BOA - Podcast 479 - Enoch and Rion - The Cult of Design Part 1

12:22PM Aug 4, 2023

Speakers:

Enoch Sears

Keywords:

architecture

architects

design

ryan

cult

architectural

money

business

created

practice

podcast

clients

idea

culture

university

starting

ignoring

running

sacrifices

finance

If that was the other thing we were told, you will not make money as an architect. If you want to make money, then you need to go somewhere else.

Hello, and welcome back architect Nation. I'm Enoch Sears. And this is the show where you'll discover tips, strategies and secrets for setting up and running an architectural practice that allows you to do your best work more often. Today, I have the pleasure of being joined by Ryan Willard. So Ryan is our Director of consulting here at Business of Architecture. And Ryan runs all of our group classes that we have as part of the smart practice program, in addition to handling the lion's share of the one to one work we do with firms in both in coaching, consulting and mentoring. So Brian adds, glad to have you on the show. Ryan also happens to run you'll hear him interview here for the be awake global podcast, as well as Ryan is the exclusive host of the Business of Architecture UK podcast, of course, because as you may know, Ryan Willard is based out of London. So Ryan and I, we met back in I guess we met in person in 2018. But before that you had reached out and we started collaborating on the podcast before we actually even started working together. Yes, architecture about

2015. I have that LinkedIn message I sent you.

Yeah, do you remember, tell us about that, because there may be some other aspiring podcasters, who would like to run a podcast and they they just may be sitting on the sidelines. And we want to encourage them to reach out to us maybe they could be the next Ryan Willard. But what tell us that little story here just to start us off.

I was running my own business at the time, architecture practice. And I had the idea that I wanted to talk to other architects about how they were running their own businesses and what they were doing. And I'd been listening to Business of Architecture, I've done a couple of business architecture programs. It wasn't business sponsorship program, it was one of the one of the web design programs that you've done with Eric. Yeah, back in 2013, I think, yeah, just one of those courses and worked my way through it. And I've thoroughly enjoyed it. So I've been listening to the podcast. And I thought, well, I'd love to interview architects, why don't I record these interviews, and then perhaps turn it into a podcast. And rather than create a podcast from scratch, I was like, well, but listen to this guy. In it, I wonder if he'd be interested in perhaps taking these podcasts on or taking these interviews and publish them on his platform, it would be a lot easier for me and I had a business mentor at the time, who thoroughly encouraged that idea. And so I reached out to you and sent a message saying, to explaining the idea, you promptly responded. And then the next day we were talking on Skype, I think it was back in those days. And you gave me some ideas about what kind of podcasting equipment to go and do and go and use. And that was the start, really. And then I just started inviting people to be interviewed. And then it quickly grew into a bit of an obsession. And we started to produce, we're starting to produce quite a few podcast episodes. And then after a few years, that's when we decided that we would find the Business of Architecture UK.

Absolute. And then when I flew over there with my wife, I think it was 2018. We had the launch the launch for that. You got a wonderful venue promoted. I think we had over 300 attendees there. Yeah. And architects a great panel discussion. Yeah, it

was a it was a fantastic evening. So we did a number of those live events. And that was the that was the beginning. And then and then we were kind of cut out a little bit during COVID. So live events kind of went out of when weren't permitted anymore. And then our working relationship got deeper and deeper into it. Yes. Until we're here we are today.

Yes. Was that your penetrating insights? Right. And as a matter of fact, writes, Rand is going to be over here in the US here coming up this year. So there will be some seminars and workshops will be running. So if y'all would want to meet Ryan in person, and you live in the US, that should be an opportunity that.

Yeah, we're very excited about doing that. Yeah. Right.

Okay. Right. So we're here to talk about this idea that you and I have been talking about behind the scenes, which is the the cult of design. And instead of given a lot of preamble about this, what we're going to do is we're going to jump right into a manifesto that Ryan has has written about this, and then we'll discuss it and you may wonder, okay, you know, Ryan, what is the cult of design? Well, buckle in your seat belt. And we're just going to turn the time over to Ryan here and he's going to jump right into reading off this manifesto about the cult of design and the impact that we're seeing that it has currently and it has had in the past on the professional practice of architecture. Brian, over to you

