Probably related to the previous post.There seems to be a lot of psychology to what I do as an architect. When someone comes to me with their ideas I often sense that there is something behind those ideas and I want to know what it is. Some people welcome this level of “interrogation” and others just want me to do some drafting so they can get it built. I figure if someone is going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on something, they would want it to be the absolute best thing possible to meet their needs. (needs including budget!) I like to understand people's needs as well as to help them analyze their needs, not just write them down and follow blindly. Sometimes clients are pretty insistent that I do follow blindly. I think this usually happens when they have either been thinking about a project for so long that they have lost all objective ability or desire to critique their own thinking or if they are sick of thinking about it and just want to get on with it. Following blindly is difficult for me. I have often heard “I've finished designing it and now I need and architect to draw it up” Huh? Sometimes I have to do it just to pay the bills but it is difficult to stand by and watch people do stupid or ugly or overly complicated things. It feels like a cop out and like I'm not really doing my job. I would hate to have someone come back to me later and say “why didn't you suggest doing it this way?” I can't really tell them “because this was just a drafting job and you were too cheap to pay me to do the architect thing” Numerous times I have started a project at this “just follow the program” stage, couldn't help myself and suggested a different way of looking at things which starts a cascade of communications resulting in going back to square one where I get to help them analyze and re-define the whole “program” which is what I probably should have been hired to do in the first place.
