Monday Visual Inspiration: Transplanted history

This is the actual piece of brick wall against which several gangsters were shot and killed in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago in 1929. Apparently, when the actual building was being demolished in recent times, a private citizen purchased the portion of the wall with the bullet holes and blood spatter from 1929. Upon his death in the early 2000s, the collector's daughter took the wall/bricks and eventually sold them to the Mob Museum in Las Vegas.  (We toured it on our most recent visit to Vegas in February 2013--totally worth the ticket price, I might add.)

A piece of building constructed before the turn of last century captures pieces of a horrible moment in time in its bricks. It's taken apart and moved to another location. It's taken apart and moved again over 2,000 miles away to share that horrible moment with people who weren't even born when that moment occurred. Le Corbusier said that International Style architecture was meant to be relevant anywhere and not connected to any particular local style--it would carry its own meaning wherever it was built and viewed. Can we say the same for this piece of wall from Chicago? Does the meaning of this moment in time change when we take the wall out of a Chicago warehouse and reconstruct it on the third floor of the former Las Vegas Courthouse? The bullet holes are circled, just in case the audience can't figure out its meaning, after looking at so many exhibits of tommy guns, bootlegger's cases, and FBI bugging and recording devices.

Monday Visual Inspiration: home, interrupted

About a month ago, our condo building manager texted me to say that the building handyman smelled something odd near our unit, so they were going to go in and see if anything was wrong.  Then came a text that our unit was fine, they would be checking the neighbor's unit.  A chill came over me--I realized that I had neither seen nor heard our neighbor for a month.  I hadn't heard her barking dog, the jingle of her house keys at 5am when she usually left for work, nothing.  Guy had seen her a while back, loading her cat and dog into her worse-for-wear Jetta, the cat yowling from the passenger seat and the 70-lb dog stubbornly refusing to climb in.  I knew she'd been having money problems and health problems lately.  What if something horrible had happened next door...and I was now among the legions of couldn't-be-bothered neighbors who never noticed that a fellow human being had died--or killed herself--next door?

Turns out that our neighbor had gotten a new job on the east coast and had moved out over a month before. I was slightly relieved that there would be no stories of the Capitol Hill condo owner whose pets had been chewing her face off and drinking from the toilet and a leaky kitchen sink to survive, nor would I be interviewed on camera to describe how quiet and nice the deceased had been.  To be fair, she'd always kept to herself, and that was what many of us who live in urban places want--to live our lives uninterrupted by the questioning and prying eyes and rumors spread by busybodies that sometimes permeate suburban and rural life.  And also to be fair, our units are on the side of the building with the trash chute, so if there had been any odor from her place, I would have written it off as fumes from the chute across the hall.

It turns out that the neighbor's financial woes had become too much, and she abandoned her condo to foreclosure.  When Guy saw her loading her pets into her car, that was her final retreat from our building. It also turns out that her emotional state had her living like a hoarder, according to the building manager--cat food cans piled up, broken furniture on the enclosed balcony, and the carpet ripped up from the living room so that only the bare concrete of the building's structure remained. She had been living like that for years, he said. Bad plumbing eventually betrayed her secrets; a slow leak in the kitchen had finally pooled water on the floor of the kitchen, dining room, and living room where lay at least six inches of trash, left from when she moved.  The building manager and the handyman spent ten hours shoveling trash out of the unit and bringing in fans to air out the musty, humid damage.

What does it look like? I wondered as I came home that evening. I tried the door handle, and it opened.

The manager and maintenance worker had done their best, but the condo was still in disarray.  I stepped over piles of clothes and bags of trash and peeked into the bathroom.  Bottles of Philosophy shampoo in the shower, Dr. Perricone face serum on the filthy, mildew-encrusted sink and counter.  This woman didn't just leave this place--she fled.  No one leaves behind Dr. Perricone face serum unless they're in a God-awful hurry.  I turned in the other direction and could just make out a pile in the bedroom corner.  The cat food cans.  I looked back at the cosmetic expanse on the bathroom counter.  When Guy saw her leaving for the last time, she was taking the most important things with her--her pets.  Everything else could be left.  And now, with the bank foreclosing on the place she bought not long before Guy and I moved in next door to her in 2001, everything else must go.


We live in urban areas for the convenience but also for the anonymity.  No one to pry into your life means that no one can spread rumors or be nosy, or even hold your failures up to your face constantly.  But I have to wonder if Guy and I could have helped this woman.  And then I wonder if she even would have let us in--Guy mentioned that if she ever answered the door, she barely opened the door and stood so that you couldn't see past her into her condo.  And for all our attempts at privacy and not wanting others to interrupt our routine little lives, we are interrupted by real life--people die, jobs are lost, homes are foreclosed upon.  Regardless of our tragedy or circumstances, we gather up that which is most important and go elsewhere, searching for the normalcy that allows us to live again uninterrupted.  I hope she finds the peace and quiet she deserves, I would say into the camera as the local TV reporter asked me about the neighbor: she was a quiet neighbor, and a nice person.

Monday Visual Inspiration: Look, just take it off our hands

This bank was built after 2001, and not even ten years later it was vacant.

Wonder what they planned to do with it?  Sell it? Rent it out?

Maybe both?  "Look, man, you can buy this building off us, you can lease it, whatever.  Just take it, man."


I've been seeing a fair amount of "Price Reduced" and "Make An Offer" signs outside of buildings and houses lately around Denver.  I think the market is still a little meh, but people just want to get on with their lives.  Even our neighbor in my condo building moved across the country and is letting her unit go into foreclosure.  I know she's been having money problems for a while, and I bet she's ready to make a clean break and move on.  I can't say I blame her, and I don't blame the company that owns this bank building either for wanting to unload it by any means necessary.

Urban bun!

This bunny hopped all the way past me and into a school playground near Cherry Creek North, where it proceeded to nomnomnom on some grass and clover.  Just a few yards from busy streets and shops and people going about their lives, this little creature (about the size of a 12-week-old kitten) was living its life the way its ancestors have for thousands of years.


Sometimes, our construction displaces wildlife.  Other times, it just makes life difficult for them, but they adapt.  Bunnies live in empty lots and tiny parks.  Foxes and their kits live in the storm sewers in nice neighborhoods.  Squirrels use power lines to get from tree to tree.  I'm not advocating that all human progress and construction is good and we shouldn't worry about the creatures, but it's nice to know that sometimes they find a way to live amongst us.  It's a furry middle finger to the so-called top of the food chain.

