GSD Taiwan

(Resource: Harvard GSD 2011 Brochure)

過去十年，GSD總共有72位來自台灣的校友，平均每年7.2個，其實很多。這兩年台灣學生少很多，然後大陸學生暴增，韓國略比之前少一點點。當然只拿GSD一所學校來看根本不夠當做什麼指標，也沒有說一定要出國念書，就算出國念書也沒有一定要來美國。只是看到這個再想想現在的狀況，有點點小感慨小寂寞，台灣其實很強，比我當初以為的強，也要繼續強下去。

我還記得小時候學地理，老師指著一些課本上的圖片說：其實台灣沒有這麼大，所以開始腦袋烙印著"台灣很小"，於是在每次畫地圖的時後失去尺度感，慢慢的把自己的土地越畫越小，遠比她真正的大小還小。這是一種自卑吧，然後在內心的自卑和面對外人的自我強調之間反覆衝撞，就像在國際情勢上的政治地位一樣。

學過建築，並不代表就能在地圖上正確畫出台灣的尺度。我到現在還是有時候太大有時候太小。

總之台灣加油。總是離家了才會想家，透過別人的眼睛才看到自己的優點，台灣還有好多強項講不完，大家不要被唱衰自己的媒體教壞，被政客操弄，被那些妄自菲薄的人干擾。勇敢走自己的路，台灣的輪廓才會更明顯。我愛台灣，月底見！

Inefficient Profession...

一年小記

- 下次回到GSD 要好好善用LRC (Language Resource Center) 不然英文這麼爛要怎麼辦  有想法表達不出 有知識吸收不了  寫文章詞不達意....
- 對於將來有很多想像 但更體會到只說沒做 什麼都沒意義。乾脆少逞口舌之快 等做了 做出了個程度 驗證&修正過後再來提出分享  也比較有建設性
- 可惜下學年不在  不過回來的時候要繼續想辦法拉Geoffrey West來Harvard給個演講，來給個mind-blowing lecture!
- 一年其實可以做滿多事  整個世界給你飛 這次沒有藉口了
- 如果知識=力量  那他違反能量守恆  因為我想把我這一年學到的盡量分享出去 然後造成集體能量提升
- 畢業了 工作一陣子 能量下降 又來到學校 感覺又能量充足  現在這種感覺才是現實吧  不管在哪 應該都要保持這種狀態
- 學越多越覺得很多不懂  所以虛懷若谷的人才值得尊敬
- 剛來的時候偶而覺得有點overated  但現在開始感覺有些東西在發酵了  有些很深的影響開始根深蒂固 切記謙虛  任何事情
- 這次沒修到  下次要去MIT修課  積極一點  認識一些怪胎
- 罩子放亮點 一年前踏進來  我問我自己準備好了沒  一年後 再踏進來的時候我要問：GSD, 你準備好了沒!!

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design profession in the larger design realm, but it is perhaps one of the only few that still being practiced in an outdated way.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

Portfolio 2011

http://www.flickr.com/photos/roy_lin/5509771705/in/set-72157626225639526/lightbox/

Titled If City Is Generic. Nothing really about generic city actually...But perhaps that's my point of view. This one includes the work from last semester in the Elements Studio and the competition I did with Hsieh Chin-Nan. Still too many pages. I think I'm getting tired of looking back on my previous works.... 

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。