publicly act as a beneficent figurehead, a beacon of positive leadership for all in the firm. Privately direct a squad of your lieutenants to do all your firing, slave-driving, salary-cutting and other dirty work. Feign innocence of their actions.

26. Hire a talented new employee with an impeccable resume, trained in a firm more esteemed than yours. On their first day, give the individual a single chance to impress you with their abilities. The instant they deviate from your design affinities, crush them and declare them ruined by their former employer. ignore them until they quit.

27. Interrupt, interrupt, interrupt.

28. Announce to the office you intention to author a Groundbreaking Theoretical Tome. Do nothing.


29. Initiate loud squabbles with your business partner or spouse in front of all employees. Grumble about him/her under your breath. Act surprised when employees quit.

30. Request several color samples of an architectural element, material, or surface. Rule that the correct color is somewhere between Color 1 and Color 2. Repeat ad infinitum.

31. Change part of the design during project documentation. Next, forget that you made this decision. Upon encountering the change as built on site. Fly into a rage.

32. Optional addendum to #31: insist, INSIST! the change be corrected regardless of cost, schedule, or client desirability.

33. Should an employee quit your office, curse them, disavow ever liking them, disparage their abilities and thereafter ignore them. Upon encountering the employee years later, act as if you’ve remained good ol’ pals.

34. The photograph is paramount. Concentrate all your resources on areas to be photograph. Construction need only be durable enough to survive the photo-shoot, not actual use.

35. Brow beat your computer support fellow. Remember, your computer has never ever worked correctly, and “why must I ask you to keep fixing this?”

36. At least once per client meeting, directly question your project leader’s intellectual capacity. Apologize to the client for his/her ignorance (regardless of the validity of his/her remarks”)

37. When others are speaking, do not listen. Concentrate instead on what you will say next.

38. Assert that you work is better than (insert name of architect more highly-esteemed than your)

39. Hire a young attractive employee fitting your sexual preference, regardless of their intelligence or lack thereof. Never find any fault with them. Never fire them. Just leer at them.

40. Punctuate your speech with words for which you have created your own new, bewildering definitions.

41. When walking by an employee’s desk, briefly glance at whatever lies on top, declare it unsatisfactory, provide no solution, and simply continue on your way. Allow no more than 10 seconds for said exchange.

42. No office-wide staff meetings. This would needlessly give workers a sense for the future of the firm, and consequently, their jobs. Much better to keep them nervous, nervous, nervous.

43. Receive praise only. Never provide it.

44. Assume that the office runs on autopilot. New work arrives, contracts get signs, people get hired, people get fired, drawings get drawn, clients get invoiced, bills get paid, paychecks get printed, buildings get built and your Audi gets washed, all whilst you blithely sip chardonnay in first class.

45. Publicity is absolute. Yield to this axiom: if your name isn't in print, you simply do not exist.

46. Copy robustly from yourself. If it worked with a different client, on a different project, with a different building type, in a different time and in a different country, why bother creating unique solution for this project.

47. Cultivate a voice of condescension, a manner of aggression and an appearance of eccentricity.

48. Acquiesce to all of the following client requests, no matter how disastrous it may be to the firms financial integrity: major last-minute changes, reduction to your fee, reduction to your schedule, reductions to the quality of the project, endless design options, client request for delayed payments, pro-bono side-work, working with out a contract, cleaning up another architect’s failed design, or employing the client’s son or daughter in an internship.

49. Remember, inside you are just a child who needs to get his way.

50. Lastly, pass down you unconditional conviction of your own genius to younger generations, so that they too can nurture an unjustified sense of self (regardless of their accomplishments) and mutate their integrity in the pursuit of fame, thus perpetuating the twisted personality cult of Starchitecture inexorably into the future.

-by Anonymous (may be Conrad) may be you. Anonymous is an architect. Anonymous went to the Right universities, and there studied with the Right professors, and recieved the Right grades, the Right awards and the Right degrees. Subsequently, Anonymous earned the Right professional registrations. Anonymous has the Right architects on the Right projects, but that has somehow turned out Wrong. Anonymous has quietly endured in their little fiefdoms, and observed aghast at their often childish, irratinal behavior, yet inexplicable success. Anonymous is ultimately fearful that s/he may turn out just like them.

From Conditions Magazine, #0310

In professional life you must discover a kind of identity for yourself, that becomes a sort of trademark; a way of working that is distinctive that people can recognize.

The reason for this is that the path to financial success and notoriety is by having something that no one else has. Kind of like a brand ( one of my most despised words)

So what you do in life in order to be professional is develop a brand, your way of working, your attitude that is understandable to others.

In most cases, it turns out to be something fairly narrow...

..and then you discover you have something to offer that is better than other people have, or at least more distinctive.

And what you do with that, is you become a specialist.
Then people will call you to get more of what you've become adept at doing.
So if you do anything and become celebrated for it, people will send you more of that.
For the rest of your life, quite possibly, you will have that characteristic and people will continue to ask you for what you have already done and succeeded at.

This is the way to professional accomplishment: you have to demonstrate that you know something unique, that you can repeat, over, and over and over until ultimately you lose interest in it.

The consequence of specialization and success is that it hurts you. It hurts you because it basically doesn't aid in your development.

The truth of the matter is that understanding development comes from failure. People begin to get better when they fail. When they move towards failure they discover something because of it. They fail again and they discover something else. So the model for personal development is antithetical to the model for professional success. As a result of that, I believe that Picasso as a model, is the most useful model you could have in terms of your artistic interest, because whenever Picasso learned how to do something he abandoned it. As a result of that, in terms of his development as an artist his results were extraordinary.