Monday Visual Inspiration: Your fake brick is showing

I was walking through Cherry Creek recently when I happened upon this alley, onto which fronted the garage access for some very nice condo/townhome units.  When I say nice, I mean  probably not costing less than $700,000 each, two- and three-car garages for each unit, a few blocks from the convenience and bustle of Cherry Creek North.

One of the them appeared to be undergoing some remodeling...um, what?

Let's get a close up of that corner there where the wall and roof meet, shall we?

Jesus, Mary, and Mario Botta help us: that's brick veneer.  It's what we call "lick-and-stick", when a 3/4" or so thick slice of brick is stuck to a grouted surface, the way you might do ceramic tile on a bathroom wall.  The surface now has the look of real, 3"+ thick brick in your wall, but it isn't.  It's a cheap imitation.  Now, to be fair, the lick-and-stick veneer is budget-friendly and also puts less weight (and therefore structural strain) on a building's exterior, and it's not a bad idea if you're doing a brick-looking wall indoors, but don't need the weight and structural heft of a brick, but I still find thin brick veneer to be craptastic.


John Ruskin-ish of me or not, it's dishonest in the most ethical sense.  People have a sense of what brick costs, in that it probably costs more than stucco (and it does), and when they see brick, they have an expectation of how nice, how expensive, and how high-quality the building is upon which they gaze.  Thin brick is the egg tempera mask that an aging Queen Elizabeth I wore in her dotage in an attempt to look young and vibrant.  Thin brick is two pairs of Spanx on your blind date, a borrowed Canali suit on a pizza delivery guy out in a nightclub posing as a playa.  It's a dishonest and inaccurate expression on the cost and craftsmanship of a building.  Someone spent the bare minimum to build it and charged the maximum they could for this cheaptastic building, and they walked off with mad cash.


And the architect, by the way, got none of that mad cash.  The architect was paid for work done, maybe even revamped to be cheaper ("We can't afford brick, so let's use stucco...no, EIFS! That's perfect!  Come on, stop crying, it'll look fine.").  The architect downed some cheap scotch, finished the drawings, stamped them, and then walked away.  The contractor slapped it together (and also might have been cheated out of the chance to build something really cool, by the way, because contractors do like a challenge now and again), and the developer made a handy profit, selling a thin-brick veneer to unwary yuppies who think they live in a castle when it's really a 2x4 box.  (The developer also probably spent most of the money on finishes inside the building, which means that the owners look at polished granite counters and stainless steel appliances while the rest of the world has to look at a barely-mediocre exterior, which is a disservice to culture and humanity, but that's a rant for a different post.)


So, yes, thin-brick veneer on a building--any building--irritates me because it's dishonest to so many people: the architect, the homeowners, and the public.

Hey, architects: Don't cheat me, bro!

Okay, in all fairness, I found this on Lulu Brown's blog for architecture interns, but as an architect I love it. This guy/group of people/whoever has started a blog that calls out architecture firms that advertise unpaid internships. Here's the thing about internships: if you do work from which the firm directly benefits and that firm is not a nonprofit, you have to be paid--it's the law. Architecture firms will occasionally try to hire interns to do drafting and/or 3D modeling for them and not pay them, under the guise that "any work is some experience to put on a resume", but in most cases it's illegal. (If you get college credit for the work, then hey don't have to pay you. Other rules apply--check the Department of Labor's website for details.)

While work is slowly coming back for us architects (some places slower than others), I'm still a little fearful for my colleagues, especially the newest among them. When they need just a few more months' worth of experience hours to sit for the ARE, they'll be sorely tempted to work for nothing just to get those last hours of experience. And why do my fellow architects even do such a thing as ask interns to work for free? Is it avarice? Is it not charging enough for their time and expertise in the first place? Is it thinking that the architect is so amazing and skilled that the newest of our profession should be leaping at the chance to simply bask in the light of the architect's countenance? I imagine it's a combination of all of these and maybe more.

Architecture as a profession has a weird culture, seemingly based on the Taliesin model set up by Frank Lloyd Wright. In Wright's model, the apprentices were paid little to nothing and lived in tents on the architect's property (at Taliesin West, anyway) and barely got by in order to sit at the Master's feet and absorb his (and always a his) philosophy and skills. Wright himself was a brilliant designer and engineer but a piss-poor businessman, always seemingly going into, coming out of, or on the brink of bankruptcy. It seems as if even those of us architects that might revile Wright's work still live in his shadow when it comes to the business side of our profession. We undercharge for one project in the hopes that it gets us another project with that client (or with a bigger client), and perhaps that second project will pay for the first one...but it seems that payback never comes. We can barely bring ourselves to ask for additional services when asked to do work outside of our contracts, saying yesyesyesyesyes ofcoursewecandothat anythingyousayOmasterwiththecheckbook without reminding ourselves now and again that we do live in a capitalist society and money is a form of respect due its members for skilled services rendered. As my friend Eric over at Blue Architecture says, "Architects are so focused on helping the world and 'being noble' that we forget that being able to pay your bills and make a decent living is 'noble' too."

Monday Visual Inspiration: Signs of Life

Spring in Denver is a weird time--the weather will be 75 and sunny one day and then 40 and a rain/snow mix the next (which is what happened last week--they actually had to reschedule a Rockies game on account of snow). But the climatic weirdness is welcome because it brings buds on shrubs, leaves on trees, and children's toys to front yards. Just when we thought things would never be good ever again, life returns to the Mile High.

It seems the economy is slowly picking up as well. Here is an empty lot on a major street near Cherry Creek in Denver, which has been empty for over a year now, just some dirt moving around occasionally.

Oh, what's this? Someone's building some condos/lofts/townhomes on the empty lot? Well well well.... I'm not sure I'm sold on the street facade just yet--feels like the windows are a little haphazard to me, but for all I know they have some lovely internal spaces. (Though what do you want to bet that each unit will run over a million bucks each? Stay tuned.)

Cherry Creek North, a great if somewhat-expensive place to go window shopping, is slowly turning the economic-recovery corner. Empty buildings and storefronts are filling back up, including this one next to a spa/salon. I have to say I'm liking this renovation/redo. You can see the old window openings in the early 20th-century brick facade behind the new butt-glazed display window/projections. This store will evidently be something of an upscale vintage boutique. (Miss Kitty, plz to come visit so we can roodle through this store, kthxbaisumthing.)

