Arch Job Losses

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/education/2009/0127/1232923366128.html

the year of the OX rotated 45 degrees

@keating

What you started with was, in my opinion, very interesting and very well put, I mean this:

“Lets look at this Globally. traded services, since the 80’s it went from a 20 trillion dollar market to a 200 trillion dollar market, this addition was created by derivitives, or borrowings by another name. It took 20 years to create this artificial wealth. In the 1970’s the club of Rome recognised the Malthusian notion that there were limits to growth. The planet being a finite resource. But we are all now shackled to the growth machine. Our education and values have been conditioned to feed this monster. Sweden encountered the same problems we are having now and re-engineered their economy and society to focus on quality of life over growth rates. We were naive enough to associate productivity with success.”

And this:

“But why have the sciences of Architecture and urban design not resulted in better buildings, beauty, and societal improvements, indeed we are moving in the opposite direction. Would a market without Architects produce anything worse than the state of our urban fabric after the boom?”

These are very general statements, but I hoped you are really going somewhere with what you say and I was hoping for a discussion. Instead, when asked to be more specific, you got nervous and went way too far, just to finish like that:
” ‘Clients’ don’t drive lexus anymore, they wear sandals and cycle bikes. “

Now, please. Sandals don’t make people better – aspecially in this climate. I would be really interested what specific actions would you see suitable right now, for government, for architects, for developers.

@venividi wrote:

@keating

I hoped you are really going somewhere with what you say and I was hoping for a discussion. Instead, when asked to be more specific, you got nervous and went way too far.

Venividi,
Thanks for picking the salient points from the vitriol of my post, 2 very able and hardworking architect friends of mine were let go in the last week, I blamed the architectural establishment in Ireland for not pursuing a more sustainable path. I wanted to make the point that we are better to prepare for the paradigm shift to a 21st century economy than wait for the Celtic Tiger economy to return. The successful architectural practices of the future are embryonic now or perhaps they haven’t even been born. As we emerge from our archaic epoch to our classical period,the turmoil of the current corrections are a welcome catalyst reorientating our priorities to balance economy, society and environment. During the last depression, (caused by the exact same banking belligerence as today, our most famous Architect was acting his way into friendship with Sean Lemass and Co who developed the 1958 Programme for Economic Expansion which revolutionised this country and dragged a new embryonic Architectural movement along, which quickly made the incumbent architectural practices redundant. Is Eamonn Ryan the new Sean Lemass and is the Green new deal a programme for national expansion. The clients of the future are those that understand that Energy is the new money. we have practically free energy in the west of Ireland. We have new buildings that need 5-25 litres of oil a square meter that could have been designed to use 1. Richard Doubtwaite puts our economic problems down to the fact that 10% of our income leaves the country with no reciprocal transfers in the form of imported fossil fuel. Thats €6 or 7 billion leaving the Irish economy every year, gone. Spending €15 billion on Indigenous energy would yield a better return as the money would stay in circulation and reverberate around the western seaboard. Its a crime that we are 20 years behind Denmark in energy policy, its crime that the Corrib field is not being used to provide peaking plant and voltage control to back up adding large scale renewables to the grid.

Anyway Lets have that other discussion.

What have the disciplines of Architecture and Urban Design contributed to the >35% of our building stock constructed in the last 15 years, that could not have been achieved without them?

There is an argument about these days which states that without the RIAI, which gives the appearance of a regulating board advancing architecture and providing building control, the government would regulate all new works and changes of use through something like a bord Ailtireacht. This would mean less pattern book architecture and a building control similar to the UK. How much of what we have built is Architecture, Look at the AAI awards, They had to give awards to warehouses and sensibly the judges excluded one of houses. People without any aesthetic training design most of the new flloorspace in this country and the daft opinion on substantial compliance is not building control. We’d have better buildings if the RIAI was disbanded in 1995. Touche

(you’d never guess I wasnt offered a place in Architecture after my Leaving, would you.)

My depression on the current financial situation has extended even to my fingers, meaning that even typing has become painful. However, as the economy has gotten worse, I note that my bitterness towards the Celtic Tiger has increased proportionally.

What really galls me was the protection and common-goodliness offered by our so-called regulators and planning departments. It’s bad enough that private industry tried to grab every penny they could – hey, isn’t that what private industry is meant to do? – but it’s the fact that our public servants seemed complicit in this plunder that gets to me.

Take negative equity – whatever way you look at it, it’s crap. BUT at least if you were stuck in a decent sized apartment for the next ten years, one that was spacious enough that you could start a family, then while negative equity would be a right ***** you could still progress with your life.

Instead our pathetic standards meant that many (most?) of our recently built apartments are useless for use as anything other than dormitories for mid-twenties workers. Is getting married and having a couple of kids while living in a 600 sq ft two-bed really an option? Especially one with paper thin walls?

Or the number of one-off houses that were built, so that most families are forced to pay for two cars/two sets of petrol/two sets of car tax and insurance, bacause if they don’t, it’s a long walk to the nearest shop/school/church/job.

And now my head hurts. Sorry for the rant.

