Phil Bernstein's Blog

Winter Commencement

As December now rolls around it's the eve of my last lecture in my professional practice class at Yale. Although I've been teaching for almost twenty-five years, I still can't believe how quickly the semester accelerates into Thanksgiving, and suddenly it's all over but the shouting (or, in our case, final projects and juries). About the same time as the term slammed to a closed I received a note from a student at Prarie View A&M, asking many of the existential questions that must be facing architecture students nearing their degrees. Seemed like a good time to speculate a bit about that future, and what this year's graduates might be facing as they confront the job market in the spring, with enough time between now and then to contemplate their options and plot their strategies, so here goes:

What does the market look like out there for a young architect? Everyone knows we're at the tail end of the worst economic spell in the history of the modern architecture profession, and it's pretty clear now that the explosive growth that drove the mid-naughts (which peaked in 2007) won't be seen again in the foreseable future; that bubble is permanently burst. Here in the U.S. there will always be some construction as long as the economy is functioning in some form, and there's probably some pent-up demand once credit loosens. But it's likely that the U.S. profession has been permanently downsized by 10 - 15%, and most firm growth will be in practices that are either working outside the country or trying different business models (see below). Of course, work outside the U.S, particularly in places like Brazil, China, India, and maybe Russia will continue to explode and someone will be doing those projects. Any one with an architecture degree and the ability to speak Portugese is going to be very busy for quite a long time. Here in the U.S., however there is the harsh reality that 6,000 folks with architecture degrees will graduate in the spring and enter a market where there may be as many as 20,000 unemployed (and more experienced) architects.

What's the best strategy for getting a job? If only it were that simple. There is some hiring going on out there, and what differentiates younger architects from their older counterparts is experience with new technology and digital skills, and a willingness to see problems from a different perspective. Good firms realize that they need diversity in points of view, fresh intellectual resources, and a pipeline of future leaders. Stipulating my obvious conflict of interest here, technological skills are a huge differentiator as well. So is a willingness to be flexible in role and career path. Special note: lots of non-architectural firms are getting on the BIM bandwagon, and hiring architects to jockey those models. Other firms are partnering with builders, or even trying building themselves. A non-tradtional route to be sure, but one that thrusts you right in the middle of the problem. Isn't that where you'd like to be?

How will the role of architects change in the next decade? This is the biggest question of the day, in my view. The relationship between those who design, those who build, and those who own and operate projects--and the process by which all that stuff happens--is evolving, and the days of strict separation of church and state (design and construction) are ending. That creates lots of challenges for architects to define what they are good at and care about (versus the imperial authorial role that we train for) but also opportunities to reposition the profession in a way that solves the broader problems of building rather than just design. But the role of (and need for) pure designers in the traditional sense will diminish.

Has my education prepared me for what I might face out there? I guess as an educator I'm supposed to proclaim "of course!" but honestly, I'm not really sure. We work very hard in our school to establish design bona fides in our students, and the foundational skills of design can be made to serve in a broad spectrum of issues that the profession must face. And I am not a believer that schools of architecture should produce "mini-architects" fully formed upon graduation--being a decent architect is simply too hard and the profession takes time to learn. But I often wonder whether what happens outside my classroom (where we wrestle with questions of what architects do and why, rather than how they do it) is enough to arm our students for the challenges described above. The world of practice is running much ahead of the academy (see "integrated project delivery," "digital construction," "BIM," etc.) and I worry that the gap may soon get too great. I can certainly suggest that the organizations that are responsible for facing these questions might get on with it, and quickly.

What are my chances to stay in architecture? The pure math isn't great (see 6,000 graduates/year), especially for folks who are looking for traditional roles in traditional firms. But maybe that's the secret. For the last few spring terms (during the downturn) I have suggested to our students that they try to remain "on the grid" of the building industry, which actually employs millions of people--far more than the two hundred thousand architects working in firms here in the U.S. That grid includes firms of various flavors, engineering consultancies, contractors and subs, specialty consultants, even building product manufacturers. Staying on that grid keeps you attached to building, might provide some unique perspective and skills from which you could find the right spot in the making of buidlings, and injects some much-needed architectural perspective (no pun intended) across the building ecosystem. It's both an employment plan and a marketing strategy to emphasize the importance of architecture as practiced by architects--where building is a central activity of a vibrant society. As many architects as can fan across that spectrum is all for the good, from my perspective.