And of course, I can't stop looking at the clothing displays. The window of the Adornments store showed off this little number, in look-at-me red, no less. Rich, joyous colors are back, and not just in the flower beds, but even on Mother Nature's human children, no less.

Architectural grocery lists

In the recent hubbub of finishing SD for the Uber MOB, many of the departments find that the programs for their departments are wanting--some rooms are too small, others were left off the program, and now and again there are too many of some rooms. So as we're making sure the departments flow properly, we're also having to do this addition, subtraction, and massaging of rooms and spaces.

A program is like a detailed grocery list. First, it lists what rooms and spaces (and how many of each of those rooms and spaces) are needed. (Space doesn't necessarily have walls on all of its sides--it might be a wider area in a hallway, or it might be an alcove tucked in off of a hallway but open to it as well, or it might be an open area inside a larger room, which has walls on three or four of its sides and often, but not always, a door.) Then it tells you how big each of those rooms needs to be (square feet), and sometimes the program will indicate a minimum dimension for these spaces. (For example, a CT scan might be specified to be 350 sf, but the program might also indicate that the room must be at least 14 feet wide.) If it's a well-written program, it will also provide details on how the spaces relate to each other: do some of them need to be close to each other or accessed directly from one another, or do some need to be as far from each other as possible? Do some of these spaces need to account for a huge piece of equipment or need to have direct access to the outdoors? Finally, a good program will also account for things like circulation (the space needed to get between the rooms and to move around in open rooms with lots of smaller spaces in them, as well as stairs and elevators), walls and structure, and utility spaces (tele/data rooms, electrical rooms, mechanical rooms and shafts, housekeeping closets, elevator machine room, etc.).

While these programs for Uber MOB were put together almost a year ago with the users and the higher-ups at Gestalt, there are now more users in the room when we go through these plans who weren't involved in the initial programming. Some of these users are the ones treating patients every day, so they have a different perspective on how many of what spaces are needed. These daily users are the ones who provide us with real, useful information like, "the reason we can function with three exam rooms now is because we use two of [neighboring department]'s exams on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We really need at least five exams, preferably six, if we're not gonna be able to share exams with someone else." Or they might say, "By the time a patient gets to us, there's no need to weigh them--we'd rather use the patient weighing/vitals alcove for equipment storage." We the architects then make notes on the program and send those user-requested changes to Gestalt National in the mid-west so that they can approve or disapprove of the changes.

It would be easy to get mad at the users (and/or the client) for underestimating a department's needs, but programming is a gift that architects sometimes take for granted, I think. It's our job to take users through the course of treating a patient and get them to think about the spaces they use and need. It's out job to help a client think through if they do something a certain way now because it's how they want to do it or if there's something about the existing building that makes them do it that way. It's our job to help a client understand space and really know what it means to have a 7'-0" x 14'-0" storage room. So instead of getting pissed when clients say, "Oh, good Lord, we need another four exam rooms and a lab!", I try to remember that they're having to play catchup to the way I already think, just as I probably remember important symptoms at the last minute during visits with my own physician.

In Soviet Russia, survey takes you!

So here's the deal: a couple of architects have contacted me to ask a favor, and I'm happy to oblige. They're working on a presentation to an architectural convention that deals with the experiences of architectural interns and how best to work with them. So that their presentation will be fact-based (and not just based on their own experiences with interns), they've devised a survey for architectural interns. (Interns are defined as those working in the field who are not yet licensed architects.)

If you're an intern, and you're interested in sharing your experience regarding your architectural internship, then click here and take the survey now. NOW!

And send the link to your intern friends, people. The folks who are doing this survey also told me that no specific or individual information will be shared or even be identifiable--they're going to process a summary of the survey results to use in their presentation, although at the end, you can enter your e-mail address for a drawing to win an $80.00 gift certificate to a national bookstore. Squee! The whole thing should take about 12 minutes to complete, and hey, gift card, people!

In lieu of a real post, I'm going to support a reader

So my sister has been here all weekend and will be here all week (try the veal and tip your waitstaff), so I have nothing intelligent or insightful to say today (which technically is the same situation as when she's not here). However, I want to let y'all know about a competition for a environmentally ("green" designed starter home in which one of WAD's faithful readers has entered with a friend. So go vote for Michelle and Lauren at the Free Green website, which provides free house plans and affordable home design services. Couldn't we all use some affordable services these days? Rock on Michelle and Lauren!

Helping out in Haiti, architect style

There are many good charities and organizations helping out in the chaos and pain that is Haiti right now, such as the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders. I'd also like to mention Architecture For Humanity as a cause worth supporting during this and any time. Generally, AFH provides services to developing countries and communities to help them get the building and infrastructure they need to improve their citizens' lives. Right now, AFH is working towards the reconstruction and shelter effort in Haiti, since as many as 2-3 million people are living out in the elements. I know times are tight for everyone, but remember that every little bit helps your neighbors. And by neighbors, I mean fellow humans schlepping this pebble.

Return of the High School Interns

I have a reputation for doing a good job mentoring high school interns. It started back during my early days at DA in 2000, when my manager wasn't able to keep me busy doing work-related stuff, so when the email went out asking for volunteers to work with a high school intern, I eagerly jumped at the opportunity. These high school kids spend a certain amount of hours per week in the office learning about what it is architects (or whatever profession it is) do, and they get high school credit for it. So far, I've had five interns. The first intern forger her timesheets and ended up realizing that she didn't want to be an architect. The second intern I worked with turned out to be awesome and now works at my office. The third intern lived in an untenable home situation, and I encouraged him to move out and get financial aid ASAP--that architecture would be cool and fun and that his life at the age of 18 would be the worst it ever was. Then, some of you may recall that I had two interns in 2007, and you'll recall that I had issues with keeping these gals busy. Well, it's not so much keeping them busy, but rather getting help to keep them busy, as documented here and here.

The problem with keeping high school interns busy is that it's a lot of work to monitor and teach people who know NOTHING about architecture. Added to this is the difficulty of explaining what's about to happen to them if they go to architecture school first (which is the custom in our profession): school is so vastly different from work that the student's time spent with me must be spent showing them what school is like and what work is like. And that, my peeps, is a lot of work. When I worked with Intern Kimmy and the people before and after her, I was an intern myself; I never had to go to meetings or make lots of phone calls, so I had the time to do time-intensive tasks like work with a high school kid. Plus, the economy was better, and I was allowed to bill any time spent with interns to "Other Approved Time." Nowadays? Not so much. I'm licensed and a job captain, so I'm going to meetings and handling lots of time-intensive and time-sensitive stuff, and I can't bill for that extra time I spend with interns, so giving them a good, solid education and experience is hard.