@massamann wrote:

My depression on the current financial situation has extended even to my fingers, meaning that even typing has become painful. However, as the economy has gotten worse, I note that my bitterness towards the Celtic Tiger has increased proportionally.

What really galls me was the protection and common-goodliness offered by our so-called regulators and planning departments. It’s bad enough that private industry tried to grab every penny they could – hey, isn’t that what private industry is meant to do? – but it’s the fact that our public servants seemed complicit in this plunder that gets to me.

Take negative equity – whatever way you look at it, it’s crap. BUT at least if you were stuck in a decent sized apartment for the next ten years, one that was spacious enough that you could start a family, then while negative equity would be a right ***** you could still progress with your life.

Instead our pathetic standards meant that many (most?) of our recently built apartments are useless for use as anything other than dormitories for mid-twenties workers. Is getting married and having a couple of kids while living in a 600 sq ft two-bed really an option? Especially one with paper thin walls?

Or the number of one-off houses that were built, so that most families are forced to pay for two cars/two sets of petrol/two sets of car tax and insurance, bacause if they don’t, it’s a long walk to the nearest shop/school/church/job.

And now my head hurts. Sorry for the rant.

negative equity – what’s your definition of this? It’s a phrase bandied about by people whose houses are worth less than they paid for them. But, if you bought before the stamp duty revisions at say 6% stamp duty, your house would have to appreciate by 6% before you “broke even”. Negative equity is when your house is worth less than you owe which is a worry if you’re a speculator or on a buy to let jaunt. Ironically a speculator would only get an 85% mortgage so they can absorb a notional 15% drop in price without negative equity

The houses being sold now are desperation sales – the market is not a true reflection of market worth. If you bought for the long term then sit back and weather the storm. If you bought in the last 7 years you will, without a doubt, lose money but not as much as you think.

Even more ironically actually is those people who lose their jobs and have to go overseas will have to rent out their houses and end up paying more tax.

it’s great the way that, when we’re up we’re great and when we’re down it’s someone else’s fault

I bought a house 3 years ago. It was built in 1890 and cost me a bit.

It’s not built particularly well, there’s no isulation in it, it’s freezing cold and a howling gale blows through every orifice. The little girl next door doesn’t sleep very well around 2-3am and I have to pay to park my car in the street outside. Now, who can I blame?

The architect? – probably dead and his PI will probably have lapsed.
The builder? – similar situation I suppose
The estate agent? – I viewed it didn’t I?
The surveyor? – told me all I already knew
The bank? gave me more than they should but I got a very good deal on a tracker that doesn’t exist anymore. I took it though didn’t I?
The builder I got to tart it up? made it a hundred times better
It has no garden – where will my kids play? – the park with other kids
It has an energy rating of G – who will buy it? – they’ve sold for 120 years, they’ll sell again

so, when you think about – the only person to blame for where and what I live in is “me”

Sorry hats,

But I’m not with you on this one. We trade a number of our rights to the government e.g. the right to drive at 180mph, the right to build what I want where I want (provided I own the land) and in return they are meant to act in the best interests of society as a whole. But they didn’t live up to their side of the bargain. While they were denying Sean and Sile Citizen the right to squeeze a second house into their front garden, at the same time they were greenlighting the rezoning of large tracts of land across the country. To me, this is not fair and equitable.

When you go to the doctor, you’re the one that doesn’t feel well. You’re the one that smoked, drank or eat too much. But given that, you are hiring someone with more knowledge and experience than you to examine the situation and tell you what you should do. You expect their advice to be truthful; you expect their advice to be honest. After all, you are paying for it. Whether you act on it is up to you. But you at least expect them to do their job.

When the bank regulator was telling us that everything was okay, was he doing his job?
When planners were taking bribes to rezone land, were they doing their job?
When I hired a surveyor to look at my house, if he had missed something or neglected to point a critical detail out, would that be my fault or his?

You must certainly shoulder some of the responsibility for buying your house. As must I. I just wish that the public servants that we are ALL paying to do the best for us, and that I was listening to when I made the decision to buy, had been more forthcoming with the true state of play. I can’t decide to opt out of paying taxes. I have no choice as to whether I follow the planning regulations or not. The state insists that this is what I must do.

And because of this, in return I expect that at the very least, I should be able to trust what these public officials tell me.

@massamann wrote:

When planners were taking bribes to rezone land, were they doing their job?

I think that might have been Councillors, rather than Planners, massamann!

Planners are going to have enough of the brown stuff heaped on them in the next few days (and rightly so), without getting hit with the ‘brown envelopes’ accusation as well.

someone told me reddys are down to 15 people – can’t be true surely?

Heard a very similar rumour about O’M+P……
But in Reddy’s case is it just their Dublin office that is affected? Have they transfered their opperations to their other offices?

go and sign on;)

Your best bet is to up skill or change careers unless you have the option of 2 poles.
Everyone is undercutting each other while some practices work for free…
Even if you are working on secure projects you may be replaced by someone cheaper and better… If your young you have the whole world before your eyes but you could of course join the church of architecture and say a little hymn 😀 There are still big 30 year contracts out there yet to be awarded which bear no risk to the tax payer/architect…

amen;)