Thank you very much. So, the cult of design design is wonderful and empowering. But the cult of design is manipulative, destructive, and has been at the source of the loss of agency of architects for a long time. And we were the only ones responsible, not politics, not gender, not the Riba, not the AIA. But us architects, we are responsible. The culture design includes warped perversions, usually indoctrinated into us at university. Now, this wouldn't be so bad if it was a regular degree that lasted for three years with normal hours. But we know that architecture was one of the longest degrees at seven years. In general for its complete training with lengthy hours. If you look at any of the statistics, you will see that architecture degree programs tend to have the most hours of lectures and people obviously sitting inside their studios. So this is a long degree long period with long timeframes on a daily basis. That goes in to the brainwashing, which begins early, and we get diluted with the following portfolio is everything. The result of prolonged exposure to a bizarrely weighted education system, where design takes preference over everything, and where academics celebrate all constraints, and their possibilities to inspire architectural invention, except we do not celebrate business, finance, or commercialism. This is completely negated creating an architectural culture that is obsessed with artistic integrity, but lacks the agency in many cases to even get that type of work realized. We become hyper critical of others to the point of pessimism, and only design is ever considered. We blame everyone else, clients, the economy, other industries for our low fees, but we accept little to no responsibility, and we expect the RBA and the AIA to constantly save us. We've created a culture where the reality of designs importance is warped, and lied, and largely hyperbole. And it negates the problem solving ability of the architect and their real world service. We have a culture of architecture, where we're obsessed with drawings as the motivating force of architecture to use a Peter Cook, quote, but most people can't read drawings, care for them or even understand them. Even your contractors. Go and check the top universities for the garbled theoretical musings that pour out. They may be beautiful, but do they make any sense? Money is the motivating force of architecture, not drawings. There are numerous sacrifices made in the culture of design, in the name of the God of design, innocent employees, architects themselves, our relationships, our mental health, our well being, and of course, profit and our bank accounts. We will defend architecture as a way of thinking and looking at the world, certainly when we're looking at it and considering it as a degree. But we hate on the idea of teenagers being made to study. For example, in the UK here a recent proposal from our prime minister, we hate the idea of teenagers being made made to study mathematics, all the way through up until university, which isn't that also a language that helps us to think and problem solve. In the cult of design. We become impotent financially, we can't get it up. We aren't invited to the table. We're seen as a states. And well, this is what happens when you ignore finance. Because guess what money creates architecture, societal issues, not architecture, ones become distractions, of business incompetence, climate change, inclusion, gender, all interesting and important things. But in many cases, architects with little to no agency have taken the route of activism before they've grown a mature business that can make an impact. Clients come second, sometimes last and are often viewed to do battle with or was an obstruction to doing me my work. And we've always considered that design is always inherently virtuous. That's what I've got with that so far.

All right, Ryan. Well, where should where should we start? In terms of

look, I think little bit of context is needed. Let's set the context. And also to consider this as a kind of work in progress of, of ideas and thoughts that we've been talking about for the for a long time here. And, you know, kind of there's a lot of there's a lot of commentary on a lot of things, you know, that are actually quite nuanced and complicated. And I want this to be something that's starting conversation. And the, the wider context, if you like, is, it's good to consider the wider context of the culture of design. So when we work, when we work with businesses here, Business of Architecture, will often start with what we call the four cancers of an architecture business. Number one is the culture of design, which is this paradigm, this coat this culture, if you like, that has been, in many cases, on unintentionally created as a result of our long gestation period, as architects, then we've got other things like overwhelm stress burnout, we see that happening, the bottleneck, people working crazy, long hours, exhausted teams, low salaries, etc. All of that contributes to overwhelm stress and burnout, then we've got lack of money, lack of profit, lack of resource, lack of time. And then the other, the final ailment of an architecture business is the wrong team, the wrong people. Okay, so the culture design sits in these four, this kind of for illnesses of an architecture business. And often what we're doing in the smart practice is creating pillars, which actually are the antidotes to some of these things. And we found it very useful to start to describe the cult of design. So that we can become aware of it. Alright, so that's one of the that's one of the intentions of this conversation. So in there, there's, you know, there's, there's quite a lot of quite a lot of things, I think one thing that I would also add to this court of design is that I'm not against architectural education by any means, and think it's incredibly powerful, rewarding, and a fantastic education. And they're just a fantastic set of tools and skills that you that you get learned. And I've been very privileged to be able to go through that experience myself. But I would say that we're starting to see architectural ways of thinking and skill sets being better rewarded in disciplines and professions outside of architecture. So people with architecture degrees, or architectural training, kind of changing or getting off the career path. And working at other sorts of design companies working in user experience, working in film. And this is this university is very, it can be a very exciting and intoxicating idea. And depending on what industry you move into, those skills can be much better renumerated. And then in architecture, as an industry itself, the training that you get, you don't need it. It's not used. Largely, yeah, it's largely not used. And then we also had the other problem of the architects, people going into the architecture industry, don't have the skills that are needed to be an architect. They don't have the construction knowledge than had the practical knowledge. They don't understand how buildings are actually put together, they've got no idea about how the world of finance works and operates, and how that's gauging things. There's no idea about the client, none of this, none of this real life stuff. And it's often the universities are like, well, you know, you'll learn that at when you're working. Okay, that's not the place here. But it's, it's a bit backwards because, well hold on a minute, why the hell would you not consider Money and Finance in architecture school? Because you're safe? You keep talking about it being a safe environment, to test all these wonderful design ideas, or why not test out financial ones and business ideas in the safety of like, you know, no one's putting any money down. Except for the money they're paying for the course. So it's very interesting when I speak to people like Geronimo at the in Madrid, at the at the MBA of masters of architecture, and you know, that they're, they're getting their students to really consider using the safety of university to to consider different business models and ways that architecture practices can make money and starting to look and explore at very deep level, the commercial side of running a business, I think that's massively important. Because what ends up happening when we go through our education, negating business, then we've inadvertently created this cult of design, where design is everything. And people make these crazy, crazy sacrifices for it. And it doesn't actually further great design, it becomes a bit of a handbrake to it.

