Quote some Homer. I dare you.

For what seems like years, I have been reporting opinions and surveys of the diminishing value of design professions and similar artistic endeavors. In our related professions, Architects and Graphic Designers have been pushed aside in favor of virtually every kind of Engineer. Through the last recession, staggering unemployment percentages have been cited by many sources.

Now, we have non other than the New York Times reporting on some consequences of this trend. To see their article on the reduced interest in humanities studies, go to http://goo.gl/PskAvi. There you will see comments about such places as Harvard University, which has "... had a 20 percent decline in humanities majors over the last decade."

In my case, I came out of an Architecture School which was considered to be Engineering-oriented - my School of Architecture was part of the "Faculty of Engineering". During my class reunions, it's not uncommon for us to laugh about the group antagonism we had for mandatory "dance" class intended to make us aware of human movement though space. Over the years, however, many of my peers and co-workers have had more diverse and broad-based experience than I. As a consequence, I have developed a great respect for someone who is equally adept at quoting both William Shakespeare and I.M. Pei.

Where will we be as a society if we become dominated by technicians and scientists? The pleasure of the arts, the appreciation for history, the impact of emotions, the value of discourse and contemplation - will these all be lost? I hope not.

My suspicion is that this trend - which is no doubt real - is cyclical, related to the miserable economy we may be coming out of. Perhaps, in thirty years we'll be advocating that our children become philosophers. Now wouldn't that be fun?

I've Fallen ...

and maybe I won't have to get up. In this case down is good and up is bad. However, this is all very much sad irony.

My partner in life and business is a Graphic Designer. The template for this blog, and all things graphic in No Left Turn, are her doing. For a number of years now, we have watched as one business reporter after another slammed Architects for the perceived uselessness of their education and career choices. Through these times fraught with all the negative press we have soldiered on together - pretty much committed to our chosen fields.  It's often been a struggle to maintain the commitment. Now there comes an odd turn of events.

For the first time that I can recall, there comes a news story from Business Insider that her profession is now one of the top ten "Useless". Oddly Architecture is absent from the list. See the story at http://goo.gl/CtWVrQ.

Years ago, we hosted a small dinner party for couples where one was an Architect, and the other was a Graphic Designer. That evening was one of modest self congratulation, where we chatted up the compatibility of the two professions and how we as couples got along.  Now, years later, I hadn't expected that we would be comparing negative perceptions instead of positive ones.

Oh well, the good news is that we still like what we do, and enjoy one another as well. Too bad one of the dinner party couples broke up years ago. But that's an entirely different kind of story.

Shoot Me

In my last posting, I mentioned how much of my work entails writing. In a manner somewhat similar to how I view building construction, I think that sentence structure and composition should follow established rules. I think this curiosity might has started with the 'by the book' teachers I had in elementary school who taught us how to diagram sentences. It was all very structural. Looking at subject and predicate, parts of speech, modifiers and all that stuff was great fun. Yes - now you can see the inner nerd.

Later, there came a growing fascination with how proper punctuation makes more order out of the potential mess of throwing words together. On this subject, there is no better reference than Eats, Shoots & Leaves, the wonderful book by Lynne Truss. Her extended title, The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, is apt.

An interesting aspect of all this analysis is that I eventually came to realize that if you want to write in a manner that is conversational, you have to ignore the rules. Imperfect sentence formation, use of jargon, bad grammar, you name it - they're all part of the game. The old biddies at Old Tappan Elementary School would be aghast. Me - I just stumble along. Okay, please don't shoot me.  

Writer's Block

Much of what I do to put food on the table involves writing. Specifications, reports, newsletters, memos, simple correspondence, and this - my blog.

All the other stuff has a purpose, an agenda if you will. The outline , the format, the intent, and occasionally even the content can be predetermined. Sometimes this all may be a business variation of paint-by-numbers, albeit hopefully with some intelligence and business acumen to make it cogent.

This blog, on the other hand, has no prerequisites. I can write about whatever suits my fancy.  Recently I read another that I like to follow entitled "Nothing Special". It seemed like a drawn-out Tweet or Facebook post - decidedly humdrum. I wondered what prompted it.

I normally want these postings to be germane to my business purpose, but how could this be when nothing truly unique comes to mind? Maybe I should write about why I like two spaces between sentences, but Blogger messes with my formatting when I do that. But, that would be "Nothing Special". Don't lose faith, the next post will have more content.

Even Bigger!

 

Now, this is getting really crazy.

I just assembled a Construction Document progress specification for a proposed nearby high school. In spite of my best efforts to stream-line things, my attempt was foiled - mostly by the Mechanical/Plumbing/Electrical Engineer.

How could this happen?

I blame the idiosyncrasies of specification writing software. It used to be that specification sections would often describe related components - all plumbing fixtures, for example. In order to produce the spec for a specific project, the writer would open the spec section document in their favorite software. Components would be added or deleted as needed. With the right combination of master spec spec and software, this could be as simple as toggling elements on and off.

For the truly lazy, there's a tempting alternative. If a master section includes only one component, no editing may be needed. After setting up enough of these "master" sections in advance, all the casual spec writer has to do is list the needed sections for an administrative assistant to copy and collate. Voila - you have what passes as a project specification, lacking only actual custom components.

Here's the rub - this approach can easily triple the number of individual sections. Each one with redundant general requirements. I hate it, and I suspect most Contractors do as well. My latest high school project had an assembled specification of more than 2500 pages, more than 1400 of which were multiple mechanical, plumbing and electrical sections. Who really reads all this stuff? I have to admit, even though I assembled it, I didn't have the patience.

Would you?

Some Consolation, I Guess

Over the last few years, virtually every Yahoo news story about College degrees and professions listed Architecture as the worst possible choice. Yahoo has recently modified their position.

Architecture degrees are now just the second worst possible choice. See http://goo.gl/YwiLbl to see what I'm talking about.  The numbers they quote imply that 1 out of 8 architects are now pounding the pavement. We have to take solace in the fact that as recently as last year some sources were saying it was nearly 1 of 5.

The article cited says that a better choice is Civil Engineering. I suppose the employment prospects are better, but how many budding architects do you know who would be equally happy designing roads and bridges? Not many, in my experience.

Just goes to show you that the common perception of what attracts people to the design professions can be slightly misguided.