越競爭，越平庸？

回想最近媒體書報雜誌，很愛勸人培養自己的"競爭力"。大概因為是亂世，再也沒有"穩定"的路子，也沒有明確的方向，導致集體慌張，所以到處勸人加強"競爭力"。耳目所及，永遠不乏"進修", "學習" 等等的字眼。

<Difference: Escaping from the Competitive Herd >這本書反倒是指出了 "越比較，越少差異"的迷思(ex: 麥當勞看星巴克紅了，所以也賣起咖啡；星巴克看餐點有搞頭，所以也出了早餐套餐...之類的) 因為當一個企業遇上競爭對手，都傾向補足自己的弱點，而非強化自己的優點，結果就是大家越來越類似，只有在小地方不同，然而這些小地方對於大多數消費者卻無關緊要。

企業，就是人。人就是會有這樣的毛病，怕將來會輸的，而少想到已經贏的。所以，這個社會的集體恐慌，集體追求"高競爭力"卻都是在推 補習，考照，學第二第三第四外語，出國留學打工旅遊...，卻鮮少有一本雜誌，一篇報導，一位導師，告訴我們如何發揮我們已有的或擅長的能力，如何真正脫穎而出，或至少怎麼發覺自己的興趣並且stick to it。

也許比起可套用在任何人身上的"補"，必須針對個人特質單一進行的"雕琢"原本就難得多。但即便環境文化甚至於人性本如此，個人在自我發展上可千萬別搞錯重點。否則整個社會越強調個人"競爭力"，越是 "集體平庸化"。

[書記] Rework 工作大解放... 將來工作請別忘記...

摘自<Rework: 工作大解放>多篇文章標題
有些忘了確切意思，之後回來補


- Planning is Guessing
- Failure is NOT a rite of passage
- 外來資金 少碰為妙
- Scratch your own itch!
- Less is a good thing
- Decisions are progress
- 銷售副產品!
- Meetings are poison!
- "Good enough" is fine
- Your estimate sucks!
- 小決定＞大決策
- Don't Copy!
- Say "No"!
- 培養觀察
- "分享"!! (名廚&食譜)
- Everything is Marketing!!
- 世界各地找人才
- Speed changes everything
- They are not 13!! (your employees)
- Send people home at FIVE!!
- "政策是對個人不良行為的集體懲罰"!

Architectural-based Think Tank + Branding (4): thoughts on the Culture

The Culture of an Interdisciplinary, Architectural-Based Design Tank

What are the principles to maintain a firm’s creativity and energy? What kind of environment and structure is needed? Here are some key points of two different innovative firms:

IDEO (interdisciplinary design, USA)	Brain Store (idea factory, Switzerland)
-       Idea-friendly -       No Boss’ boss -       Work with “friends” -       Characterize each member for further placement -       Brainstorming as routine Source: Janet Wiscombe, “The Innovation Factory”, Workforce Management Online, Jan. 2007	-       Idea Machine - produce ideas industrially -       Insiders + Outsiders -       Idea management > generating -       Idea-friendly Source: Nadja Schnetzler, “The Idea Machine”, 2005

I think the ways approaching design are fundamentally the same, and being interdisciplinary is not a trend, it is the nature (and a mission) of design profession. I would like to compare my thoughts on an architectural firm to the two above and try to conclude the essences of design firms that should be applied as well to architectural profession. I think what a typical architecture firm lacks of is an inspiring working environment, a creative and flexible labor structure, and an efficient way of producing ideas. And these elements are even crucial to a detached design group.

Structure

The design tank should consist of several sectors: Architecture/Planning, Interior Design, Product Design, Commercial Design, and Market teams. Each member in the firm has the chance to be the Project Manager according to his/her capability or profession and the project type. Also, outsiders- including interns, partners, and clients, will be part of the team during the stages of concept development. The firm is adaptive to continuous changing of labor flows and its recruitment will refresh and energize the firm itself constantly. 

