Appraisal Season!

Its Appraisal Season in the office and the excitement started with the request for all staff to complete a form evaluating each of our own performance in the last 12 months and what we hope to see ahead of us. There were the usual complaints of the futility of the task because "no one reads it anyway" and "they do not really listen or give you what you want" but everyone gave the form filling due seriousness.

At the time of writing, I am happy at work and although I do seem to express worry rather more, the issues that I raise are, I believe pertinent and important to address. So far, the issues have been taken up and we have moved along in a direction seemingly more secure than before. Since I raised issues about co-ordination of information with our consultants for our construction information production, about how we reflect the lack of full co-ordination in the package issues, about how their information release is out of phase with our production information and how we are to address it - we have as a team sat down and reorganised the construction master programme and have a much more confident buy-in by everyone. We have reduced our turn-around period from 10 days to 5 days for review of consultants' drawings but it seems like everyone is willing to pitch in to get the project on-site and on time.

We have definitely had the construction programme compressed and my director SC immediately realised this when we had our internal review of the proposed programme before tabling it at the most recent DTM. With this shorter turnaround, I wonder about our ability to co-ordinate properly and to minimise oversights both in our work behind the scenes and then later on site. To this end, I think the procedures that I have introduced and am still in the midst of implementing will be useful. What I need to be extremely clear when I execute it is that the diagram is clear to all and that everyone believes in the process so that the experience of WCS and STC to a lesser extent, become lessons learnt. In any case, I might have to raise the issue of a shortened window for cross-checking soon - not to get my excuses in early but to allow everyone to see the purpose of my idea if not the need for it or an alternative to achieve a similar end.

There have been some undercurrents in the office mood and morale recently. There have been exits aplenty with one moving to F Systems, one to Zaha's and one more to Roger's. In the last week, two more prominent staff have opted to leave and although they might not be considered essential to the director's in their immediate plans, the medium to longer term future of the office is surely at stake. In a way, I do feel that the effects of M Knight's departure a year ago is now beginning to show. There have been complaints of the quality of the new staff hired since then - the bulk of whom have joined us fresh out of school at different levels. There have been a general dissent about the lack of quality of work being produced by the staff having to produce it. Ownership levels are low with a rather large divide between the old staff and the ones wet behind the ears with no signs of improvement on the horizon. There is a general air of mediocrity pervading the air and I don't like the smell of it. Someone said that there are always casualties after the Appraisal season, let's see if any more shock announcements are made in the coming weeks!

Conductor Composer

I was at the Cadogan Hall on Sloane Square yesterday enjoying an evening of fantastic music by Stravinsky and Mahler, performed by the Philharmonia of the Nations. It was a full orchestra and their performance was impressive. It was one of those rare moments when I could slip into an imaginary plane created by the unison of sound, skill and collective action. It was like the very best football games but with music as its goal - and the similarity lying in the aim of practiced precision and self expression amalgamating into a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. A whole that can be termed collective expression and that immediately produced something so immaterial and ephemeral and yet so tangible. The orchestral sounds came across as a unified expression that created something so powerful in its ability to suck in all those who want to partake in its resultant ambience; and so immediate - not least because its accessibility required little prior factual knowledge of its production. And yet, the sounds reminded me of things quintessentially European. Or things that did not exist in the Chinese culture and provided such a stark counter-point. Pirouettes, a turn and twirl on the dance floor with arms outstretched and at shoulder level, swoops of violins and clarinets over grass plains and up above twinkling triangles and crashing cymbals. I was not so much drifting as I was floating and swooping with the music that was magically emanating from vibrations, friction and differential air pressure being produced on-stage before my very eyes.

In this sort of milieu, I tend to let my mind drift into my own realm of expertise and passion. I began to compare the white haired man on the podium conducting the musicians whose ambitions and expression is confined to their technical expertise. Essentially, they become technicians however virtuoso their performance. I began to think that the conductor was playing the role of the traditional architect - who mediated and made things tick. He knew the different trades and knew when and how the greater whole should be designed and delivered. He knew the composition and how to rouse it into an arresting presence. Then I realised a difference - an architect did not just recreate music, he or she would also have to be able to create anew. He needed to know how to compose in the musical sense. So is it more accurate to think of architects as composer conductors? Or that some architects are more conductors and others more composers? We certainly see architects who prefer managing the nitty gritty and recreating the vision (whether someone else's design or translating the drawing into building); we also see architects who prefer to design and to express themselves through their creations(virtual or physical).

While in the AA, I used to think about how we would compete with technicians and engineers with the way we were going with animation and mapping with all sorts of softwares that were not even written for architects or design. L shared that he thought that more than ever it was the role of the architect to mediate and to co-ordinate and not to be technical experts. More important than co-ordinating a team of consultants lending expertise, it was the role of the architect to mediate the qualities and the potential(s) of the design team to create a greater whole. I have had to keep coming back to this view of my industry many a time since graduating especially when it seemed that the extremely technically adept amongst us had more opportunities to influence design and to make a difference in creation. At times when the star designers going to the star firms were the experts at this package or that and when the spotlight in my firm were shining on the technically fluent operatives displaying control and unique, if not elite, knowledge. If technical expertise is the driving force of creation as it seems to sometimes be alluded to recently (bottom-up strategies anyone?), does it mean the soloist is controlling the entire output of the orchestra? Or is it just more pop/rock?