Zero, Zip, Nada.

My work doesn’t get built.

There, I said it.  Nothing I’ve designed as Cobrooke in the last five years has gotten built.

Zero, zip, nada.

Not the concierge ALF in Tampa, the new campus plan for a developmentally disabled service provider, a new technology center or the performing arts center addition or the school for victims of human trafficking in Africa. By my count that makes me 0 for 5, batting a perfect zero. Recently, we were executive architects for a fairly large church addition that did get built but that doesn’t count. It’s like being a car passenger, along for the ride with your feet hanging out the window enjoying the view.

And yet here I am, still standing in the batter’s box, bat in hand waiting to take a swing. Hey, I’m an architect, it’s what we do.

We dream, we hope (these days pray, a lot) that the next one is the big one. Until that happens we forage, like survivors in a post-apocalyptic world, for nuts, berries and insects to keep ourselves alive and hopeful.

Today it’s a new competition that occupies my time and keeps me from wondering if today’s the day that a proposal submitted two months ago for a small project with a whopping three grand fee gets green lighted, or the even smaller proposal for half that amount goes through. Hey, it’s all nuts and berries remember?

Until then I work on my competition winning acceptance speech and hang my hat on the adage that “architecture is an old man’s profession”.

Problem is, depending on who you ask, I am already an old man.

Robert Vecchione is an architect/designer and principal of the multidisciplinary firm Cobrooke Ideas-Architecture-Design (www.cobrooke.com).

Join us on Facebook

I know you like good architecture. Come like my company page, Consulting For Architects, Inc.!

Architect Writes A Book of Short Stories

The target audience for this book includes:

• People in creative fields e.g. architects, artists, engineers etc.
• Professionals who work in a field where there is a confluence of technology and humanities e.g. employees of Apple, Pixar, Google etc.
• Educated women from all over the world.
• Culturally open-minded Americans and Europeans.

As this book’s author, publicist and spokesperson, Ms. Dalal has been giving talks about it at different organizations and forums; so as to create an awareness about it and generate an interest in it. You may take a look inside this book here. If your organization consists of its target audience (any one or more of the above categories) and would like to learn more about it, then please leave a comment below.

Blah, Blah, Blah

My head spins these days as I read the pablum being spewed forth about technological or practice methodologies revolutionizing the practice of architecture. BIM, REVIT, IPD, open-sourcing, architect as chief-collaborator, blah, blah, blah.

Enough!

None of that stuff matters unless we have work. And these days there just isn’t enough to go around. Or maybe there is and we just aren’t getting our share. Lord knows we’ve done a good job of bastardizing this profession over the last 30 years, giving away much of the mantel we once claimed as ours. So maybe we need to put the horse back in front of the cart and figure out how to GET more work before we figure out how to DO it.

Nah, that makes too much sense.

Robert Vecchione is an architect/designer and principal of the multidisciplinary firm Cobrooke Ideas-Architecture-Design (www.cobrooke.com).

Donate to help those most affected in Boston

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Tom Menino have announced the formation of The One Fund Boston, Inc. to help the people most affected by the tragic events that occurred in Boston on April 15, 2013.

Donate to the One Fund

Trial of the Century

Pssssst….  Ever hear about the secret room in the Washington Square Arch?  Think you know what it’s for?

GENIUS ARCHITECT!  SADISTIC MILLIONAIRE!  STUNNING GIRL FROM NOWHERE!  Are these yesterday’s headlines?  The answer is no; instead they are from June 25, 1906 when Stanford White was murdered by Harry Kendall Thaw.  Newspapers touted that this was the Trial of the Century!  And perhaps, the very first such headline, considering they were only six years into a new century.

Thaw claimed that he shot White because he discovered that White was having an affair with his rather young wife, Evelyn Nesbit.  Some may call it schadenfreude, but we all certainly derive some degree of pleasure when the facade is stripped off of respectability and wealth.  And, after all, they say that Stamford White single-handedly invented the American facade of the moment.  His firm designed the icons of their day, the Astor, Vanderbilt and Tiffany mansions; the Century and Metropolitan clubs; the Washington Square Arch; and the second Madison Square Garden (now long destroyed along with the original Penn Station), where he was killed. 