Environment

The office environment is crucial to the firm. As same as its labor structure, its space remains open and flexible for its continuous changes of arrangement. Also, recreational elements and plants are considered as important as any other furniture. All furniture are mobile, and should be able to be moved easily since an individual may be part of several projects at a time, he/she would constantly move the working place between groups. There would be no fixed partition but flexible ones that could be easily and interestingly set up for meetings or other activities.   

Inefficient Profession...

Architectural-based Think Tank + Branding (3)

Strategic Planning Approaches for Design Firms –

The Necessity and Feasibility of Detaching Design Sectors from Traditional Architecture Firms

Roy-Lin MAUD 2012

GSD 7440 Leading the Design Firm

Instructors: Brian Kenet and Richard Jennings

Design is not invention, though it needs certain degree of creativity. Design is the profession based on the knowledge of certain field, triggered by the needs, practiced boldly but carefully to create the better products. Architecture is of course one of the design profession in the larger design realm, but it is perhaps one of the only few that still being practiced in an outdated way. The way an architectural project is constructed and delivered became more complicated and needs even more collaborations or clear labor divisions to meet diverse market needs, just like any other types of design profession. What if we can separate design sector from inside of a single firm and detach it from the mission of construction document production, which costs most of the time and labor of a traditional firm?


The burden for a design sector
One of the most significant characteristic of architectural design is the long lifetime of each project. From the development of SD, DD, to CD and even construction oversight, the firm/architect need continuous participation. Especially during the stage of CD (construction document), the firm has to devote most of the labor and time to the project. During this period, smaller firms usually fall into the situation of purely robotic production, the passion and creativity of design slow down and die. And this is the longest period of every project. If we look at the division of big firms, design sector and construction documents production are usually separated in order to meet efficiency (they have people really good and experienced in CD). But for smaller firms, which consist 96% of all members, the designers are also responsible of CD and this cause somewhat misplace of the labor and lack of efficiency.  If we consider a design firm only responsible for SD and DD, and leave the works of CD to other group specialized and only for such production, and restructure what used to be done vertically within a firm horizontally with other corporations or architect firms, the design firm would have more space and be more free and productive.


Marketing and Branding
In my opinion, architecture becomes more similar to industrial and commercial products which tend to have shorter lifetime in order to meet the market needs of diversity, flexibility, and alternative. Under this notion, we need to rethink the position of architecture and also the way of designing it. We should consider buildings as scale-up industrial products which work functionally, beautifully, and most importantly, to carry a consistent identity, which is in other word: branding – the added value beyond the product itself. The identity of the author, meaning the architecture design firms, helps the firm to build public impression and also differentiation among its competitors in the market. Or, from the aspect of client, the architecture product can help building their identity, which can support their business strategies. To achieve a successful architectural branding, the design firm also needs the ability of marketing. By having the skill of real estate marketing and making strategies in short-term, mid-term, and long-term, the firm can create maximum benefit and continuous fame both for the clients and the firm itself through every project.


Interdisciplinary Design 
In order to make successful brand, the design firm also need other design skills such as graphic design, advertising, interior design and industrial design for installations and furniture. These what used to be outsourced to other small design firms now could be integrated into the new type of architectural design firm since it’s been detached from CD and other workload and have more space and time for other design professions. The Interdisciplinary ability is the key of creating a strong brand and being more competitive in the market. The product of the firm should be more than a single building but includes the market strategies, advertising, and interior items as a holistic design package. Besides, the interdisciplinary ability allows the firm to take commissions other than architecture when the building market goes down, in other words, to be more flexible in the larger design market.