Collaboration, Disasters, Tools

I'm just back from Tokyo where I attended the 2011 International Union of Architects (UIA) triennial meeting, a gathering of the world's architects.  Japan was chosen as the site for UIA several years ago but the organizers seriously considered cancelling or moving the event after the disaster in Fukishima on 3/11/2011.  Deciding that pressing ahead--and shifting the focus of the conference to "Beyond Disasters, through Solidarity, towards Sustainability" would demonstrate the resilience and dedication of the Japanese people to recovery and rebuilding.  The opening ceremony, presided over by the Emperor and Empress of Japan, concluded with a silent presentation of photographs of the destruction wrought by the earthquake and tsunami.  Even for those of us from the West who are becoming inured to the destruction of natural disasters (think Katrina, the Texas drought, or even Hurricane Irene) these pictures were extraordinary.  One amazing image--of a large yacht sitting atop the partially crushed remains of a building like some sort of horrid marine/architectural sculpture--has stayed with me as a reminder of how the things we build are fragile, impermanent, and completely yielding to the larger forces of nature.   We'll never be able to fully resist these forces, but we can certainly plan better for them.  But how?

I was asked to contribute to one of the sessions called "Architecture for Human Security" that addressed how architects respond to the challenges of disaster recovery and, by implication, sustainable design.  My charge, from my friend Kazuo Iwamura (an architect and professor at Yokahama University) was to describe how digital technology might contribute to such challenges.  After watching a series of dedicated designers describe their work working to either repair or anticipate disasters around the globe (including northern Japan) I felt a little like the guy who was asked to talk about hammers and chisels after several sculptors presented their masterpieces.  And I opened my remarks accordingly, suggesting that digital tools would be the least important topic addressed during the afternoon.  I hope that my thesis wasn't too obvious to the attendees:  that digital models and supporting analysis provide the sort of comprehensive insight that's tough to do well with paper and markers, or even CAD.  And that those tools might, someday, provide a consistent sort of data and knowledge that the world's designers could tap to share their insights and strategies.  For those of us who tout this sort of stuff for the broader building enterprise this was old news.

I watched the last presentation by a brilliant Japanese architect who was describing his designs for disaster-resistant regional plans.  His slides were a series of photographs from his sketchbook, in a notational style familiar to those of us architects of a certain generation: deft, beautifully clear felt-tipped pen and pencil sketches that described both process and result.  As someone who lives in an almost exclusively digital world, these images were almost a relief to me--exclusively analog yet completely cogent.

But I found myself wondering, after the session was complete, how these various architects (none of whom, I would note, seemed to know or use modeling technologies) could share their collective insights more broadly.  Ours is a solitary profession, and this UIA session made me realize how much we work in our locales in isolation.  Without Iwamura-san these architects, all working on design problems that are so important, would likely never know about each other's work, and few others would either.  I don't think that digital tools will ever completely supplant the drawing process that is so critical to design thinking, but important work that is described digitally--and made fluid and accessible accordingly--at least has a chance of escaping from an individual designer's sketchbook.   So I might have missed a critical aspect of my assignment:  the possibility that the world's designers could memorialize, share and augment their burgeoning insights with models and accompanying algorithmic analysis.  Maybe a digital chisel has a place in the discussion between sculptors.

 

Partly Cloudy, Chance of BIM

Autodesk announced last week the release of the Autodesk Cloud, the first steps in our exploration of future platforms for computing.  I'll leave it to my marketing and sales colleagues to provide the particulars, but thought it might be useful to consider the implications of the emerging cloud for the building industry.

While architects, engineers and builders have always been engaged and enthusiastic about digital technology, low margins, lack of capital and a general aversion to risk have prevented most AEC players from broad, enterprise-wide investment in technological innovation.  The appearance of the personal computer in the mid-eighties was an important tipping point in that commoditized technology was finally available to the myriad small businesses that are the backbone of our industry and moved us, albeit late, to the computer age.   The internet connected those computers for us, and the combination of the two converted the theoretical possibilities of BIM into practice.  Cloud computing is likely the next accelerator, and in my view, a huge game changer for the building industry. 