I email the entire office and explain that even if they only have an hour or two, it's great for a high school kid to learn about what/how/why we do what we do, and many hands make light work, and it's a better experience when they work with a wider variety of people. And out of 90 design staff, I get five replies--two of them are landscape and none of them are interiors. So now, I have to come up with stuff for these po chirrens to do. Fortunately, I have stuff from working with past interns, but I continuously reconsider: is this the right thing for an intern? for this intern? for my profession? And because I'm hourly and can't bill the time, I have to use my lunch breaks to work with interns. And even these lunchtime reviews aren't sufficient to really do a good job. People love to talk about how great Intern Kimmy is nowadays, but I used to spend anywhere from six to twelve hours a week with her, discussing, teaching, critiquing, listening. I don't have the time to do the job right, and it leaves a Shorty rather cranky.

Last fall, Alex, one of our firm's partners and one for whom I've done a great deal of work (including Wheatlands), asked me if I would be the mentor for a high school intern who is the son of a friend of his. I said yes, but I thought Arrrrrgh! not again!! Truly the only reason I agreed to do this is because it's a favor for a partner, who asked me because I have a reputation for working with the interns and doing a pretty good job. As far as I'm concerned, I've done my part. I no longer should be working with the high school kids--after all, I'm doing the seminar series with the actual post-college interns in our office, and that's where I'm putting my effort these days. Give me a break already.

This young man is in the office Tue-Thur, and I must say that he's a bright and pleasant young fellow who appears to be more interested in architecture the more he learns about it. Alex dropped by his desk the other day to see how things were going, and when the young man described what he was doing, Alex exclaimed, "Excellent! That's good stuff to know for school and work!" I sighed inwardly with relief--I may not like it, but I still got it.

Architect pay, professional pay...same difference

A reader recently emailed me to ask if the pay for architects is truly as abysmal as it sounds. The succinct answer is yes, it sucks for the first few years, but getting licensed and/or changing firms can help increase your income. However, everyone getting out of college for the past several years—regardless of their major—is getting paid crap compared to the cost of living. It just hurts architects more because of a) the professional costs of continuing education and professional dues and testing and so on and b) the business costs of all the special software we have to buy and insurance we have to have in order to practice. I have two previous commentaries on what architects make here and here.

Another question I received recently regarded how much it’s worth slogging through architecture if the pay is crap and you have behemothesque student loans. First, let me say that again, like everyone else, your student loans are out of scale with your out-of-school income. Again, it’s the whole cost-of-living thing. Second, and more importantly, how much it’s worth it depends on what you put into it. There is indeed some luck involved in how well you do in your profession; for example, if you get out of school and join a firm that lays you off after six months and you spend the next fifteen months on unemployment (which happened here in Denver a great deal), then you suddenly find yourself behind in the game with regard to getting experience so you can get licensed faster. But that’s if you even come back to the profession at all—this economy is going to make architecture lose some pretty good people. But if we set aside luck and the nature of the economy, you really only get out of architecture what you put into it. I’ve seen interns and architects thrive and do well in nearly the same environment as other interns and architects who are barely hanging on and self-medicating every night at home out of misery and disappointment.

So, the short and simple (but not easy) answer about architecture as a job, a career, and a profession is: it depends. Which is probably true of a lot of professions. Is it true of yours?

Eye of the beholder, Part 2

So I was musing on my new high school building here in Part 1, and as longtime readers of WAD might expect, I diaspprove like a rabbit. However, I'm trying to check my self-righteous archifury as best I can. Problem is, just like the disapproving rabbits, I feel so much disdain...for mehchitecture.

Mehchitecture is the best way I can describe the bland, uncreative buildings and sites and you and I see on a regular basis. It's generally every strip mall and big box store you've seen, it's every chain store you've seen, every fast food joint, and more and more, it's every commercial building and office park you've seen. Strip windows. Stucco. Or worse, EIFS. A slightly angled canopy over the entry. A little barrel vaulting going on over part of the building. Yeah, okay. It feels like no one's even trying anymore. And by no one, I mean my fellow architects. It's our job to push the envelope with forms, materials, structure. It's our job to ask clients over and over again, "Is this how you work now, or is this how you want to work?" It's our job to look at whatever pissant town we're designing for and look for inspiration, for things and forms and colors and materials and ideas that help us design a building that looks interesting and fresh and yet timeless and yet fits into the context. That's a tall order. But that's why we go to school for 5+ years and practice for years and years before we get to take a much of tests and practice on our own, and we still never get it fully right. We learn on each project, but we forget it is also our job as architects to teach, to introduce our clients to something more, something better. You can have it so much better, we tell them. Look how much better this can look, how much more efficiently it can function, how easy it will be to expand when the time comes, when you do what we're suggesting. If I can't give my clients something better than a cruddy brick chunk with a huge gabled roof that's out of place on the building type, then why even waste the 7% to hire me?

Here's where I have to give my old high school some credit. They look like they spent some money on the interior, not blinging but rather pleasant. They used some creativity to make the dollaz go farther. But that's the point, isn't it? It's easy to make a building look badass when you have mad-crazy money; the challenge is how nice can you make a building look--and how durable and well-built is it--for what little you have? Let me say that I've been in a similar position on a hospital, where we cut landscaping dollars so that we can make the building's inside and outside look good and function well. Still, you can do a lot of really cool things with brick and metal trusses in order to make a building look really cool for little to no cost compared to doing something bland-looking.

I also appreciate the fact that they slightly overbuilt for now so that they can grow into the building(s). When I graduated from Booger County in 1994, we had about 600 students in grades 6-12 on our campus. Now, this campus is preparing to have as many as 1,500 kids grades 9-12 on the campus, and good on them. In healthcare architecture, we frequently design buildings and additions so that the facility can add on easily in the future, and they appreciate that. I've built shell space into several hospitals so that when they were ready, they could build up walls and doors and just connect to the plumbing lines that we'd already run in the slab. I don't know how my old school overbuilt for the future, but I applaud them. I also appreciate that they at least "splurged" on things like smartboards in the classrooms. Here's hoping that everyone embraces the technology.