Yeah, fasten the reins. So what we have here is, we have a lot, a lot of symptoms of problematic things in the industry that we know are problems, and that these problems have very severe and real consequences on our lives. Let me give you an example. So right now, there is a shortage of mid career professionals in the architecture industry. Right? I would say, at least half of the of the client firms that are in our smart practice program right now, like most of the firms out there, are looking to hire someone that is further along than right out of school, they're looking for that sweet spot of someone maybe 10 to 12 years out of school that can basically take over a project and to finish, start to finish and be able to pull that off successfully. But what happened is that we have these cycles in architecture. So let's go back, there's there's the cyclical nature of architecture, where we have these massive layoffs because the economy crashes. And then all these architectural practices, spend the next year or two or three years digging themselves out of the hole. Right. Now, it is true that there are forces way beyond the control of us as architects in the economy. However, there are certain things within that realm of context that we do have control over. And these are the things that we see that it's very easy to ignore, or to be blind to, or to not pay attention to, or not take responsibility for. Because we are so enamored with the cult of design. So for instance, the need to make a profit, right? I know many architects feel and there seems to be this unspoken ethos or culture, that having a profit in architectural practice. First of all, isn't the point of architecture. That's another topic discussion there. But that is not even necessarily that important. Right? Like, if we're just making enough money to pay the bills, and we're just getting by then everything is good, right? This is this is an ignorant and shallow viewpoint, because what it doesn't take into account is that a proper functioning and a well funded practice has the ability to buffer itself against the cyclical nature of architecture, it has the ability to hire, and keep on the best employees as the ability to pivot in the case there is some sort of downturn. So well run business, by and large is going to be the most well protected in the case of the cycles that happen in architecture. And so what we're missing out on when we think that you know, what, I'm making enough money, air quotes, right, we're just making enough money is this we're making enough money for the current model that we're running, which for many small practices is the model of, I'm basically trading my time for money, I have I have built myself a job. And I'm ignoring any sort of long term marketing approach just because we don't need to, I'm ignoring to large extent any sort of staff development, I'm ignoring the ability to be able to refine the way that we present our value to clients. And so then we have a whole bunch of other side effects, which is clients telling us that we're too expensive. And then we end up lowering our fees, because we start to believe the narrative that indeed, clients don't value what we do. And it's just this huge cycle that continually feeds on itself, which ultimately creates a lot of the structural problems that that so many people are outraged about in the industry of architecture. And when we when we take that thread, and when we look at that thread, and we take it all the way back to the root, what we find is this, this obsession, this worship of the cult of design, and so that's the context for the conversation that we're having here today.

I think it's very interesting. Like let's let's consider what a cult does. Right? A cult takes you away from your family. It can warp your ideas. It can impoverish you. It generally has these kinds of quite negative impacts, right?

It's kind of fanatical about it. Now you become an advocate of irrational, irrational about the way that you approach life and relationships and have session with this particular thing.

Yeah. When we and again, like I was, like I was saying in the document, they're like, we end up making these sacrifices in the name of the cult. Yes. Yeah, I think one of them as well as is, as we're talking about money, and then we have, we develop a way of dealing with the lack of finance as being an architect, which kind of softens the reality of it. And I think we're starting to see as well, you know, we talk about more agency and having more diversity in the architecture field. But, you know, the, the, the prospects are not great for someone to spend that amount of money, if you just look at it as an ROI, or return on your investment. People, you know, spending all that money for seven years of university education, to be getting paid a salary, which is the equivalent of a manager of a McDonald's, no disrespect to anybody who manages a McDonald's.