Let's stipulate that building projects of all kinds are huge CPU and storage hogs, and that today's increasingly large personal computers have helped but certainly not kept up with those demands.  Seems to me that our customers are constantly pressing these boundaries, ahead of hardware and software capabilities, the more they embrace model-based approaches.  Supporting your BIM process with thousands of CPUs in concert with what is essentially infinite storage certainly won't hurt.  And having that stored data more universally accessible is an added bonus.

But as we move from the desktop to the cloud (not just in AEC, but everywhere:  see Amazon, Apple, and your local bank) I think the much-touted possibilities of BIM's transformational implications for building will come into much sharper focus.  A parametric 3D building model, as a more accurate approximation of the final product, is advantageous in and of itself.  But the ability to extrapolate the possibilities of that model, unconstrained by computational boundaries, is pretty titillating:  generating and evaluating alternatives with both scripts and sorting algorithms that will "bound" the exploration space of options; running persistent analysis programs that report "real time" results of design decisions as the designer makes them; even keeping a continuous set of high resolution rendering cameras "viewing" the design as it unfolds, will give designers and builders completely new insights into how projects are unfolding.  Even more importantly, it will simultaneously increase insight and free us to explore and solve, using our synthetic and creative abilities and leave the mundane "in the cloud."  I'm betting that, once we get over some initial giddiness and sloppy form, we'll build better as a result.

Redefining BIM (Video)

In the interest of multi-media, I'm posting here a recent video we prepared where I examine the definition of BIM.  The term has been around since 2002, and is certainly bandied about with abandon around the building industry.  Many folks have their own ideas about this definition, but here are mine.  Comments welcomed.

 

 

Boundary Conditions

I've just finished a couple of weeks of travel (on either end of vacation) tied together by a common theme expressed most clearly by the topic of this summer's Chicago BIMForum:  "Where Does Design End and Construction Begin?"  The phrasing of the question expresses the fundamental tension--that somehow design and construction are deeply separate phenomena--and implies that the distinction is really important. Is it?

Before my break I visited several firms in Seattle, including architects, engineers and even a "DBOM" (Design/Build/Operate/Manage) practice and all of them, in some way, were struggling with this boundary condition.  I saw architects placing themselves directly in the connection between their design strategies for building enclosures and the fabrication of curtain walls, directing the work of the subcontractors even as their official "place" in the delivery structure was "Design Architect."  One of our customers, the DBOM firm, overtly challenges and blurs the design/construction boundary and extends their reach into building operation--designing, fabricating, installing, and then operating energy systems for entire building portfolios and reveling (not to mention thriving) in their resulting span of influence and control.

My summer beach reading (no letters, please) was Mario Carpo’s The Alphabet and the Algorithm.  Carpo, who introduced me to the idea that the Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti first asserted the ideas of both design modeling and the design-construction schism.  In this slim text Carpo explores Alberti’s declaration that the architect’s design should be executed without deviation by the builder and that, almost six-hundred years later, BIM somehow collapses that divide once again, returning not back to the age of the “Master Builder” (forever gone in my view) but something new where roles are restructured in ways yet unknown and boundary conditions between design and construction again redefined.

At the BIMForum, a non-denominational assembly of AEC players interested in process change through technology, a series of presentations explicitly explored the demilitarized zone between design and construction.  Not surprisingly, architects presenting suggested that construction in some ways was a form of design, and builders presenting asserted that construction would be better done with “better design.”  One contractor colleague went so far as to posit that a solution to the divide was for architects to take design into much further detail (think shop drawings) so that construction could be commoditized into a “procure and assemble” process.  There was, of course, lots of BIM enthusiasm amongst the converted, including a two presentations:  “BIM Amongst Friends” suggesting that the technology was the connective tissue between willing designers and builders, and “BIM Amongst Non-Friends (Enemies?)” a skit where I played an BIM-enabled architect unwilling to cross the boundary with information desperately needed by my BIM-starved construction manager.  It was just play-acting, but amazing how easy it was to fall back into a mode of self-protective, fee-protective self-interest absent any other inspiration to the contrary--despite all my alleged BIM power as the fictive architect.

Later in Chicago I observed a focus group of construction technology leaders exploring issues of BIM use in their realm.  During the conversation about “BIM in Preconstruction” I was struck by two thoughts about life in the boundary condition.  First, it was clear from these folks that they deeply understood the implications and possibilities of BIM even early in the design process, and that the sorts of information made possible by model-based early design gave them real entre into the conceptualization of the building.  That was the good news.  Not so good was the language being used:  “If they would just do this, then we could do that…”  and very little use of the idea of “if we did this together, then…” or “they need this to design, and we need that for construction.” This was all expressed in terms that did not at all acknowledge an understanding of the structure, flow and intent of a design process.  If we’re going to blur the boundaries here there’s much work to be done across the aisle.  I’m confident that a similar meeting of designers would suffer from the same asymmetrical understanding.

