|
|
|
|
The response to this will be very interesting. To me it's just one more slippery step on the path to irrelevance. I suspect younger.generations will view it as a wonderful entrepreneurial opportunity. Is the truth somewhere in between? ------------------------------------------- Eugene Ely AIA, LEED AP Architect-in-waiting San Jose, CA -------------------------------------------
Show Original Message
-------------------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 12-10-2012 10:19
From: Ross Cann
Subject: Commoditization of Architecture
Although we keep claiming architectural design to be a service and not a commodity, other forces are conspiring to drag the profession in the other direction. I have recently learned of a company calledwww.ArcBazar.com that pairs clients to designers around the world in the form of "Paid competitions." A prize of perhaps $1000 is put up for the redesign of an entire house and there will be 8-12 competitors who each upload their solutions within a deadline set by the client. The website takes 20% of the "prize" off the top, the selected winner supposedly gets what's left and the other competitors get the "pleasure and honor" of competing. With the use of BIM many of the completed projects LOOK fairly well developed and have multiple perspective renderings. There is no guarantee of code compliance, safety considerations or even buildability but clearly the competitors are each devoting scores of hours in work, if not more.
The Advisory Board includes many alleged professors from Harvard and MIT. Does anyone know any of these people?:
Oliver Bandte
Tim Curran
Sarah Goldhagen
Jon Hirschtick
William Porter
Daniel Schadek
I would say they have a lot to answer for. There is to my mind something HIGHLY unethical about luring desperate people from around the US and around the world to design with little to no prospect of getting paid. There is an even greater unethical quality about collecting a salary fro a university where people are paying $50,000 a year to learn to be architects and the debasing the profession through the use of this near fraudulent offer of compensation. It is like have 20 people rake your yard and offering to pay the one that you judge to have raked the best minimum wage and paying the others nothing. Does this shock others as much as it shocks me?
Regards,
-------------------------------------------
Ross Cann AIA, LEED AP
Senior Architect
A4 Architecture + Planning
Newport RI
-------------------------------------------
|
|
Be the first person to recommend this.
|