Pears

One of my biggest jobs have gone the shape of a popular autumn fruit. As I am but a micro practise, this equates to roughly three quarters of my projected income over the next six months. I have turned other work away in anticipation and am now twiddling my fingers on this keyboard, with very little to do apart from breathe faltering life into this neglected blog.

Some time ago, a businessman approached me who had bought a run down property about a hundred yards from his own place. He had hopes of expanding, and the new property was ideal – a large site, good road access, an attractive listed building forming the frontage and room to build three houses behind.

Excitedly, I produced a scheme for converting the building into his new showrooms, restoring the lovely, curly, guilded Victorian shopfront and creating offices on the first floor. I designed three little town houses behind it, facing a small yard and communal garden with all the usual Planner friendly ‘green’ touches – secure bike storage, recycling store, insulation worthy of the Space Shuttle and draught sealed up as tight as a duck’s bottom. I went through the whole programme of the RIBA recommended work stages* – chatted up the conservation officer, chatted up building control; arranged an archaeological dig, got brick, tile, paint and stone samples; all very enjoyable.

I drew joinery details, showing every aspect of sash windows and doors in the Victorian style. I went through endless meetings with the structural engineer. I produced hundreds of pages of specifications, preliminaries and schedules of works, ironmongery, paint, doors and sanitary ware. I had lengthy discussions with the quantity surveyor and the mechanical engineer over how to incorporate modern services into the old structure. I worked 60 hours a week to get documents together for the best builders in the area to price (known in building speak as ‘tender documents’). I checked the tenders, negotiated with the chosen builder, arranged a contract. The client was that rare ideal who just let me get on with it and wrote the cheques - it was wonderful.

I worked 60 hours a week to meet my client’s schedule. I anticipated, with glee, the large project to come, which would not only give me a generous income but would hopefully get my name around to similar businesses, lead to more work and… fortune and fame for Alice?

He rang me two weeks before work was due to start on site. ‘We can’t go ahead’, he said. Aaaaaaagh!’ I thought, and sat down. Credit crunch? I wondered. ‘I’m emigrating to Australia’ he said ‘I’ve sold up and the new owners don’t want to do anything with the building at the moment’. They didn't want my services. And that was that. Not only has it left me with a serious cash flow problem, but I am truly disappointed at being bereft of my best job. No-one, to my knowledge, becomes an architect for the money – it is the joy of seeing your design translated by good craftsmen into a real, living, breathing and useful object.

I feel robbed.

*I'll explain in a further blog