Architecture Week: Dirty, Sexy Money

This week we have a whole week of blogs on the subject of architecture. Our first blog is from Su Butcher.

Why Architects Don’t Get Money (and why they should)

My first ever commission was for a Quaker Meeting house. At the time all the meeting houses in London retained a surveyor, so I had to meet this guy and work with him. We met in a pub round the corner from the building we were going to convert into a Meeting House. As I walked in the door he said, “Every time an architect walks in the door, there goes £20,000 down the drain.”

Now firstly I should point out that I’m not an architect (to be an architect you must be registered with the ARB, have Professional Indemnity Insurance, and have completed all 3 parts of the RIBA Professional Practice exam – I only have 2 parts).
Secondly, this article is an opinion piece. I’m not saying that all architects don’t get money (or make it). After all, I work for a commercially minded architect, so they do exist.

Architects Cost Money

So it is hard to admit it, but the surveyor is right. It rings true doesn’t it? Architects cost money, and to many, they appear to be a frivolous waste of money. He’s right because architects are notoriously poor with the whole money thing.
Why is that?
I think there are two reasons why architects are seen as a waste of money. One is history, the other is training.

A Poor Commercial Culture

The history of the architectural profession, like many of the arts, is one of patronage, not business. Architects were commissioned by wealthy people to design buildings that expressed their clients’ wealth. A little like fashion design today, where much women’s fashion is in essence a physical expression of the fact that the woman who wears it does not have to do manual work, or walk very far either!

Great early architect designed buildings were palaces, large homes or large public buildings. Their greatest achievement was to impress.
Today things are different. During the early 20th Century the education of architects began to get more open, architects ventured into socialism and design for the masses, and today the man or woman on the street will think about employing an architect.

Over a parallel period, architectural education has moved from being an apprenticeship system where you studied whilst working with an architect in practice, to being an academic qualification.

Five of the seven years spent becoming an architect are now spent at university, and the predominant focus of architecture courses is learning to design by designing. Students design buildings from their very first week, but in order to give them creative freedom, several practical constraints are loosened. The most significant one of these lost constraints is money.

Financial Constraints

In all my time at college (5 years and two degrees) I was only encouraged to look at the financial aspects of my designs once, at the end of my second degree. Much of the time, budget issues were considered an inconvenience, stifling the creative process. The culture of the education was that one put off talking about money as long as one could – at least until one got into the grubby business of business.
So architects have a history of extremely wealthy client patronage, and for generations have been trained to ignore budgetary restraints. Is it any wonder they don’t like to talk about money?

The Effects

Architects are poorly paid. They earn less than Chartered Surveyors and Town Planners, Construction Managers, Senior Local Government Officers and even Physicists, geologists and meteorologists. I contend that this is because architects don’t know how to make money out of their business.
Architects don’t always pay their staff well either. Last week a story broke in the national construction press about a firm of architects in London offering Part II architectural assistants (that’s someone with two degrees) £400 for a 70-hour week – that’s below the National Minimum Wage.

I don’t think this is just an effect of the recession, I think it’s an issue of culture. I’ve discussed it in more detail here:- it’s about money- stupid!

Are Surveyors At Fault?

There are clearly internal problems, but the biggest concern to me is the Surveyor’s opinion that architects waste money. Why would architects waste money? I think its because many of them have difficultly seeing, or accepting, the commercial aspects of a clients’ point of view.
If you’re a business person, or a person of moderate means, you’ll need an architect to understand the commercial aspects of your project. You’re not employing them simply to inject unencumbered (if attractive) opulence. You have a budget, and it’s not elastic. Architects can create wonderful spaces, but for them to be truly wonderful they must be practical, and they must be cost effective. And for most clients today that also means profitable.

Why are so few buildings in the UK designed by qualified architects? I think this lack of commercial understanding is a major factor.

How To Avoid Property Developer Mistakes

The supreme irony is that architects are superbly positioned to help their clients make money. Decisions made at the design stage can create opportunities for a client to derive more value from their site and buildings for generations to come. Designing an office space to be flexible and adaptable to future needs can save the occupier hundreds of thousands of pounds in retrofits, refits and moving costs. Rearranging a site to make the best use of land isn’t just about getting the extra unit cost, its about all the income that unit will bring your client through the life of the building, income potential that can be sold on.

Dirty, Sexy Money

I think the reason why many architects don’t use their design skills to profit their client, is that they don’t want to talk about money. Which is also the reason many of them don’t make enough money.

Being profitable is about keeping your eye on the objective, and behaving appropriately. Its about being able to talk about money without embarrassment, and accepting that making a profit is an acceptable, reasonable thing for someone to do.

Its about standing up for your right to make a reasonable profit, and pointing out that other members of the team need to do so too. Why hasn’t open book contracting taken off? Because people don’t want to be honest about the money.
So lets start talking about money. Lets teach about it in architecture schools, lets explain the cost/benefit calculation, lets truly show how good design can make a client hundreds of thousands of pounds over the life of a building. Lets stop pussyfooting about with our ‘vocation’ like money is a dirty word. Lets talk about the money.

Su Butcher is Practice Manager of Barefoot & Gilles Architects. You can also chat with her on Twitter here.

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