My trip ended in Washington with a talk to a group of leaders from architecture schools across the nation, and I took the opportunity to suggest that, despite otherwise dire prospects for employment out there right now, it was the boundary condition that provided their greatest opportunity.   This generation of young building professionals brings three key characteristics needed to really, deeply address the divide:  terrific digital skills, a willingness to experiment, and a complete disinterest in the rules of engagement as currently constituted.  The hierarchical sensibilities of command and control brought to you by the baby boomers (and I’m one of them) are charmingly absent from these folks.  Maybe it’s that willingness to look beyond those norms that will eventually make the boundary between design and construction uninteresting to the point where we just call the process “building.”   One can only hope.

 

Competitive Tension

In 2005 I worked with a graduate student at Stanford CIFE named J.T. Taylor (now a professor of civil engineering at Columbia) on a study of early BIM adoption patterns. The project, published here and further examined in a journal article here, has affected my thinking about the building industry since, but not just because J.T. was able to put forward an interesting theory about how AEC firms wend their way down the BIM path (pretty prescient work for six years ago as BIM was just emerging). The research phase of the project required him to interview 65 designers and builders about their business processes, during which he observed that the AEC industry seemed to be “sub-optimized to the point of failure” as he once described it to me. Lacking objective measures or even specific, outcome-based delivery models, each part of the AEC delivery chain focuses on a single principle: lowest first cost.

The conclusion rings true. Clients choose designers based on lowest fees, then contractors based on lowest bids. Contractors select subs accordingly, and the chain continues until the project is completed. With this variable--lowest first cost--slavishly prioritized along each step in the process it is little wonder so many projects miss performance objectives, budgets and schedules.

Alternative project delivery methods like IPD (and supporting processes like BIM) purport to shift the focus to outcomes rather than lowest bids. But integrated approaches are oft criticized for having no mechanism to assure “Best Value” for the project, which to many clients continues to mean “lowest possible cost.” The UK Government recently published their “Construction Industry Strategy” for public projects in which this issue is called “competitive tension”—making sure that there’s enough competition in the system to avoid arbitrary price fixing and assure the best combination of performance and price.

The UK report asserts several strategies for accomplishing the ends of integrated delivery and therefore “best value” for public projects while maintaining competitive tension. A national database of project costs will create a baseline for comparison as new projects are defined. Public project managers on the client side will be measured by lifecycle value of projects, rather than slavish adherence to budgets, and will be trained accordingly. A pipeline of upcoming projects and their preliminary cost targets will be published giving AEC suppliers a “planning horizon” to anticipate potential work and plan integrated approaches accordingly. And by 2016 all UK public projects in excess of $7 million must be executed in BIM.

I have often gently chastised my colleagues in UK for having created much of the intellectual platform upon which the current movement for industry innovation is based (from Guerin to Egan up to Wolstenholme) but having little to show for the effort save the process that created Heathrow T5. Lots of theory in whitepapers, but little action. But the UK, not unlike our friends in Singapore, has suddenly taken a huge leap from theory into practice. The Government, responsible for 40% of construction spend (and therefore about 3% of GDP) has been forced by the economic crisis and climate change to attack this problem, and in doing so has introduced “competitive tension” across the AEC supply chain with the variety of techniques described above. Of course, they lead the argument with a promise to save themselves 20% along the way (some things never change). Lacking any other coalescing force in the building industry, Government will implement an innovation agenda meant to restructure the entire supply chain.

At least they understand the leverage points and the policy necessary to make the change. Where’s a similar conversation here in the US?

 

“PAST EXPIRATION DATE,” Present and Future

Building owners are facing a “baby boomer generation” problem of a different sort these days, and it’s not entirely demographic.  An entire generation of buildings, designed and constructed in the 1960s and 1970s, has come to the end of its useful lifetime and faces either extensive renovation, abandonment or even demolition.  With so many healthy buildings out there that are 100 or more years old, how did this particular cohort come to such an ignominious juncture?

