it is nearing the end of october and things have changed a little.
i'm in hong kong for 3 weeks, working on a project in Guangzhou, 2 hours by train from kowloon tong station. i have been working 14 hour days and have not produced any drawings since i got here. it is strange for me and it feels like i'm detached from the design team. i have liase with the client, with Arup (our joint venture partners) and have a lot of administrative matters to attend to. feeling a bit lost, only now do i suddenly recall the managing director of AVPL, fong hoo cheong, telling me about design work vs. administration work - we are only left with 5% of our time to design and increasing our efficiency with administrative work is the only way to get anything over and above that 5%.
my inexperience means i don't even have that 5% now.
working on a chinese project just brings out the cliched nightmare scenarios of an architect's journal. a client who has more foot soldiers creating ever increasing numbers of whimsical deadlines (to ensure you produce the report card for him to show his superiors); a client who has so many people who want a piece of the action ("for their career") that every meeting is a muddled cacophony of voices wanting to be heard; fickle decisions encompassed in briefs that constantly move the goalposts; all wrapped up in a programme so tight, they release information and changing briefs like IT industries' (and their research department's) immediately obsolete launches.
for me? just equates to immediately obsolete minutes of meetings.
i should really try to make some sense of all these. but i also should really be finishing up the minutes from yesterday's two meetings and check that off my list. maybe then, i'll have my weekend's peace of mind. either that, or i spend the weekend writing it.
lunchtime.
i'm in hong kong for 3 weeks, working on a project in Guangzhou, 2 hours by train from kowloon tong station. i have been working 14 hour days and have not produced any drawings since i got here. it is strange for me and it feels like i'm detached from the design team. i have liase with the client, with Arup (our joint venture partners) and have a lot of administrative matters to attend to. feeling a bit lost, only now do i suddenly recall the managing director of AVPL, fong hoo cheong, telling me about design work vs. administration work - we are only left with 5% of our time to design and increasing our efficiency with administrative work is the only way to get anything over and above that 5%.
my inexperience means i don't even have that 5% now.
working on a chinese project just brings out the cliched nightmare scenarios of an architect's journal. a client who has more foot soldiers creating ever increasing numbers of whimsical deadlines (to ensure you produce the report card for him to show his superiors); a client who has so many people who want a piece of the action ("for their career") that every meeting is a muddled cacophony of voices wanting to be heard; fickle decisions encompassed in briefs that constantly move the goalposts; all wrapped up in a programme so tight, they release information and changing briefs like IT industries' (and their research department's) immediately obsolete launches.
for me? just equates to immediately obsolete minutes of meetings.
i should really try to make some sense of all these. but i also should really be finishing up the minutes from yesterday's two meetings and check that off my list. maybe then, i'll have my weekend's peace of mind. either that, or i spend the weekend writing it.
lunchtime.
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