Do you remember that movie the mask?

Jim Carry tries on this mask and he becomes a crazy exaggeration of himself with supernatural powers. The concept of the mask is that it pulls out certain aspects of a its wearer's personality and amplifies it to the max. So if you try it on, and I tried it on, or anyone else on the planet for that matter tried it on, you would always get a different super hero. In becoming a famous architect or famous at anything for that matter, the people who are most successful are the ones that seem to have found this secret mask. And they have kept it hidden until now. Well I have found it and I will share it with you. but don't tell anyone else.

The problem with most architects is that they want to become Le Corbusier, or Loius Kahn or Mies or whoever. So they go out and get their glasses, they trace their work, and even try to copy their mannerisms. The only way to become either of these people is to have their parents make you and even that's a long shot. If you have siblings you know what I mean.

The simple and most effective way to become famous is to desire to become"YOU-to-the-max". That right! You put on a super mask and super size the greatest thing about you. That's what the others did.

So what's the secret of the mask?

It all comes down to this. A single stupid dumb question.

You go in front of the mirror and ask:

What's great about me and how can I make this better?

I know this sound too simple, better yet, it sounds too geeky, too nerdy. In fact let me give you some advice on how to read this blog. click here

Ask this question in every aspect of your life. In your work, in your play, in the way you dress, everything.

What great about this project, how can I make it better?
Whats great about my this?
whats great about my that?
Just keep on going

This is why they call architects optimists.
If you cant do this leave architecture and do something else.

Anyway, yada yada yada, nuf'said.

Until next week, live famous and be happy.

This post is based on the premise that what the client and general public's view of what is good architecture, is often times not the same as what the famous architect view of what is good architecture.

In becoming a famous architect you will inevitable have to make a choice in which constituent your design will pander to. Otherwise you can place your design somewhere between these two polarities.

Daniel Lebiskind tends to side with the idea of making architecture that communicates with the public, while Peter Eisenman tends towards communicating to the architectural elite.


This debate played out between the two at the end of the World Trade Center competition which Lebiskind won.

Eisenman's team, was a member of one of seven semi-finalist in the competition. His team, which included Richard Meier & Partners, Gwathmey Siegel & Associates and Steven Holl Architects, proposed creating a five-building matrix arranged at a 90-degree angle and connected by three aerial bridges.

"The project was doomed from the start," Mr. Eisenman told 100 students and faculty in Princeton University's McCosh Hall. "We submitted our credentials and truly we never thought we'd be selected."

Mr. Eisenman blamed New York City officials for turning a serious architectural competition into a popularity contest based on public opinion, and he criticized the media for oversimplifying each team's plan.

"The biggest mistake the city made was asking anyone to vote on such a project," he said. "The media condenses projects and doesn't show anything but images."

Believing his team had developed the most creative, meaningful plan but disappointed it did not reach the final round of competition, Mr. Eisenman hopes to continue promoting its original concepts.

Most of all, Mr. Eisenman laments what he described as the overall failure of the World Trade Center competition. "I think it's sad for New York and sad for the country because the idea posed a lot of hope and not a lot of answers," he said.

Eisenman won't discuss Libeskind by name, but there is no love lost there. He says the New York competition was set up with too much public input -- from families of the victims, the Port Authority, the trade center leaseholder and from the man in the street.

"You can talk to the public, but I don't think they should say what is good art or music" Eisenman says. He has seen the designs sent to him by "Joe Everyman," and they're as heavy-handed as the artwork after Sept. 11 that depicted a crying Statue of Liberty, a reminder of why you should "never pander to popular taste."

"You're dealing with an important memorial," Eisenman says. "How do you make those decisions so you don't get kitsch banality?"

It's a dig at Libeskind, of course, who has made himself accessible to everyone, and who has said, "The public is always right."

Lebiskind's response is "Architecture is a public art, it's not something done in private for private reasons, it has to reach the public, and part of the art of architecture is also language. it's not just some sort of container, some abstract piece of glass and concrete, it is part of communicative system, and we understand old traditional buildings because they signal to us, things about our culture. The same thing is true for new museums, they have to signal the connection between that past and in the future."

In an interview he was asked " You say that, but it is easy for me to think of architects as people who cater to private indulgences and the fetishes of the rich."

Lebiskind's response "Well I was not one of those architects, I have no aspirations to do that kind of architecture because really architecture is what is common between people, and what a contribution it makes to the viability of a city, and to civic space. After all, the pleasures and the celebratory dreams that we have, have to do with the environment we live in, and we might as well make an inspiring environment, an environment that is more than just a shallow façade of something inauthentic, and deal with the problems that we have."

Interviewer: Now what about this common image we have of the architect as a kind of solo visionary. What's the role of the collaborator, of the client, or of the community as a collaborator in these projects, should they just go away and wait until the architect who knows what he's doing has finished the drawings?

Daniel Libeskind: That's a very old-fashioned and very nostalgic view of the old architect, the master who's sort of sitting contemplating and making some models and imposing things on a society. I think the contemporary architect is an architect who is able to be engaged with a client, with the public. Certainly architecture is a communal art, no one person can build a building, you need teams, you need workers, you need people, you need engagement, and of course the building is not built for its own sake, it's built finally for the life that will take place in it. I often point out to my clients that the building is not finished when the building is finished, it's only beginning its life. For the next 30, 40, 50, 100, 150 years, which is what will be exciting and vital for the people who will use it. So yes, it's a collaborative art, it's an art of teams, but that doesn't mean it's a mediocre art, that doesn't mean that it's diluted to the lowest common denominator, it's to raise the art form of architecture, so that it is communicating to our deepest aspirations.