I open our blog with this famous quote by Frank Gehry, one of the best-known contemporary architects.
The subject is the relationship between client and designer, a relationship essential to building anything at all – unless the designer is his own patron.
How many times have we argued with people who asked us to design their home, having to change reluctantly and with frustration what we had conceived for them with passion and effort?
The answer is probably “always” or, for the luckier ones, “very often”.
I believe the ideal client is the main resource, the key contribution to reaching the goal and creating architecture that is not self-celebrating but able to improve the life of the person who will live in it every day. Such a client constantly challenges the architect who, caught up in the creative process, sometimes forgets practical, economic and functional aspects, making trivial and unjustified mistakes. Yet the ideal client also knows that the designer they freely chose must become the person who guides their choices, taking them on a unique and fascinating journey of cultural growth. Architects have trained for years in how to organise space and light. In turn, the capable, aware designer is fully able to meet the client’s requests, overlooking nothing and critically weighing the sound suggestions the client may make. But the architect must always be free to work in a modern, independent, cultured and coherent language.
The ideal client must have the humility to understand that making architecture is very complex: it is one of the hardest disciplines to learn, no school can really teach it, and mastering it takes many years of study and practice. That is why, at times, we must trust the professional we have chosen.
In my career I have often turned down commissions when people wanted to impose design ideas I did not share. I believe an architect’s contribution is pointless if the basic conditions for giving it are not there.
Turning down a job is above all an ethical choice: charging a fee that does not reflect the real added value I could bring is like buying something that costs far more than it is worth and than its proper use. On this subject, I am publishing an email from a couple of would-be clients who wrote to me again a few days ago, months later. It is not meant to flatter the ego every architect cultivates, but simply to illustrate what I have tried to explain, very briefly, in this first blog post.
Their words of praise for my studio and their regret at not having given us the job, rather than pleasing me, left me with a touch of sadness – not for the lost work and income, but for the unique opportunity the clients did not seize as I would have wished and hoped.
The opportunity was to build architecture to be lived in, whoever the designer would have been: that rare chance was wasted.
Dear Architect,
Valentina and I were discussing some of the choices we have made over time.
I should tell you that the project started recently but, alas, without LCA.
Unfortunately, decisions driven by certain needs (including the handling of permits and planning approvals) turned the building process into an ordeal. FALLING BACK on other professionals was partly a result of this.
To tell you the truth, between us: the other day we were really regretting (sadly yes, and that is exactly the word) not having gone ahead with your studio, because we have had to make so many compromises, so many things were underestimated or taken for granted, a relationship not understood by the various professionals involved in the project of our lives.
We know your work is made truly complicated by the tastes and (technical) ignorance of us clients but, objectively, if the client has clear needs they must be taken into account, beyond one’s own “architectural” approach (perhaps not the right term, but you get the idea). I believe compromises can always be found.
It is true that we did not have the chance to go into many things in that single meeting, but the many ideas you explained, our shared love of ecology, the pairing of “noble materials” (again, perhaps not the right term, forgive me) such as iron and wood so well shown in the apartment you so kindly let me visit, the idea of “breathing” and not feeling suffocated (I clearly remember the dark, almost claustrophobic entrance of the apartment, which then opened wide onto the living area), the play of rooms that create walls (that is how I saw the apartment, forgive me) had fascinated me. Wonderful!
So why not accept your expertise at that moment? Because, unfortunately, the meeting came at a bad time, along with a series of unfortunate events. I know this makes it even more frustrating (on both sides), but we were at the beginning of the journey, daunted by a project perhaps bigger than us, taking our first steps in a completely unknown world that left us literally bewildered, with many players in roles we did not understand, and a budget that was too tight and would never have been respected (but we only really understood that later).
Now the project is almost a reality. Mind you, we are happy with it, we are not saying otherwise: it is a beautiful house and has what we wanted but, with hindsight, I am sure we would have done something more together and, I am also sure, there would have been a different kind of relationship and respect.
This email will not turn back time or our choices; it is an apology for not getting back in touch, as there is so much going on, but I wanted you to know that it was truly appreciated.
Stefano & Valentina