But...here's a li'l story to help illustrate the reason that the appearance of the school disturbs me most. Diane Travis (who is an epic genius) of the Rocky Mountain Masonry Institute once told us a story of a county government that was trying to stop graffiti in their low-income housing neighborhood. They started talking to Diane about different coatings that they could put on their next low-income building's masonry exterior to keep graffiti from sticking. Diane then asked them what the planned exterior of this building was, and the county project manager informed her that it was CMU. That's right--concrete block for the exterior of this housing project building. Diane said (and I love her for this), "Well no wonder people are spray painting your buildings--they look awful. They look like highway underpasses, utility buildings, forgotton places. People don't take care of things that look like crap." For a very comparable cost, she showed them some other exterior masonry cladding options, such as split-face CMUs and bricks made of colored concrete. And guess what? The new, nicer-looking but not-any-more-expensive building never got tagged.

My hope for my new high school building is that the students feel good in that building, that they feel valued. I hope that they enjoy their new building and understand on some level what the Booger County school board was trying to do: give them a better place to learn so that they might be better prepared for the future. I fear that the mehchitecture that has been perpetrated on them might backfire, that new will not necessarily translate into nice. But I hope they'll have the sense to know that a) the school board tried, and b) it can be so. much. better. They're just going to have to go find it.

A silver lining in the housing crisis

An article in today's Denver Post highlighted some houses that the city of Aurora (Colorado's second largest city, just east of Denver) have purchased from foreclosure and are fixing up to sell to qualified low-income and middle-income families.  It's money from the Neighborhood Stabilization Act, which is part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act (signed into law by Bush back in July), that allowed Aurora to do this in the first place.  I'm loving this for a couple of reasons, one of which is that it's part of my Master Plan To Eradicate Everything Undesirable when I take over the world.

Contractors are being hired to work on the properties and make them essentially new when the new owner moves in. According to the article, potential buyers must meet certain income criteria before they can even look at a house, and the homes will be sold for their appraised value or for their purchase cost plus the cost of renovation, whichever is less  (price is non-haggleable).

So there are three good things happening here: one, Aurora is employing contractors and keeping people on a payroll, which should inevitably put some cash back into the economy (every dollar into design and construction supposedly changes hands as many as five times, holla); two, the program gets folks into homes that would otherwise sit empty, look icky, and bring down everyone else's home values in the neighborhood; three, the low-income or middle-income families can benefit from normal-market home-ownership perks like being able to deduct mortgage interest on their taxes and sell the house for likely much more than they paid; and four, it has the possibility of mixing low-income families into middle-class neighborhoods, which can have a positive effect on the family.

Reasons Three and Four are the most important to me.  Back in 2001 when I first started looking at buying a loft downtown, I looked into a new complex that was going up in LoDo.  The saleslady mentioned affordable housing, and I thought I wasn't eligible until she informed me that the income limit for a single person for affordable housing was...$60,000.  I was making about half that.  First of all, what does it say about a society when we consider someone making $60,000 a year in need of affordable housing?  Perhaps our housing costs are out of range for most decent, hardworking folk?  I almost jumped at the chance to buy one of the affordable housing units, but then I discovered two nasty truths about them: one, they're the crappiest units in the building.  They had no view, no balcony, and were on the noisiest corner of the complex.  Good thing I wasn't trying to raise kids in this building.  Second, I found out that the cost of the unit would have to be capped at a 5% increase of its previous purchase price for the next twenty years, in order to keep it as an afforable housing unit.  So, I don't make a lot of cash now, and you'd like to punish me by not even letting me reap one of the good benefits of home ownership, the so-called American Dream.  Thanks for punishing me for being poor.

When I was working on my thesis on designing environments for the homeless mentally ill, the head of the program I interviewed which had the lowest recidivism rate shared with me her secret for truly truning people from homeless to homeworthy: one, you have to provide support, like "reminder training" of how to keep a house clean and how to balance a checkbook (when people are homeless for too long, especially while taking drugs or suffering from a mental illness, they can actually "forget" how to do these things); and two, mix their housing units into the general population.  Instead of ghettoizing them into a public housing complex and labeling them, put a person (or a few people) into an apartment complex our single- and dual-family home neighborhood full of working-class and middle-class folks.  As Ruby Payne observed, if poor kids only hang out with poor adults, then they only learn how to do what poor people do.  In a neighborhood full of people that understand the implicit and explicit value of listening to teachers, learning, saving for college, evaluating resources, and so on, lower-income families learn how to do what needs to be done to lift themselves out of poverty for the long term.

So, I like what Aurora is doing.  They're taking care of their neighborhoods, their property values, and their communities.  It's still not as far as my Master Plan To Eradicate Everything Undesirable would go, but it's a decent start.

Pruitt-Igoe and the failure of the modern housing projects

Gather round, my children, and I'll tell you the story of Pruitt-Igoe, a housing project that was meant to be the post-war hope of the future and ended up being a sorry mess.

The Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex was designed by Minoru Yamasaki, a Japanese architect who followed the International Style (what most of us think of as "modern"), for the city of St. Louis. Post-WWII, St. Louis the city had been deserted by anyone with any money for the suburbs. The city decided to demolish a large swath of dilapidated houses and small, run-down apartment complexes and put up instead Le Corbusier's wet dream.

The complex was designed in the early 1950s, and after a round or two of value engineering (where you change the design in order to decrease the cost of a project), construction was completed in 1955. Over 50 acres were cleared for the 33 buildings of the complex. The buildings were originally separated into two groups, the Pruitt complex and the Igoe complex; one would hold blacks and any other minorities, and the other would hold whites. The complexes were integrated in the late 1950s. Upon its completion, the world's architecture journals praised it as a beautiful example of International Style housing, which many architects of the time believed was just the way to alleviate and even end poverty and to cure society's ills. Some residents, upon first moving in, said it looked like a dream come true.

But it wasn't long until the complex looked like this:

Remember that value engineering I mentioned earlier? First of all, Yamasaki's firm proposed a mix of varying heights and densities of buildings--low rise, high rise, and walk-ups (not more than three stories)--but that plan was nixed and all buildings were set at eleven stories each in order to economize each building's construction. Some politicians attributed the high cost estimates to having to pay union wages to the construction crews. Regardless, money had to be saved somehow, and changing the size and shape of the buildings wasn't the only way. In order to get more people into smaller building footprints, the units were way too small and had inadequate kitchens and plumbing fixtures. Even worse were that the elevators only stopped on three of the eleven floors--it costs a lot of money to stop an elevator on a floor, so by stopping it on the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth, you save a lot of cash, right?

