rejecting projects

[PI]

hi, has anyone had the experience of rejecting a project because the architecture was really..i mean really bad. how do u tell someone that u don't do it because it look like crap!!!

[Jeff Mottle]

I thnik you just answered your own question. Just don't do it. If you don't want to tell them it's crap, then just tell them you are too busy to take on their project right now. Or offer to fix it and make some money on deign work.

[Wolf]

if you dont want to do it,

just quote a squillion dollars

they will then think your expensive,

next time they may come back with another design,

and think its cheap

and if they are prepared to pay for it

BONUS

[PI]

hey great idea!!!...ill try that one sometime

[nisus]

Just do the project, but make sure they don't like the design when seeing pre-vis. Then suggest to make it better , That way, you're kind of in control of yukkie buildings NOT being build, whereas otherwise it will be build as ugly as is... This saves your town from a building disaster

 

rgds

 

nisus

[jazzhan]

I have an idea,just say you are too busy,you are responsible for your every project.

maybe not a good ieda -:0

[garethace]

Alot of projects out there that are really 'yukky' actually began life as good designs. But because the client ham-stringed the architect into doing something repulsive, the design was compromised.

 

The architect still has to put the damb thing on site to get most of his fees. The client is happy with their new yukky design and to be honest, i hope cg artists have more respect for their art, than to waste time visualising designs with no merit.

 

I have seen too many architects in my own experience, bend over for the client and just do something terrible. Then the architect expects the guy with the digital airbrush to make it look better than it actually is?

 

One of the finest architectural cg artist i have ever met, actually did this for a developer driven architect i was with for about a year. After that, he had enough and just took his talent and his skills elsewhere. Since then he is doing just dandy and i hope he will suceed.

 

Pressure really needs to be applied on some architects who 'roll over' too easy for the client and then expect a cgarchitect to take all the responsibility for their total lack of pride. By doing art work for these so-called architects, what you are doing is just giving them an escape clause, or a mask to hide behind.

 

True. I can actually envisage a time, not too far into the future when architects will actually begin blaming cgartists for having 'screwed up' the visual appearance of their finished work. Architects i believe are gradually relieving themselves to their bound duty to care about a buildings appearance. This trend is only going to get worse, as they can afford to pay more and more money to artists to 'tart up' some hopelessly bad design.

 

I have heard this from some very good professional architects on the inside, so i know it to be true.

 

[ April 05, 2003, 03:52 AM: Message edited by: garethace ]

[nisus]

So when we try to change the yukkie design into something more appealing, you think architects will eventually don't care about changing the design anymore as long as the visual looks better than the designed reality? Hmm... Interesting thought, although I still hope they WILL change the design after seeing their own failure...

 

rgds

 

nisus

[DelfoZ]

when the design r really.. really bad, i add a Extra charge to the Price $$

[seismograph]

If you can't work TOGETHER with an architect and improove his design then let him find another CG artist.

 

I think there is no project which is such ugly to not find any dramatic camera position or lightsetting which shows the good sides of an project... it's a challenge and it will be until you become an technican drawer.

[quizzy]

I did some projects for an architect that were ...uuuhhmmm.. designless. And it really costed me extra time to make it in to an interesting picture. He suggested to add more people, trees etc.. but what really was the problem was the design... but as i'm not an architect i could not help him with the design, and I didn't tell him the design was crap...

[garethace]

There is one holy grail for all architects, the architect/client relationship. Architects will use, abuse and walk on heads just to preserve a healthy relationship with 'their clients'. They use cgartists to make this relationship friendly, to impress their client. While your cg renders keep the client busy going WOW, and putting the client 'off-guard', the architect will use the window created to 'work over' the client from a different angle. A deathly more psychological game of cat and mouse-the architect never takes their eyes off this game for a moment.

 

The problem is, the architect often uses the cgartist to hold off the client temporarily, while the client 'comes around' to the architects original design. I.e. The architect is unsure initially of his/her relationship with the client. So instead of trying to force a good idea initially upon the client, the architect plays a waiting game. This waiting game consists of the cgartist doing numerous versions of the bad designs for the client. These are only decoys, but the client never suspects it, and neither do the cgartists.

 

Gradually over a period of time, the client is being educated to be led by the architect, and trust the architect - not the other way around - the client leading the architect. Sometimes it works, the cgartist presents designs that the architect doesn't like, but the client does. Then after a long drawn out process the architect eventually 'wins the trust and respect of the client' and then finally gets to draw up and build the original design he/she wanted to build day number 1. Have you ever observed a cat stalking a prey in the tall grass - this is EXACTLY what architects are trained to do with clients, builders, economists, planners, engineers.... cgartist and so on.