Definitely not want to respect dollar McDonald's workers,

it's, but it's what it's kind of saying there is that, you know, I was, I was looking at this, as you know, the time it takes to become a McDonald's manager. Now, somebody who's reasonably intelligent, can become a manager of McDonald's, this is not an owner, by the way, this is a manager of one of these outlets within the space of, you know, two years or so, if you're reasonably bright. Are we getting paid an equivalent rate of a newly qualified architect? Now, right, we get brought up again, with this other idea of, you know, follow your passion. And if you follow your passion, then you'll never work a day in your life. And if you do what you love, then everything's gonna be okay. And I feel like this is, this is not the whole truth. And this is, and this is one of these ideas that deeply baked into the culture design. And when I, when I first went to university, the first day of architecture school, I remember they, they stood us all up, and they said, you know, there was 100 of us, or 120 of us, and they said, only 30 of you are going to become architects. So they've already created the sense of scarcity in the sense of like, most of you are never going to make it. And then they would, then they spoke about architecture as a vocation. It's a calling. It's something that you feel deep in your soul. This is sounding very much like a cult. Right? It's, it's something that's good, something that's calling you, and that you're never gonna make a lot of money as an architect. That was everything, we were told you will not make money as an architect, if you want to make money, then you need to go somewhere else. So that kind of justified the whole next seven years. And rather than kind of owning up and perhaps saying, we don't know how to make money as an architect, but there are people who do. That was never, that was never a conversation, but rather, the conversation then led for another seven years of money and great design are incompatible.

Right? I see this as this is, it's interesting how this how closely this, this just matches human nature. In other words, when there's one that we have a perceived lack or deficiency, it's human nature to blame everyone but ourselves, in other words, not to take responsibility for the thing that we're looking at. And the crazy part is that when you really look at it, when you look about any situation, or any negative impact that we're experiencing in life, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter who's responsible. It doesn't matter who's responsible, it doesn't matter. There's no blame, there's no fault. There's blame, fault, shame, feelings of inadequacy. These are all perceptions and interpretations of the human mind. Right? And so what ultimately ends up happening is that we start to live out our life based upon a narrative, right? And one of the narratives is if I go through architecture school, and my professors told me that we can't make money in this profession, and why do they say that? Well, we don't know. We need a psychologist to figure that out. Probably based upon their experience, right? But there's this vicious cycle where, let's let's just say and I remember this from my early days, as a businessman, I understood that the problem was that I just didn't know how to make money. I understood that making money was a skill. And I also understood that I didn't know how to do it. And the wonderful part is that making money is a skill that can be applied to any any any business. You know, the Principles for Making money are going to be the same for a plumber, as they are for an architect as they are furniture Ernie as they are for a restaurant owner, the principles the application of those may be very, very different. But the actual principles that drive the production of money, that the exchange of goods and services for money is they're indisputable laws, their laws, their principles that are well documented. There's hundreds of business books about this. And it's the foundation for what we teach in smart practice is the very, very basics of these foundations. Now, what what we become blind to, and why this can be so damaging, is because of the unseen impacts that this overall culture has on us as people and as architects. And let me give an example. Right, I was talking with one of our one of our clients recently, and one of the things that we focus on in smart practice is a focus on what we call the core four areas of life. So it's not just what we found is that every area of life is connected. So our relationships at home, we call that balance, our health and fitness, we call that our body, our relationship with ourselves. So it's personal sense of self purpose, passion, and also a relationship with the higher power, we call that the being. And then lastly, business. So there's four key areas, body balance, being in business. And what's interesting is that a lot of times we compartmentalize these things, and we say, okay, my life is doing great, I'm having a lot of success in the business quadrant. I'm making lots of money, we're doing good projects that's on fire. And it's very the trap here is that it's so easy to be doing well in one of these areas, and then ignoring the other areas. And so what we see is we see people, their health is deteriorating, right? So we see them gaining weight, we see them their energy levels are dropping, they're not sleeping well at night, they're sacrificing their health, they're sacrificing their relationship. They're sacrificing their mental sanity well being on the altar of the cult of design. In other words, to do work that we love, we believe that it's necessary to sacrifice these things. All right, so we're gonna go ahead and cut this episode right here. I hope you enjoyed this conversation that Ryan and I had about a very, very important topic. Tune in next week for our next continued segment on the cult of design. And that's a wrap. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, the world's leading step by step business training program that's helped more than 103 architecture firm owners structure their existing practice. So the complexity of business doesn't get in the way of their architecture, because you see, it's not your architecture design skills that's holding you back. It's the complexity of running a business, managing projects and people dealing with clients, contractors and money. So if you're ready to simplify the running of your practice, go to business of architecture.com forward slash smart to discover the proven simple and easy to implement smart practice method for running a practice that doesn't get in the way of doing exceptional architecture. The views expressed on the show by my guests do not represent those of the hosts and I make no representation, promise guarantee, pledge warranty, contract, bond or commitment, except to help you conquer the world. QRP DM