What they saved in up-front construction cost, they lost in the long run. Too many people from different neighborhoods in substandard conditions made for a lot of tension amongst the residents. Thugs and thieves waited in the stairwells for people returning from their jobs with paychecks and the mailboxes with their monthly assistance checks as they climbed up to their floors where the elevators didn't stop.

By the late 1960s, only one of the buildings had any residents in it at all. Estimates vary on maximum occupancy, but they range from 33% to 60% full at its fullest. The first of the buildings was imploded in 1972, and the last imploded in 1976. In 21 years, the critically-acclaimed housing complex was no more.

So what happened? I don't think the fact that it was a "modern" building was the problem. My research on designing homeless shelters (that was my thesis, bitches) as well as my experience in healthcare architecture has shown me that if you don't give people nice things, they don't care about what's around them and won't take care of it. Put poor people who know they're poor in cheap-ass-looking public housing and don't even give them adequate space and for the love of Philip Johnson, you don't even have the elevator stop on each floor...well, you've made it pretty clear that you don't think very highly of these folks. And they will behave accordingly and treat their building that way.

It's also a matter of scale. The psychological concept of crowding has shown in animal studies and to a less-controlled extent in people that if you put too many of any mammalian species in a given area, they react poorly and engage in destructive behaviors. Furthermore, it's worth noting that a nearby public housing complex that had fewer units per building had much less vandalism, and its residents were much more careful about taking care of their gronds and keeping them clean. Studies have shown (and of course I can't put my hands on them right now, but I distinctly recall this) that people are more likely to help out when there's fewer of them present. One study on this concept found that if there are ten people in a room, and they hear someone fall in the next room and cry out, the "oh help!" person is not very likely to get help from any of those people, but they're much more likely to get help if there are only one or two people in that other room. So, with Pruitt-Igoe, if you put 20 units on a floor, they tend not to take care of their public areas (halls, courtyards, etc.) as much as they would if there were three or four units on that floor. In my eyes and experience, the failure of Pruitt-Igoe was less of an architectural aesthetic failure and more of a planning, policy, and psychology/sociology failure.

By the way, Pruitt-Igoe was not the only notable piece of architecture that Minoru Yamasaki designed. Know what else he did?

I bet you do know.

Edited 12/9/2011: I appreciate the continued feedback on this post, and I'm aware that evidence regarding the architectural intentions of Pruitt-Igoe's architect and the planners have recently been made clearer in a variety of books and articles in the past several years. More recently, a documentary title The Pruitt-Igoe Myth sought not only to delve into the socioeconomic issues involved in Pruitt-Igoe's creation and demise but also to understand the architectural and planning issues and decisions made regarding the project. As better information and research on this topic is produced by others who have the time and ability to do so, I urge readers to seek out those resources and will close this particular post for receiving comments. Glad to know that this topic still provides lively discussion in the public sphere, and hopefully it will continue to do so in the spirit of improving the public realm's aesthetic as well as how we care for those less fortunate than us.

Michael Graves is in a wheelchair and he can still kick your ass

Longtime WAD readers know that I've taken some shots at Michael Graves before.  (I've done it here, for example)  But I keed beecauzze I luuvv.  I like his stuff in general, especially his industrial design stuff.  I got an email recently from Healthcare Design Magazine noting that Michael Graves will be the keynote speaker at their conference this November in Orlando.  The profile of Graves talks about the awards that His Kitschiness has received and the services his various firms offer, and then it says:

In 2003, a sudden illness left him paralyzed from the waist down. Now confined to a wheelchair, Graves' designs continue to combine simple utility, functional innovation, and formal beauty with his now deeper understanding of the importance of accessibility and patient-centered design in the healthcare sector. Five years after the illness that changed him forever, Graves and his team are hard at work on many healthcare design projects, including a line of home healthcare products that fuse one-dimensional medical utility with style, multifunctional elegance, and beauty.

“We are delighted and honored to have someone of Michael Graves' stature to keynote this event," says Debra Levin, President and CEO of The Center. “Michael's stated design philosophy — that healthcare settings need to serve those who work and receive care in them — is very much in alignment with The Center's mission to transform healthcare environments through design research. We look forward to what we know will be an engaging, dynamic, not-to-be-missed keynote presentation that will set the tone for the rest of the event."

What?  In a wheelchair?  Good Gawd!  I suppose it's unfortunate for him (but certainly not the worst thing that could happen to him--at least he didn't have a stroke or something), but it's really a gift for the healthcare design world.  Like him or not, Graves has a way with industrial (objects) design and graphic (print) design that is unique and arguably revolutionary.  I like his stuff, and so do a crapload of people who shop at Target.  Michael Graves entrance into the healthcare design world (even if it's Chevy Chase-like and inadvertent) means introducing new design style and taste to a clientele that is generally (in my experience) averse to anything "design-y".  As I've described in an earlier post, the first task of a healthcare facility is to function so that caring for and healing patients happens efficiently and effectively.  Pretty takes a backseat to functional in a healthcare facility, and it usually gets felt up in that back seat.

So His Kitschiness is about to be His Clinically Usefulness.  Righteous.  Let the healing begin, my people.  But let me open the question to the people: have you ever used any Michael Graves-designed stuff, and how well did it work?  What would you love to see him (re)design?  (Other than a chicken coop?)

The pros and cons of being an architect: correction/explanation

So I described the pros and cons of being an architect in my last post, and one of the cons I described was that we don't get paid super well.  I described this post to my husband, Guy, and he had an interesting take on that point.

"I don't know why people complain they aren't paid well as architects," Guy said.  "We're paid just a little less than engineers and pretty comparably to a lot of other professions."  The more I thought about this, the more I realized Guy was right.  Because architecture as a profession generally requires that you have certain types of degrees in order to even come in for an interview, it pays you for your experience, not your degree.  I always hate breaking that to the interns that come through our doors, because many of us--including me--have been told by our parents, teachers, and other adult authority figures to "go to college and get a good education and a good-paying job."  While college graduates still generally earn much more than high school graduates, a lot more people go to college these days than they did even 20 years ago.  This means there are a lot more college degrees floating around out there. which means that having a college degree doesn't necessarily set you apart in the workforce, depending on your job/career.  