I’m helping an organization struggling with just such a problem that I suspect is endemic to institutional building owners—how to face the music on projects that are thirty or forty-ish years old that have become huge drains on renovation, maintenance and operations budgets in tight times.  In my case, these two projects—both designed by well-known (and long-gone) architects—are slated for demolition, since the cost of bringing them back to any reasonable state far exceeds that of constructing more functional, sustainable and maintainable replacements.   Other buildings on this campus, pushing one hundred years old (and with more compelling character) are thriving, viable and will likely be around long after their younger brethren are gone.  While I’ll keep the name of the project to myself to protect the innocent, here’s water pouring through the roof of a 1970s era building—a library, no less:

Exploring the underlying causes of these challenges would be a terrific research project, but here’s some speculation.  First, as Cesar Pelli has pointed out, the Great Depression followed by World War II erased several generations of designers and builders.  Lest that seem like ancient history, consider the calendar arithmetic:  a young contractor or architect drafted to serve in WWII at age eighteen would have otherwise been reaching the peak of his construction prowess and experience right about 1965 or 1970—at exactly the same time our problem generation of buildings was being conceived and constructed.  And the Modern movement in architecture was in true full swing about that time, at least in American construction—new ideas about use of materials, construction strategies and detailing.  Combine this new modern aesthetic and its stripped techniques with the “there’s plenty of energy” and “building materials are cheap” and…well, you get it.

Why is any of these relevant today if you’re not a building owner moving buckets around in your library?  The Great Recession of 2008 may create a similar effect on building constructed in the subsequent decade, that’s why.  Construction attorney Howard Ashcraft (see below) predicts a wave of lawsuits in the next few years stemming from projects suffering from vicious price-shopping by clients and corner-cutting under fee/bid pressure from designers and builders, a toxic stew that will certainly make building failures more likely and rising claims as a result.  With as many as 25% of the architectural, building engineering and construction labor force in the U.S. unemployed right now (and not likely to return to workplace in full force in any event) we have yet another enormous brain drain and the resulting permanent loss of experience.  Baby Boomer construction leaders like master craftsman and job superintendents are retiring in droves (willingly or otherwise) and nobody is waiting in the wings to replace them.  As Doug Pruitt, recent past president of AGC, has often reminded me:  construction capability is key to economic stability and viability because strong economies need to build.  Many buildings of the 1970s are grim reminders today that our weaknesses today create our problems of tomorrow.  The industry might best take advantage of this current lull to consider and address these questions lest they be forced to do so under much more difficult circumstances later.

Questions of Productiveness, Here and Abroad

I’ve just returned from a few days in Singapore, where the government agency that controls construction (the Building Construction Authority, or BCA) held a series of workshops under the aegis of “Construction Productivity Week.”  This tiny country, with a population of about 4.5 million and a total construction market expected in 2011 of about $20B, has developed perhaps the most advanced stance on the relationship of technology and construction of anyplace I’ve witnessed.

“Productivity Week” explored the question of how Singapore can improve the effectiveness of building, and given the extensive amount of construction I witnessed there the motivations are clear.  The country is really a city, and the sheer amount of building that has been accomplished in the several years since my last visit is nothing short of astounding.  Just below is one of the many sites peppered with cranes near my hotel in the newly created Marina Bay Sands area.  Unseen in this image is the enormous deepwater port—the largest in Asia—that is slated to be moved soon to make way for more building construction in the Singapore urban core.

 

The BCA’s strategy for industry productivity is based on the Singapore government’s conviction that construction effectiveness is a key component of economic competitiveness.  This is logical, given Singapore’s central role as an innovation and economic engine for the southeast Asia region, and their small size.  Their approach involves increasing production through pre-fabrication, widespread implementation of BIM (thus my visit), decreasing reliance on low-cost, imported labor, and correlating building permitting with demonstrated use of high-productivity construction methods.  Soon it will be much tougher to build a hand-laid masonry building from a set of 2D drawings in Singapore.

And they’re backing this effort us with cash.  S$250 million (about $200 million U.S) has been allocated to support industry productivity initiatives.  Need help with your BIM training and implementation plan?  They’ll provide a grant.  Don’t have access to training classes or certification?  Attend the BCA BIM Academy.  There's sponsored research, consolidated development of standards, and support of specific lighthouse projects.  I left Singapore with a new appreciation of what a focused, disciplined effort to improve an entire industry segment might look like.