Collaboration and network
Once the design sector becomes independent, it needs to create horizontal collaboration network. Within this network are the architects, who is legally responsible for the construction project; the CD professions, which could be a specialized professional team or the CD sectors inside of other architecture firms. Since the new type of design firm does the very front-end works, it automatically becomes the window between architects and clients. The clients only contact the design firm and the firm is responsible for finding its own collaborators. For the clients, it would be much easier to face a single and simple window which understand his/her needs and could provide strong market and branding strategies. As for the architects or other architecture firms in the collaborative network, the design firm could guarantee the amount of commissions through its marketing skill so that the architect and collaborative firms don’t need to worry about the 6-months out of business and marketing clients on their own. Also, the design firm only charges about 35% (average portion of fees for stage SD&DD) fee of the total of each project which means the architect and the other firm can still earn the most from each project. In order to compensate this, the design firm needs to be really good at marketing clients and the shorter lifetime of each project (reduced the parts after CD stage) can support this strategy by allowing more projects happen at the same time.
Under this collaborative structure, each member may be part of other networks as well. As a result, the relationship between design firm and it partners may be unstable and fragile. The challenge of this collaboration is that the design firm needs to develop its strong and reliable network that consists of many different characters, which is not easy and needs constantly regulation and maintenance.


References:
1. Nadja Schnetzler, The Idea Machine, 2005
2. AIA, Educating the Client, 2006

Architectural-based Think Tank + Branding (2)

Architectural-based Think Tank + Branding (2):

Set free the design sector

解放設計團隊

In the traditional architecture firm, the design sector is only a part of the whole group, and they are usaually responsible for the construction ducuments as well, which spends most of their time and energy. And because the lifetime of a single project usaully takes months to years, it's almost impossible and relatively unimportant to keep this "design brain" fresh and active, not to mention trying to do "interdisciplinary design". Such words you architectural designer always hear from others: "Don't waste too much time on this, we still have lots more to do" or "Boring? Finish these documents ASAP and you can have fun with the next one (even we don't have a damn clue where the next one is gonna be...)"

傳統建築事務所裡，設計只是一小部分，在小型事務所裡設計部門的人更需要三頭六臂很強的能力，這裡頭的設計師要有點設計sense(有點就好了)，會畫施工圖，最好真的有些經驗真的懂施工(不然PM很辛苦)。每個建築案子的期程，動不動用年來算，這當中設計師需要跟著(PM拉著下面一個畫圖小弟)從頭到尾，從SD到CD，搞不好還要被抓到山上去監工(?)，哪裡還跟你談創意談設計的熱誠呢？跨領域啊？你是神經病嘛？"設計"沒這麼重要了，而你總會聽到別人跟你說："別在這裡想太多，我們還有很多事要做" 或是"忍一忍吧，趕快把施工圖畫完就可以做別的設計啦"就算下個"有趣的"設計在哪裡連個影子都看不到...

As everyone know, architect is not the one producing all the design. It's the project manager and the design team under him doing those tasks. After the team came up with a great idea during schematic design(SD), they begin to work on design development(DD), and, if in a small firm, very likely to be led directly to construction ducuments(CD). Here comes the problem, usaully in small firms, you don't often get good desginers who can at the same time be efficient document producers. As a result, the innovation dies down, atmosphere turns gloomy, and the firm has no more space for new project. Why not take the design sector out of a single firm? Leave other tasts to someone else better.

當然建築師並不是真正做設計的人(會啦，但一部分而已)，而是PM帶著設計師做出來的。這些人想出了很棒的idea，然後進到DD，熱情開始慢慢下降，到了CD急速冷卻(熱愛設計的人又熱愛施工圖大概是21世紀最夯的新人類吧)，然後一個小事務所因為人力集中到生產施工文件而無法注入新活力...。為何不把設計跟施工文件甚至監工分工開來呢？讓適合不同工作的人放在不同位置(事務所需要到一定規模才有辦法在內部做到這種清楚的畫分，中小事務所需要的是實習生超人)

Here's the change, conceptually, the design team got out of single firm (burden) and become able to work with many other firms freely. What this design team actually become is a window between clients and architects. They now offer architectural designs to more clients, all the way from planning to DD, and hand in the pakages to architect firms for CD and further tasts. But this is not good enough. This design team need to offer holistic front-end strategy, which includes "branding" for the whole product line. Moreover, they need to have marketing skills, and interdisciplinary design abilities of all co-pruducts comes along with the architecture product.