Further complicating things (as described in the "more people go to college these days" link) is that depending on what your job/career is, you can make more with a lesser degree.  My sister in law (rock on, STL Fan!) makes more as an accountant than I do as an architect, even though she has a four-year bachelor's and I have a 4+2 yr M.Arch, and we have similar amounts of work experience.  The radiology techs at the hospitals I design make as much as I do or more, and the same goes for the licensed plumber who installs the toilets I draw.  The techs and the plumber have a degree/certificate thingy from a vocational/tech school, though the plumber might just have years of experience.

Another monkey wrench in the situation is some information I seem to recall reading a long time ago in Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickled and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America and I reread recently in Jean Twenge Ph.D's Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before.  The fact is that the cost of major life expenses such as housing, child care, and college educations have outpaced wages and even inflation.  Twenge notes that between 1997 and 2002, the amount Americans aged 25 to 34 spent on mortgage interest with up 24%; on property taxes, 15%; health insurance, 18%.  The median home price in the US jumped 14.7% from 2004 to 2005, the largest one-year jump in 25 years.  The amount of a family budget that went to the mortgage increased 69% from 1975 (my birth year) to 2000.  All the while their discretionary spending decreased, and even the income of men aged 25 to 34 decreased 17% from 1971 to 2002.  What this means is that almost regardless of what your major is in college and what kind of job you get when you graduate college, you're likely not going to make the bills.  Many intern architects get a second job for the first few years of their professional careers, or they get roommates.  Guy and I moved in together when I bought the Kappy Kitten Highrise partially because it made financial sense for us.  (Well, that and we luuuved each other.)

Last but not least, no matter what job you get when you graduate, your income isn't enough no matter what you make if you have crappy money management skills.  I'm amazed at the number of fresh-from-college interns who think they have to have a new or almost-new car or a loft apartment in one of Denver's new steel-and-glass highrises.  I had an intern who complained of his income to me one day at lunch, and then I saw him walk out at the end of the day and get into his brand new Audi--the turbo kind.  Mm-hmm.  One of the guys that Guy graduated college with makes $82,000 as an unlicensed architect (he's a really good designer and he changes jobs frequently, which gains him salary increases), and he complains to Guy and me about how poorly we're all paid (while Guy and I make $75,000 and $57,000 before taxes, respectively).  Thing is, this friend and his wife (who is also employed and has been employed for all but about 6 or 8 months of the past 8 years) live in a two-year old four-bedroom house with stainless steel appliances (they have no children), both purchased new cars last year (an Audi and a Toyota SUV), and they frequently go on cross-country or international trips.  They were recently lamenting to us how they've starting dining out "so rarely, like never, maybe once a week now and then" and all the other cost-cutting measures they'd been taking, and Guy shook his head while we were driving home from their house.  "What I wanted to say to them," Guy said, "was 'oh, so you're living the way Pixie and I have been living for about seven years now, congratulations' but I didn't have the heart."

I realize I've been going on for a while, but the whole "architects don't make any money" thing has to be mentioned with a caveat.  Being paid for your experience vs. degree, the cost of living increase, and having poor money management skills all play into the lack of income issue.

The psychology of architecture, or using our power for good

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School; the school itself took the day off, and all schools lowered their flags to half-mast.  The school, faculty, and students are trying to move forward and stop being a noun and a verb in modern-day American English and stop letting this event define their existence.  To say it's hard to do is an understatement.  Some former students are now teachers at Columbine, and most surprising to me is that the same principal is still there.

Designing a facility in the aftermath of such an event is an architect's toughest assignment by far.  I had the opportunity and honor of touring the campus after the remodeling was complete, and I got to talk to the project's designers.  The library, where most of the shootings occurred, was directly above the cafeteria, where some shootings took place.  Consider for a moment that you are in a place where you watch several of your coworkers or classmates fall to a brutal end--a hundred coats of paint will not wipe that memory from your mind the next time you walk in.    The architects took the library floor/cafeteria ceiling out and made the cafeteria a double height space with 13 foresty-cloud mural panels on the ceiling.  As I understood it, the first designs involved just removing the floor in areas where people fell, but that almost seemed too macabre.  By removing the library entirely from over the cafeteria, the deceased are honored by no one being able to walk where they fell ever again, and no one has to relive the memory of being trapped in that space.  The new library was an addition to the building near where it used to be and includes lots of visibility in the library and has huge windows that look out onto Clement Park, near where the memorial garden is located.  The garden includes a small courtyard and 13 trees.

The number 13 has been a bone of contention for the community.  15 people died in total, but two of them were the boys that committed the murders.  According to an article in the Denver Post this morning, someone holding up a sign that said "Honor All 15 Victims" was removed from the memorial ceremony.  The question of 13 verus 15 is another tough one that the architects had to address.  It's my belief not just as an architect but also as someone who lost a parent to fratricide that they should find some way to remember all 15.  While my uncle (and Harris and Kliebold) cannot be excused for what they did, I cannot imagine what kind of pain and state of mind would make a person hurt fellow human beings and then end their own lives.  Their parents have been extremely silent on the whole subject for the past ten years, and again, I don't blame them.  We all say we want to know what happened so we can prevent it, but I'm willing to bet my bonuses for the next five years (that's right, all $74.35) that people really just want to know, how do I keep my kids from doing it too?  There but for the grace of God go those parents.  Everytime I tell people that my dad's brother killed my dad and then hmself, one of the very first questions is, why? What was wrong with him?  There but for the grace of God go all of us.

Not long after the shootings, I overheard a couple of businessmen talking about it, wondering how the building was designed before the shootings.  "Weren't there enough exits?" one of them asked.  I nearly punched him.  Exits are designed for most emergencies, but think about it for a second: if you were being shot at in the middle of an open field, there still wouldn't be enough exits for you, not enough ways to escape the horror staring you quite literally point blank in the face.  Schools and offices have fire drills and tornado drills, but we never have your-classmates-are-shooting-at-you drills.  I've been asked about if a tower could withstand the kind of impact that occurred at the World Trade Center, and the answer is yes.  Anything can be built strong enough to withstand crashing planes and bombs and bullets (I recently heard about a police station with 1/8" thick steel plates on its exterior), but can you afford it fiscally?  Is it worth it for you to spend that kind of money for an event that might never happen?  Same thing for high schools: the vast majority of them will never have a school shooting, but some of them will be designed and constructed to help people see oncoming threats better or to withstand pipe bombs that students might decide to make and hide around the school.

I have to say from seeing it that the renovated Columbine is beautiful, eloquent beyond words.  It was nearly transcendent.  Its the kind of thing that architects try to do every day around the country and around the world.  It's the kind of thing that we strive to do in school and in offices and parks and houses and hospitals and buildings everywhere.

