Architects produce ideas. They produce ideas for consumption, if we may say so. They also earn a living out of selling ideas. Selling is an exchange of things for money. In monetary sense, what is the value of ideas? How was this value of ideas produced by architects fixated? So, the COA said that the architects' fees shall be a percentage of the project cost. The project cost is essentially the cost of the material and labour used in the project. The labour cost issue is again somewhat like the "valuation of ideas" debate. But it could be well understood through the Marxist theory.
But Marx didnot really talk about the compensation of the intellect!! In a Marxist sense, either we are labour, or we must not be compensated the way we are.
Anyway, coming back to the COA, it said that, for example, the fees of the interior designer shall be 10% of the project cost. It says two things:
Money --> directly proportional to bulk of used material
Value of ideas --> directly proportional to cost of material.
Ofcourse, thats why we have some interior designers fiddling with a lot of materials and costs.
But could it also mean, that the price of an idea is the amount of material manifest it can bring about? That might be a very small, at the same time very large question. Then what about ideas that never manifest yet have value? How are they priced? What I am intending to say is that in this world, its not only the material that has exchange value...how is the immaterial valued then? Who decides it? How? And why cant be an architect's ideas regarded as ideas and paid as the measure of an idea. How do you measure an idea? The COA has conveniently measured through its material manifest...
The question still remains, how do you measure an idea?
3 comments:
What the COA mentions are 'guidelines' or 'stipulations' rather than laws or mandatory requirements. There can be many ways for Architects to charge fees. Percentage basis is just one of them. And the percentages stipulated by the COA are not to be grossly or blatantly defied.
There are other methods of calculating fees like a per square foot rate, or as per man hour/man day values where fees become directly proportional to the time spent working on the project and not on the quantum of materials used.
Every architect is free to decide how they want to charge their fees but the practical problem with this is that if it grossly defies what is stipulated by COA, anyone can complain against you - your client or your architectural contemporaries.
Another interesting angle to this is the concept of 'selling services' or 'selling ideas/designs'... the theory is like this that as an architect you do not own the copyright to your design, the client owns it - you are only the author of the copyright. This is because most clients' contracts are written that way. So you are just a service provider, or selling your services because the client is paying you for your architectural services. (Does this mean that the design is free? Perhaps, I don't know)
When you become a renowned architect and your clients want you for your name, you will be able to word your contracts with them in such a way that you are the author as well as the owner of the copyrights to your designs. It is then you can say that you are selling your design/idea. But why not include such a clause in your contract from the beginning of your career? Because then no client will want to work with you. Once you are renowned and are calling the shots and the client wants your design at any cost, then you are calling the shots. So you can include that clause in your contract.
Hope I've not strayed too far off the topic but at the same time given you a lot of fodder for thoughts!
an issue well raised. I am glad.
you measure an idea in its context...few days back i was in Auroville...and I was totally awed by the varied experiments...
and I felt respect for what has been achieved there but also felt that this place is some kind of escape from social imperfections.
I saw buildings which are good...if taken away from their place and kept somewhere else in city like Mumbai, would do really well, without feeling foreign...I think it'll do justice to their idea's, than them being in jungle...but then these buildings are in jungle and are going to be that way...
I felt like terrorist there, what if I could put a bomb in that serene and absolute ideal world...what form it'll take, and wont they themselves thank me for bombing them out of that trapped ideal escape.
But how do I know it was a trap, how do I know It was not a place to be...why I felt the man made world, so ideal wasn't so ideal as mediocre and honest attempt in a city...but why did I compare, what was the compulsion...may be I was comparing the context in which the idea is placed...and cursing it that the Dharmashala building of Tibet refugee's is better and more honest Architecture than magnificence of the Tibet center in Auroville...and so many...and its all about material isnt it.
The worn out wooden place with people in it working, living than a polished symbol with Tibetan caretakers...
anyways unrelated to that...if you see many excellent architects never built...but somehow their ideas took them places, though they still remain unbuilt...but then how an unbuilt idea can be so important...may be the context it addressed so appropriately that it becomes a theorem for the next Architectural problems will be based upon...
answer is many paintings or piece of art which changed the way we discuss things or argue...or a theoretical attempt to address new materials, new media, sense of aesthetics as reaction to the last...or when you know a building made like a well put argument, and you say not again...you are all correct but I dont feel happy...
why Gehry did what he did, because he felt it in 60's what I felt now after seeing Auroville...An aesthetics so good an Argument so well made that you want to blast it ...
what made Zaha so mad...
I realized in India we are so much so deprived of good construction that we take it as an idea, and people who are able to do good construction stick to it being an idea...as they invested in it and a trait so rare...
but an idea is not about material or the science or the rational or a solution...it something more than all of them...and it can not be evaluated as it grows costly with time...
My feelings about Architectural assessment has changed, it has become more of judging a man killer in one instance and a hero in another for the same act...
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