這個設計團隊不在受限於單一公司之後，可以與非常多小事務所合作，並做為銜接業主與建築師之間的窗口。從SD設計一直到DD，然後再將整個設計pakage移交給建築師進行CD和之後施工相關工作。這個團隊具備品牌行銷能力，具備跨領域設計能力，還有該建築產品有關的其他產品設計能力。

But who's gonna be the client? what kind of project?

What the hell is architectural branding? Branding for whom?

And an architect wight ask with scorn: "Wait a minute, why do you think I would work with you??"

但是誰是業主？做什麼樣的建築類型？

建築+品牌有沒有搞頭？幫誰做品牌？

建築師也會問阿：奇怪捏~憑什麼我要跟你合作？

to be continued...

待續.

Architectural-based Think Tank + Branding : some thoughts (1)

If everything to make a better life is called design, design is everywhere. And yes, it is everywhere. If we draw a chart with Temporality in the x-axis and Superficiality in the y-axis, then all different types of design industry fall into the diagram and become easier to compair the different characteristics among them (p.s. this is purly personal perspective, no scientific statics supported...). Saying that Superficiality means how much do end users know about/pay attention to the product and Temporality means the lifetime of the product, we can see graphic design and many others fall to the top-right while infrastructure falls to the buttom- left. The truth is those on the top-right had been integrated more or less for a very long time. Comparably new business like Branding, is one stream that coordinates graphics, advertising, industrial designs, etc. and marketing/strategies. Funny thing is that, as "interdisciplinary" as branding companies are, they haven't really touched the field of architecture, even they sometimes do interior designs and the boundary between the both had became weaker and weaker.... But does architecture have no need of branding at all? Is brand something one architect may eventually have but can't pursue by means? What if architecture becomes more and more like industrial products? Why are we eager to sell our products but tend to refuse to think ourselves as businessmen? What if we can do branding for our architectural works? It's not something new, it happened quite often, intentionally or not. But we architects weren't really aware of it's importance(or we think it's good-design that only matters), and we never really push it in a more interdisciplinary way. In other words, we don't really "sell" our products.


To be continued...


如果我們用"使用者意識到或瞭解產品的程度"作為縱軸，"產品平均壽命"作橫軸，我們可以比較容易看出市場上五花八門的設計行業不同的屬性跟取向，這兩項也是我覺得用來劃分設計領域比較有意義的指標(ps. 沒有經過任何統計數字，純粹不嚴謹的個人觀察)。"品牌"這個相對較新的行業是跨領域設計其中一種多半從平面設計起家，除了具備行銷, 市場, 經濟的專業外，跨及廣告產品, 工業設計，甚至室內設計。但有趣的是似乎沒有人真正碰觸到建築設計，也許是因為建築需要太多專業知識，也許因為已經有太多建築設計師，又或許根本建築設計不是他們在考量整體品牌形象時會考量的東西。室內設計與建築設計界線越來越模糊，工業設計尺度大了，也可以定義為建築，凡是可以裝著人的，我們都可以叫建築，來自四面八方的人都開始思考起空間容器，手開始伸探到建築師的口袋裡，建築師們的手放在哪裡? 我們受的訓練優勢在哪裡，我們可以跨得出去嗎？ 難到建築設計品牌化只能是大師的專利，可遇不可求？如果建築早就開始商品化呢？如果市場上需要越來越多壽命短而精采的建築"商品"呢？難道一間成功的精品旅館，不需要跨及建築外觀到廣告手冊的整體行銷嗎？為什麼建設公司比總是建築師還在意行銷，我們嫌它們醜卻又畫地自限呢? 難道自詡為設計師，就不能同時是商人嗎？ 


新型態的設計團隊，待續。