Doing what matters Part 2: the bell curve of time and effectiveness/efficiency

Intern Timmy and I reflected on a variety of topics at our lunch last week, and he made a comment that rang true and cracked me up at the same time.  "You know those interns that sit upstairs, and they're on Vincent's team?  They're always friggin' in here!  On weekend, late nights, doesn't matter--they're in here!" he commented.

I laughed.  "I've noticed that when I'm here late occasionally," I replied.  "What are they doing, exactly?  They're paid hourly like you and me, and we're all at 36 hours a week.  Do they have permission to work that much overtime?  Or are they just not getting paid for it or what?"

"Here's my thing," said Intern Timmy.  "I'm thorough and I do a good job, and I'll do what it takes to get a job done, but I don't wanna be here more than I have to be.  I'd rather be efficient and you know, actually make a profit on my projects."

Intern Timmy's observation about Vincent's interns reminded me of college yet again.  Vincent does commercial, retail, multifamily housing, and civic and museum/display spaces, so he does some pretty artsy-looking stuff.  The impression I get is that his project teams are full of the kids who made As and had amazing-looking projects back in studio.  What I recall about those kids in college is that they were always in Studio.  Anytime of day, night, or weekend, they were in the Studio.  Sometimes, they were working on a drawing or model or figuring out designs.  Almost as often, they were hanging out, talking to some of their peeps, smoking a cigarette (a lot of architects and architecture students smoke or ,like Guy, used to smoke) whatever.  It was as if their default position on Planet Earth was to be in that room and somewhere near their drafting table.  I would spend several hours of at least one weekend day at Studio, to be sure, but I dedicated a great deal of time to the rest of my classes.  The professor who wrote that recommendation letter I mentioned in my last post (who was my favorite professor, by the way) once told us after a midterm crit that he didn't want any of us in the studio for the next two days: he said that we were at Tech for an education, which included more than just our major, so he wanted us to go home and catch up on our other classes.  I also recall a fellow student who was always in Studio, almost regardless of time of day.  He produced these bizarre/creative flights of fancy and got As in Studio during the Winter and Spring quarters of our sophomore year...and flunked every other class he took.  The Design Meister was given the dubious honor of repeating his sophomore year.  Nice work, Frank Gehry. 

My opinion then, is that Vincent has a team full of people who have lots of practice making awesome-looking designs and spending lots of time making those awesome-looking designs, but they don't have near as much practice in making timely design decisions and getting the required documentation completed in time.  Hence, it takes them that much longer to produce the documents, and there they are in the office at 7pm during the week and at 3pm on a weekend day.  Now, to be fair, I don' t doubt that amazing-looking buildings might also take a lot of time to detail, and that would certainly account for some of that extra time spent.  But at some point, I have to say quit piddling around and get it done.  Quit losing your mind over oh how does that form juxtapose with that one? and just pick something nice and start drawing it.  The days of doodling on a napkin with an unlimited budget are over.  And if I hear you use the word "juxtapose", I will slap the Eisenmann-like taste out of your mouth so hard that your eyes will cross like an homage to Michael Graves.

This may sound like a case of sour grapes, and you might be right.  One of Vincent's associates and I have had discussions about why hospitals aren't any prettier than they usually are and tend to end up on the more normative and prosaic side with regards to their aesthetics.  (Note: I'm embarrassed I just used the words normative and prosaic in this blog.  Fart jokes will ensue shortly.)  And by discussion, I mean he gives me shit for "not making hospitals prettier" and I smile wanly and say, "with a decent budget, I could do a lot more, man," and then he says "don't give me that, look at this project," and shows me the latest archiporn magazine cover with a fancy-schmancy hospital and cancer treatment center in Florida.  Well, yes, that's an amazing hospital, dude: between being a cancer center with backing from a well-known cancer research and treatment nonprofit and a well-known name in hospitals plus some fat donations from rich white people living in frickin' Florida, it's funded like mad.  I do little hospitals for people in towns of 5,000 people in the West and Midwest.  These people don't want avant-garde slices of metal panel--they want strong-looking, comforting buildings that will hold up to baseball-size hail.  And more importantly, the purpose of a hospital is to heal people, not be edgy or, dare I say, "pretty."  So when you're up against a budget, you cut things that affect aesthetic rather than function.  You preserve program and equipment and get rid of finishes and fancy stuff.  That's how it works in healthcare, kiddo.

Maybe I am bitter that my buildings don't look gorgeous and amazing and don't end up on the covers of archiporn magazines.  But I'm no less proud of my efforts on a hospital projects.  If you don't spend a lot of time on your projects, they look like crap and the drawings and specs are incomplete and uncoordinated.  But oddly enough, if you spend too much time on the project, the same thing happens.  You change your mind about what goes where and how things look, and you look at the project so much that mistakes and uncoordinated issues no longer pop out at you.  The amount of time and effort versus quality of product on an architecture project does look something like a bell curve, where there in the middle is a certain amount of efficient work that is also effective.  Management guru Stephen Covey defines efficient as being able to cut down lots of trees in a short amount of time, and effective is cutting down the right trees in the right forest.  Likewise, being effective on a project is prioritizing what to draw and how to draw it, and being efficient is documenting and detailing these things such that it takes the least amount of time and effort overall.  Sometimes, we make a decision that takes more effort up front but saves time later when time is truly money--for example, we'll figure something out and draw it to great detail during the construction documents phase so that it's easy to understand and build during construction administration.  That's ultimately efficient and effective.

Design Associates went to a bonus structure a few years ago that gives the project team--associates all the way down to lowly interns--a piece of the profits when the construction documents are done and then when the building is finished.  The idea behind this, as I understand it, is to connect performance with reward.  Manage your project well, and you'll have a li'l som'n to show for it at the end.  I recall most of the people who were initially opposed to the idea were, you guessed it, folks who worked for Vincent.  They asked in meetings regarding the bonus structure, "A lot of our projects get stopped at the end of design development--what happens to our bonuses?  Do we just never get one?"  And it's a fair question. But those of us in healthcare shared a schadenfreude chuckle amongst ourselves.  Of course Vincent's team is pissed about the new bonus structure--they're here all the time and probably go through fee like Amy Winehouse goes through crack.  And Intern Timmy picked up on this--his desire for a bonus at the end means that he exercised some decision making and prioritizing along the way as well as enough self-discipline to Get. It. Done.  And that's another usefull skill for any professional.