Of course here in the States, where as many as 25% of everyone in the building industry is unemployed in a sector responsible for almost 10% of GDP, there are no such efforts underway.  I realize I run the risk of jumping right into the middle of the “big versus small” government debate which I have no intention of examining here.   But I remain concerned that, beyond the destructive effects of widespread joblessness and the potential loss of an entire generation of young architectural and engineering graduates unable to find jobs, the expertise held by this disengaged workforce may never be replaced.  A vibrant economy needs a strong construction sector to provide the infrastructure for daily life, the platforms for innovation like libraries, schools and labs, and the inspiration to the world’s builders that we have always taken pride in.  How is it that a country with 1/7^th the population, and 2% of the construction spend, is so much more engaged and committed?

Obligations of BIM

During my years on the AIA Contract Documents Committee we would often discuss the “wide open territory” of liability in the emerging age of BIM.  Our colleagues from the insurance industry, who provided regular reports on the hot issues of the day, rarely mentioned BIM except to remind us that it was an unknown and should be treated as such.  Most of our musings contemplated widening liability for architects using BIM, as issues of responsible control and professional influence would be muddied as the team compiled the design in parametric, digital form.  On the lecture circuit I would often get asked similar questions:  “How is liability affected in a BIM project?  Doesn’t it expose designers to builder’s risk, and builders to professional liability?”  A few attorneys—especially in New York City—stirred the pot further by warning their (mostly architect) clients of the looming potential for BIM-based disaster and gave standing-room only seminars to that effect.

I recently informally polled a few attorneys who work construction law about what they were seeing out there, and the landscape appears much the same as it did five years ago even as BIM adoption pushes, according to McGraw Hill, toward 60% in the US AEC market.  My friend Howard Ashcraft (who wrote the IPD agreements for the Autodesk projects) pointed me to a very interesting paper he wrote for CNA/Schinnerer’s attorneys in 2008 where he posits the following:

BIM can affect the standard of care in several ways. At the most basic level, is it below the standard of care not to use BIM if using BIM can readily solve design issues that resist solution when attacked with traditional tools? Clash detection of complex structures is an obvious example.

Historically, designs were developed to a nearly complete level with details omitted to be completed by the contractor from the final, but “diagrammatic” design. In part, this practice was justified because the designer did not know which specific systems would be chosen by the contractor. In other cases, the final layouts were deemed part of the contractor’s means and methods and, therefore, not the designer’s concern. Because the design was not complete when issued, coordination was often overlooked. More often than one would like, this resulted in designs that could not be coordinated by the contractor or, if it could eventually be coordinated, had a layout that was inefficient and expensive. Many delay and impact claims are born from this coordination problem.

The coordination problems can almost be eliminated if BIM is used. BIM allows the designer, the contractor and the subcontractors to dimensionally check their respective work and assure that physical conflicts do not occur. Clash reports can be automatically run in the BIM software, or multiple models can be imported into a common viewer, such as Autodesk/NavisWorks JetStream. Physical conflict issues can be eliminated during the design phase and confirmed with electronic submittals. Given the expense and disruption caused by clashes discovered during construction, and the ease with which this problem is solved, does the standard of care require that the designer use tools that eliminate this costly problem? In the author's opinion, traditionally coordinated 2D drawings are no longer sufficient for complex structures, particularly those with significant mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems.

Building Information Modeling also permits rapid comparison of alternatives with iterative improvements in cost, energy utilization and sustainability. As noted in a recent ASHRAE report, sustainability goals require the use of BIM and collaborative project methodologies. Where sustainability is a goal–and it is in many projects today–can traditional approaches be justified?

(From “Building Information Modeling 2.0/Issues and Implementation” presented by H. Ashcraft to the Schinnerer Invited Attorney’s Meeting, 2008)

The implications of this line of reasoning are profound:  where we once thought BIM might create greater exposure because of its use, this reasoning suggests that a team’s failure to use a readily available technology that would have allowed them to do a competent job could constitute negligence.  Too many clashes on the job site?  Energy performance unoptimized?  Would BIM have done better if you used it?