 

Most design processes are 6 months long, even thought the architect had the design 'fixed' in his/her mind in the first week. So the whole 'design process' is bs, it's just about a process of coaxing and educating the client gradually to accept something they would have rejected initially in week one. Ken Yeang, a Malaysian architect has some very interesting ideas about how architects should market themselves better to the broader general public. I believe he holds dual degrees in architecture and in marketing. Think about it, what does a company like Apple or Intel do to get you to buy a piece of silicon chip, which you cannot understand - they 'market it'. They fool you into thinking that you have choosen how the technology was designed, 'it fits around your needs'. You feel that you are in control of the technology and not the other way around.

 

The very cunning ploy of alot of unscrupulous architects is to make the client believe they are in the driving seat, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Cgartists are usually just reduced to being a cheap marketing and persausion tool by the architects. In reality, most of the time architects have no intention of 'sharing' an ideas about design with anyone except fellow colleagues in the architecture profession. Being a cgartist for an architect, you might as well be just designing their personal letterhead, or company flash logo, most of the time. Of course, i am not saying this is always the case. I am sure at a higher level, architects on good jobs and budgets have much greater respect and use for cgartists. Santiago Calatrava for instance, treats his model builder as a true artist and probably the most respected member of the design team. But definitely, down at the level i am dealing with them, i am no better than one of their own secretaries.

 

Over the many years i have been doing cg, i have indeed presented many, many 'decoy' visualisations for architects to present to their client, just to maintain a stable relationship. I have NEVER in all my time, been offered the respect of any architect to do one of their 'week one' original 'real' concepts for them, as i believe architects can do good design and i would like to model some good design. Instead having offered many times, i have been rejected and told 'oh we don't like the way computers represent our ideas!' But whenever that same architect wants a quick piece or two of marketing toilet paper to spring on an unsuspecting client, i get that dirty work no problem. I think it depends on the individual architect, whether or not they respect cgartists, model makers or illustrators and treat them as a valued member of the design team.

 

 

[ April 07, 2003, 12:04 PM: Message edited by: garethace ]

[nisus]

for those people who don't like nisus-long posts, here is a brief summary:

 

Most design processes are 6 months long, even thought the architect had the design 'fixed' in his/her mind in the first week. So the whole 'design process' is bs, it's just about a process of coaxing and educating the client gradually to accept something they would have rejected initially in week one.

Very nice!

 

nisus

[garethace]

Provided of course the cgartist is willing to accept the following assumption, and i stress assumption. Each and every case is a shade of grey, and only in rare unfortunate experiences are things as black and white as i have presented here.

 

Most design processes are 6 months long, even thought the architect had the design 'fixed' in his/her mind in the first week. So the whole 'design process' is bs, it's just about a process of coaxing and educating the client gradually to accept something they would have rejected initially in week one.

It becomes the sole responsibility of the cgartist him/herself to decide how 'used' she/he really wishes to be, by the architecture profession. At some point, if the 'used' factor becomes just overwhelming, the cgartist is much better off to cut all ties. JMO of course.

[Reitveld]

I hate to bring you back to earth but sometimes you have to do bad design work to 1) make money, or 2) get an 'in' with a company/client. After your in with a client then you have the ability to help with the 'client re-education' stuff.

[garethace]

That is my point you see. This process of educating the client is like an extension of reality TV, Big Brother, Web CAM, the War on CNN, the world in your own living room sort of senario. Where our occupation literally becomes to provide other people with a virtual world, in which they are spoon fed some alternative to their everyday reality.

 

Have you noticed peoples ever increasing thirst for this kind of experience? ? ? ?

 

What the architect has now become, is an agent of that 'world becoming a smaller place' sydrome. Where, he has to expend most of his/her time and precious energy making it virtually real for a client. As oposed to designing something worthwhile, that future generations can look back upon and say, 'those guys really knew how to build something that can lift the spirit and the mind'.

 

How many new buildings having been pre-rendered in raytracing beautiful sparkliness and shininess have the ability to lift one's spirit?

 

What architecture is mainly about is the dynamic motion of a human body experiencing travel through both time and space. Our environments are constructs designed around human beings - the eventual experience is what is important - not the CNN preview the clients gets 2 years before the building even goes on to site.

 

Architects have to learn how to make space again, and trust people to enjoy eventually reality of the architecture designs - not just cynacally churn out buildings with a raytraced view of the facade. How do you present an experience of the Barcelona Pavilion, a Fallingwater or a Luis Barragan house in cg? ? ? ?

[Jim Mann]

Accept that you can't polish a turd and decide whether you need the job for the money or not. If you don't, just tell them you are busy for the next few weeks/months/years, thats probably the politest thing or even just a "very sorry but we are really too busy right now". Quoting too high a price might put a client off from ever coming back, never shut the door to future work.

 

A few years ago I did two images for some flats which weren't brilliant as designs but looked okay and looked pretty interesting in the images (I thought) Saw the same building (the real, built version) at No 6 in the ugliest buidlings in Britain list in Building Design magazine last year. So, there you go, you can't polish a turd, but you can make it look interesting and get paid for it at the same time!