All Work and No Play...

No blogs for a while - I've been frantically busy. Architecture is like that - in June you can be twiddling your thumbs, cleaning the computer, reading silly websites and in September you're rushed off your backside.

I've got 14 jobs on the go at the moment, not all of them 'live' but many of them kicking. It can be embarrassing when a client rings up and for the life of you, you can't remember who they are...

Old Fashioned Girl

Most architects these days produce drawings using a computer and a CAD (Computer Aided Design) programme. There are still a few, a very few, who do not. Quinlan Terry, for example, who designs classical buildings, stated recently that his practice ‘is completely CAD free’, implying that CAD would somehow contaminate his hands, architecture or office, I am not sure which. Quite a few of the conservation crowd also do not use CAD. They also have other distinguishing features, but I will put that into a different posting.

I do not use CAD, or at least, not very much. Why, you ask, when that is the way most of the profession produce drawings, and it is so easy? Well, I think it is inertia, mainly. I can draw well, it works, I’m quite fast, why not leave it alone? I am so busy, that it is difficult to find the time to learn to use it, and it does take a lot of time, and practice, before you are fluent – a bit like learning French, or how to play the bassoon.

Last week, though, I wished I had taken the time to learn it. I occasionally get days like this. A client rings up and I say, breathlessly, ‘Yes, I’ve nearly finished, your drawings will be in the post tonight’.

‘Good’ says he ‘But we want to add another storey’. (Oh strewth, thinks I).

On a computer, it would be relatively easy to change the whole thing, neatly, as if it had never been any different. Using a Rotring pen and Indian ink on tracing paper, the only way to change things is to either draw the whole lot again or scratch bits of it out using a razor blade with one side wrapped in tape so you can hold it. I tried the razor blade first. Scrat, scrat. Off comes some of the ink, but there is a rather untidy shadow left behind. Sreek, screet. Now I’ve gone right through the paper, which is easy to do if you are trying to save money and using a thinner grade. So I had to draw it again. Then I realised there was something wrong with the measured survey – two of the plans did not make much sense when compared to the elevations. Out comes the razor blade again. By 4pm, I am covered with tiny shards of tracing paper, surrounded by balled up sheets of very expensive scrap paper with holes in, and thoroughly fed up as I watch the profit margin disappear.

CAD here I come…

Vintage Vehicles

I went to a site to take some measurements of a derelict house, which was due to be knocked down (why? Subject of another post). It was in a beautiful coastal village, looking over a salt marsh to the sea. There are two rafts of population – the second homers, who are only there part time and drive massive cars and push the prices up, and the locals, who are rapidly becoming a dying breed due to the cost of housing. Most of the local builders are the second category, and they usually run family firms consisting of the father and a couple of lads or sons, plus the wife in the office.

I had arranged to meet the builder at the site, and waited in my car on the dusty track next to the site. A filthy old light van turned up, and an elderly man struggled out, panting and covered in dust. He was short, and as wide as he was tall. ‘Hello’ I said. ‘I’m Alice the Architect’.

He cupped his hand to his ear. ‘EH? YOU’LL HA’ T’ SPEAK UP. OI’M A BIT LUGGY THIS MARNIN!’

He was sixty seven and still working full time. This is common in building firms, at least in out of the way places. Why? After a life on a building site, with their mates and the long hours of work, they simply don’t know what to do with all the spare time and solitude (or the wife’s company).