smallprojects

I have a gut feeling that architecture firms grow big way too fast. By big, i dont quite mean in staff numbers, but employee figures do rise when work just keeps being taken on. By big, i do mean that architects by and large, feel more credible the greater their stable of work...its come to it that societal accomplishment today equates with whom one knows and what one gets: its about being networked. Many architects will explain about having mouths to feed. Monthly overheads. The running momentum of things. 'We just have to take the work in' theyll say.

Uhuh, right.

It didnt start that way. Remember that first job? All that cool attention to detail? The promise we'd never end up like the others? The a t e l i e r ? No, what really happened was that we were all excited at the concept of work, not the reality of it. It was cool to be able to tell others what we had landed, what was being worked on, how fast we were growing and where it was headed. Somehow, along the way, we suddenly realised how big we had grown and what was left along the way. With the beemer and that red car, we forgot about passion.

Somehow, the very best architects in the world make it work. Strangely. It could be the heady connections but i doubt it. I have the same feeling the biggest didnt take just a couple of years to get there nor had passions clouded by that very next big job they could have landed or by whom they were landing it from.

And if all this sounds just a little too birthday and pink for the real men out there, then just sink right back into that sunbed, reality hasnt eaten through me just yet.