As you might imagine, this argument has a certain “third rail” quality when posited by a software company like ours, so I have avoided it up until now.  And I while I’m fascinated by Howard’s analysis, only time (and the plaintiff’s bar) will tell if in fact he’s correct.  But Howard reminded me recently of another interesting biorhythm of the building industry:  a wave of negligence claims always follows an economic downturn.  Owners seek remedy for shoddy work produced by designers and builders working at or below cost; corners are cut along with margins; bad work results.  So it won’t be long before we learn whether Howard’s assertion is the next subject of discussion amongst insurance carriers and their clients.

Excellence Vs. Opulence

Earlier this week I sat in on a class at Yale Law School called "Representing Justice" that examines how justice and the law are manifest in the arts and architecture.  Of particular interest in this class is the ongoing, multi-billion dollar Federal Courts construction program where the government is building or renovating courthouses for the judiciary across the nation.  The program has been a major focus for GSA's Design Excellence initiative designed to inspire the Government to build better architecture.  A major objective of the Design Excellence initiative is to hire "top-quality" designers and artists that can best express the values and significance of our Federal institutions.  Having been the project manager while working for Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects for a DE courthouse project in Brooklyn, New York, and knowing that much innovative BIM work had been attempted in courthouse design I thought this session would be provocative.

I wasn't dissappointed.  The seminar was visited by Bob Peck, leader of GSA's Public Building Service that runs the DE program for the courthouse construction enterprise, and two Federal district judges closely involved in new courthouse projects in Boston and Springfield, MA.  As all these folks were Yale grads the atmosphere was convivial, despite the publication of a recent book by the sponsoring professor, Judith Resnick, that openly speculates on the necessity of this major construction program in a time when actual court proceedings (particularly trials) are diminishing with plea bargains and alternative dispute resolution--not to mention limited resources.  Peck made an impassioned and convincing argument that the Federal government had a obligation to build with appropriate seriousness of purpose, permanance and dignity that the Republic deserves, and that these new courthouses were both facilities for the serious business of justice and important spaces for the public.  Both judges suggested that the justice system is the purest form of democracy (where the laws are applied to all in the transparent public realm) and its activities should be conducted in appropriately dignified settings.  As we were in a room filled with lawyers and lawyers-in-training, the arguments were delivered with clarity and conviction.

While there were several architects in the room, we watched the lawyers and students argue these issues.  Having actually worked on one of these jobs, I was acutely aware of the time, expense and emotional energy (not to mention tax dollars) necessary to bring them to fruition--my project begun in 1993 took over a decade and cost almost $200 million--but never during the process of designing and building our courthouse project did we ever question the basic premise that the proper setting for the administration of justice was good architecture, and we were doing our best to deliver it. (Decide for yourself here.  This courthouse--is it opulent?--is a working class operation, with a lot of mafia and drug trials.)

What was interesting, however, was to listen to the law students probing Peck and the judges about the need for what they seemed to imply was "opulence" in these courthouse projects, conflating the ideas of good design with the overwrought use of materials and excessively grand space--and, by implication, wasted tax dollars. One things seemed to imply the other. There were numerous, nostaglic references to days gone by of neo-classical courts anchoring the downtowns of towns big and small, but somehow buildings designed by current architects were considered overdone, rather than simply dignified or appropriate.  Somehow "architecture" and "overdone" seemed equivalent.  Peck told a story about his time as a law student working on behalf of an indigent client at card table in a tattered, dingy government office where clearly no money had been spent on "opulence" and somehow, at least to a few students, that was just fine.  One brief digression about the apparent lack of appreciation for the importance of the setting by the public (who chew gum in the courtroom and appear in all means of inappropriate dress) suggested that perhaps the architecture was "lost" on the general public who use, and pay for, these projects and whose lives are often dramatically altered by the proceedings held there.

So if this group of well-educated, articulate lawyers-to-be was unable to distinguish between the ideas of "opulence" and "good design" what does this foretell about the future of building?  These folks are the future clients of architecture of the public realm.  As we sat in the neo-gothic spendor of their Yale classroom, I asked myself: where did we lose them?

In the days when Peck and his judicial colleagues were students at Yale Law School, the architectural historian Vincent Scully taught a famous class on modern architecture to hundreds of rapt undergraduates in the Law School Auditorium, the largest classroom on campus.  It was a hugely popular course.  All three of them stumbled upon Professor Scully's class and enrolled, and thus were exposed to the importance of architecture.  I don't think it's a coincidence that, years later, each became an important player in making good design available to create the public realm.  That's real "design excellence."