GENEROSITY AND GHOST

" He who gives what he would as readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is self sacrifice." - Henry Taylor 

Generosity and the Architect come hand in hand, though it may not seem like it or be able to be perceived all that often.  We are a strange bunch, let’s be honest.

We are known for coming across as arrogant and extremely opinionated.
Builders and Engineers say we change our minds too much.

Clients think we are too expensive.

And so this post comes from a stream of thoughts that occurred while thinking about a project in the shower this week… yes, in the shower.  We also do this while hanging clothes up, eating, drinking, driving, and even in our dreams; we are constantly thinking about your project. 

How we can make it better for the end users! 

How we can make it less expensive for the Client and funding body – who is usually the Australian tax payer ! How we can make it more efficient with use of standard material sizes, orienting the building for less heat gain, stacking services so less building waste occurs, etc.

This is because every building is a prototype; there can never be a true duplicate as there is always a new site, a new set of end users, a new building code to adhere to, a new way of constructing – we are always starting with a new cube of clay.

Just like in the movie Ghost, there are multiple hands forming the end product as the physical bit of clay spins almost out of control. A client's brief begins to mold it in one direction. The site and location of the building pushes this chunk of clay even further in another direction, slowly towards something more real and tangible. Then we review the design. We bring in more people to the team: certifiers, engineers, and quantity surveyors.  All who add their opinion and documentation to develop the design so it can be built, safely and to a budget.

The above takes time – countless hours of research and investigation that you never see. We stay up all night, we awake in the middle of the night to sketch out the solution for a room that’s not quite right.  We stop work to deeply discuss the best way for men to arrange themselves in a row of urinals in a public building we are designing.  Every single element, area, and space in a building matters. 

As anyone who’s worked with clay before knows there are so many times that a bit of clay gets pulled from the table and thrown into a wet sloshy bin with other bits of clay that will be reworked at a later date.  Architecture is the same. The pursuit for a building that serves it’s user’s needs, within budget, and embetters society takes time; it takes a team and it takes changes and adaptations throughout the design process to get it right. 
Even then there will be more changes as it’s built.  Why, because it’s a prototype.  
It’s literally never been done before in the exact same way.   We cannot repeat it. We are the first to do it.  

So, when we bring an idea or a possible amendment to a design it comes from a deep seated need to give back, to do right by our client, to do right by society, to find the best solution for an uncle who needs wheelchair access within his home.  It’s because we care truly and deeply about how these spaces will be used, and we’ve been studying how to do this for over 5 years before we even begin to practice in a firm.

That’s right practice, in a firm, just like a sculptor takes many hundreds of cubes of clay to mold an acceptable bowl.  

And even then it will never be perfect, because it can’t be.  

It's man made.