The cost of good architecture
August 9, 2001

How come most of the better architects I know drive clapped out cars? I hear you say that they're not charging enough and they're spending too much time at it. The existing fees scales encourage mediorcrity, and there's a lot out there.

Across the way, in the art world, the mindset is different. Artwork is produced differently, marketed differently, and sold differently. Not that your typical artist drives a better car for it. But the value that the client places on the goods is worth comparison. Freed of the burdens of function and regulation, art has to be valued purely as ART. The patron occupies a different headspace to the architect's client. The public at large value the two disciplines quite differently. Architecture is rarely seen as ART, it is too contained by its perceived definition.

The work fed to the puiblic by the media and the Institute is generally of a very high quality, setting an expensive standard in the client's mind. They don't realize that what they are seeing is architecture plus. When a client wants a building that is a piece of art, they enter the same commissioning phase as the client seeking a waterproof leasable box with space for cars. The architect often gets the two types mixed up. The client quickly realises that architects operate in a competitive environment. So after the architect carefully measures the correct fee off the sliding scale, they are talked into dropping a few percent off, for the sake of a bargain. In some cases the architect knocks off the percentage points themselves using lousy justifications like a lack of overheads.

The fact is that the fee scale is too low for most projects. It doesn't take into account the time required to navigate the new world of planning, or to splice your new building into an existing shit house, or or to deal with cut price contractors with a penchant for spitting RFIs at you. And they definitely don't take into account those prospective jobs that go nowhere, and competition entries. There is no room to discount unless you really want to give your professional services to the client for the love of it. Which is what a lot of us tend to do.

The nett result of the whittled down fee is sleepless nights and a clapped out car for your typical perfectionist. The time requirement for a finely honed and detailed design is perhaps three times that for an adequate design. The salary multiplier becomes an office joke. The salary is going to be lower at your office, by up to $15,000 per person per year.

Well respected larger firms have to face the quality question everyday. In my experience, their approach to driving a half decent car and keeping face is thus: only allow a few projects to become pet projects. These ones will lose money, but the rest will subsidise them if you get the apportionment right, and it may get an award which is worth something. At a sold-out seminar last weekend in Auckland, Robert Caulfield of Melbourne said that Daryl Jackson only focussed on about eight of the 260 project that flow through his offices every year.

Another trait of these firms? They don't do house unless they owe someone a big favour.

Food for thought? Food for the stomach more like.

Peter Johns
Architect who sold his car.