Friday, November 7, 2014

Architecture: where communication builds things... literally.

Henry is a seasoned architect, he has gained a lot of respect over the years through a distinguished career of innovative and even inspiring structures, monuments, and buildings. He even recently won the Pulitzer Price for a museum he designed in the middle east. He currently is a partner in a very respected firm and a large municipality announced recently a design competition for a large municipal project that would bring a lot of recognition to the designer. He sees it not only as a great business opportunity to bring added recognition and money to the firm, but also an opportunity to communicate something to the community. 

Typical Architecture firm office.
Henry heads a team of junior architects, and will usually communicate to them in a unique work-setting. Most architecture firms have are designed in a way to optimize collaboration and team work, so a firms physical space itself will contribute to communication between associates. All of the written communication will be over e-mail, Henry will send e-mails to the junior architects, he likely won't have to labor too much over rhetorical tools since he's their boss, but he'll observe obvious courtesies and will always use words that identify a team effort. For example:

Memo for municipal competition team:

Hello everyone! Attached to this e-mail are some conceptual sketches that I've rendered. Review them and see what you think. We'll have a meeting tomorrow morning at 10 to talk about the sketches and do some additional brainstorming together for this thing.

-H.

Zaha Hadid, a recent Pulitzer Prize winner... she probably
designed what she was wearing that day.
Notice that it was simple, it was likely hastily typed, read over, then sent right away to all of the junior architects on the team. He made sure to make them feel included, but at the same time sent his own sketches, the junior architects won't really question him, they'll give input and offer suggestions, but the framework has already been set with Henry's renderings, and because of his already established position and ethos, the juniors won't really question it. Also, they know who "H." is, this may be a tool by Henry to show his seniority.

Say that the firm wins the competition, and thus contracts with the municipality to build this project. After that point the architects will meet with whoever represents that part of the government, probably a city planner or someone on some committee or something. Henry will be present, and, honestly, he can wear what he wants. Most architects wear very simple clothes, blazers, nice shoes, sometimes just t-shirts. When meeting with this client, Henry will probably wear a blazer, a plain shirt or sweater underneath, and some ridiculous pair of glasses (architects can pull those off... one of the perks.) A client might think, "...that wouldn't be appropriate in my office, but he is an architect, he must be really... cool, I trust him to make something cool."

Bjarke Ingels, a pretty young architect who has kind of exploded
in popularity in the past decade. I don't even know if he's wearing a
blazer or a hoody... or both.


1 comment:

  1. How do you think the verbal communication would be formed? Do you think it would be as casual and direct as the email? What about other aspects of the architecture world: other members of the team?

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