Perhaps, White was so good at facades because he himself had so much to hide.  By the end of a relatively short life (he died at 52), he was over a half million in debt and faced possible imprisonment.  His most manic appetite, though, was for underage chorus girls.  He had a red velvet swing installed where Nesbit and other girls in various degrees of undress would entertain him, which became a focal point of the trial press coverage as well as a movie or two.  There are conflicting accounts of whether this swing was in the tower at the old Garden or at his Chelsea apartment or perhaps in a secret room???

It’s All About Gaudi…

As you are climbing uphill; what seems like a continuous climb throughout the many hills of Parc Guell, you bravely steel a glance or two downwards and think that this is it.  This must be one of the more beautiful experiences of your life.  Gingerly you take each step with your camera in hand, careful not to drop the camera or anything else as you find yourself looking at, well, everything.  It’s an overwhelming experience, and in a good way.  Earlier in the year, my dad passed away, thereby making this my first vacation in a decade where I did not suffer from any family distractions.  No worries, but did I ever miss him!  I still do.  But it was one less thing to ponder as I was transversing uneven stone steps with nary a handrail in sight.  But I was just starting to speak of the beauty about this park, a must-see for anyone who travels to Barcelona, when I hit a few detours.  Count Guell was a prominent businessman in Barcelona at the early part of the last century.  He engaged a prominent architect, Antoni Gaudi, to design a garden city with sixty houses on a hill called Montana Pelada.  The venture was not successful and only two houses were built.  But an unsuccessful venture led way to one of the more beautiful parks you will ever see.  At the entrance, you will find the main staircase with a dragon fountain made of broken bits of glazed ceramic tile, a signature style for Gaudi.  This leads to the Salon of a Hundred Columns which really number eighty-four, but who cares?  The ceiling of the salon has more tiled mosaics.  In fact, they’re everywhere in sight.  The on-site museum contains splendid furniture that Gaudi designed.  And so it goes; you’ve walked for three hours, and have a big smile on your face.  You can’t wait to tell the story to all you know.

You’ve planned a week in Barcelona because you are wise and know that you will not be bored for a second.  You will want to come back.  As you continue drinking in the various Gaudi shrines throughout this beautiful city, you get to understand a bit more about the architect with each building.  Casa Batllo is truly amazing and I would suggest to go early in the day to avoid crowds.  The details on the doorknobs and locks; the center court and other means of ventilation were ahead of their time.  The rooftop dragon is not to be believed.  Next up is Casa Mila, his iconic monument to the Modernist movement.  It does not seem very livable, but once again, it’s all in the details.  The Sagrada Familia is no problem for anyone familiar with waiting on lines at Disney.  Wear comfortable shoes!  If you are able to go to the top of the towers, then you are lucky for you will view this beautiful city in the most unique way and it is breathtaking.

Okay, I lied.  It’s not all about Gaudi.  It’s also about the food.  As I’m re-reading my diary, the secondary descriptions that do constant battle with architecture are of the fantastic food.  As I read about the various meals of fish, meats and risotto, my mouth waters and I desire to savor them all over again.  Since we are incapable of dining at 10:00 PM, we chose instead to have our main meals of the day at lunch and have a more casual al fresco experience in the evening.

I lied some more.  It’s all about the walk.  Ever since I was twenty and I traveled to San Francisco with friends, I have always made note of how compatible I am with the place I am visiting.  San Francisco was fine but I quickly realized I couldn’t live with Californians.  In Barcelona, at some point we stopped and thought, “could I live here?”  Yes was the answer.  It is walkable; it is friendly; it is safe and clean; it is modern; it is old.  Barcelona is ideal.  The week was brimming over with a travelogue of lists consisting of everywhere we ambled and places we didn’t quite get to at this time.  Maybe, next time?  Because there was so much good stuff that really good architects had the sense to design and get built all in walking distance of each other.  More Gaudi, so much to see in the Gothic Quarter as you walk past what is left of a Roman aqueduct, the Picasso Museum and the Palau de la Musica Catalana (a music hall with a gorgeous stained glass ceiling).  And then there’s Gehry’s Fish.  Barcelona’s golden fish sculpture sits in Port Olimpic at the base of one of the tallest buildings in the city.  Frank Gehry was commissioned to build the piece for the 1992 Summer Olympics and brought the city to the attention of the world!  Wow!