My daughter just told me that her Bosch stove needed a repair and the cost to look at the stove was $90 for the first 20 minutes, then it worked out to a bit over $200/hr in 6 min increments just to see what the problem might be. Hey that is just a simple stove by a guy who might have spent a few months in stove school.
And before you get thinking that is good, we pay considerably more than that for a lawyer to sit in on board meetings just to hear if anything might sound like a problem.
Architects don't know what they have, and don't know how to sell it. Should students spend untold hours drawing multiple pencil studies of dark and light aspects of the same campus building facade (yes I was just shown a student's portfolio) or should they be taking business classes. Yes we need architects to be artists, and problem solvers, yes we want excellence and creativity, knowledge of materials, sustainability and the rest; but why give it all away for free.
Even Michael Graves said "I made more money from the target tea pot then from my architectural practice"
I hate to write this - as there are so many voices crying in their beer, still, perhaps it is not too late to revision the profession, after all we have nothing but time and eternity to think up new ideas. Our problems are not permanent, we are creative problem solvers, lets get creative at hardball. Set a goal. say by the year 2100 architects will be as indispensable as plumbers and Bosch stove repair guys, will create outstanding works of art but only for reasonable compensation.
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Roger Keller AIA
Roger W. Keller, Architect
Summit NJ
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-25-2013 17:57
From: John Stewart
Subject: What would you have done??
I was contacted by a person who just bought a 6 acre property next to Larry Ellison's (Oracle) 40 acre property in Woodside,CA near SF. He lives in Miami and only plans to live in the house in the summer. The list price was $11 million. rumor is he bought it on the courthouse steps for $3.5 million. It included a 1915 European house plus a fairly recent addition of a rec building with an indoor pool, locker rooms, exercise rooms, prayer rooms, etc. The total floor area is 18,000 Sf. I spent two hours walking around with him taking notes about a two million face lift he is planning. At the end when we were standing in front of the house. He said all I want to know right now is how you are going to tie the buildings together. I want you to do some concepts for the exterior. I asked him if he expected me to do them for free. He said yes he needed to know it "I was his guy" . I wrote to him after a few days saying it was probably $10,000 of work but I would do it for $5,000 to show him I was a good designer. He wrote back saying thanks but he had three people already working on it!!!
What would you have done?
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John Stewart AIA
Stewart Associates Architects
San Carlos CA
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