Re: generalist

We relish pre-schematic design, schematics and about 1/2 of
design development. At that point the project becomes a welter
of competing demands in which architectural design must
firecely compete with the intentions of others involved in
architecture. A bevy of specialists gradually become the
designers of the project as their components are integrated
into the design program. These specialists attempt to respect
the architect's inentions but they are obligated to see that
their own work receives maximum play or they will be blamed
later for having failed to do so.

It is during this process of integrating specialist work that
the architectural designer is put to the test to learn more than
token amounts of other fields. If you do not learn more, the crafty
specialists will make mush of your design as they shrewdly
leverage subsidiary roles into major ones, after having taken
the measure of the architectural team.

It is not uncommon for a specialist consultant to let a presumptious
architect get into a fix before coming to the rescue, and then
bartering a more favorable outcome for the specialist profession
than the architect ever dreamed of when first becoming acquainted
with the seemingly compliant specialist.

Or worse, a gang of aggrieved specialists will decide to educate
an architect on how to respectfully engage fellow professionals
to do thei best work rather than issue haughty demands to do
the job told to do. Structural will whipsaw over lack of mech-elec
and geo-technical information, mech-elec will whipsaw over need
for more equipment, chases, ductspace and atmospheric isolation,

the sub-specialists will whipsaw that the majors are idiots, all will
demand re-organization of the architect's team to bring in more
seasoned persons to correct the mess, or just procrasticate, delay
submissions or delivery incompletes, submit terrifying bills for
additional services, claim all problems are due to the architect's
mistaken understanding of how little specialists can do without
sufficient leadership and timely information from the architect.

This occurs during production of construction documents; what
happens during construction is beyond Bosch's horrors. That is,
unless you have come to terms with how specialists run circles
around generalists and leave them amongst the ego-rubble
defenseless against carnivorous construction managers and
sub-contractors eager to use the architect as a wide-mouth
conduit to the owner's bankroll.

It is not uncommon to meet architects who claim professional
practice is the worst possible experience in architecture. And
that will be true if you believe architecture is about architecture
as a profession and as a business, and not a body of elegant
knowledge about how to perceive and appreciate the built
environment, omitting all the dreadful experiences that occur
in all professions and businesses -- none of which are unique
to architecture.

It is not uncommon to meet lawyers, doctors, teachers, ministers
of faith who say they no longer practice, now just read the great
works of their fields, teach and lecture a bit, muse on the folly of
ambition, chide young people who dream of fame, foster their
alternative hobbies far from the mainstream, ingest occasional
hallucinogenics by remembering when they were young and
free of bile, rage and suicidal/homicidal envy.

This is the state all masters go through, the state when the whole
damn mess of architecture is contemptible, life choices a
terrible mistake. Then one day the lucky ones climb out of the
hole they have dug, seek out and suck up to a gullilbe patron once
scorned as loathsome, and get back in saddle to go on and do
their best work. As did Viollet le Duc, Corbu, Mies, Wright, Gehry,
Rem, Eisenman and all the other names we love to smear
and dream about having.

One of the virtues of dwelling in the mind of generalism for a while
is to get over the misery of being in the service of specialists, the
number one of which are clients. Dreaming of great architecture
may be a hallucinogenic but it works when nothing else does --
even clients beg for it as they attack the pusher.

Over to s-lauf.