This series of ‘Architect as…’ posts have been going for a while now and this is an interesting one…:
Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid – Poster by Tom Beauvais, image from Wikipedia
Architect as the Sundance Kid and why allowing your architect to move is key…
Remember the scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when the foreman is testing our anti-heros if they can shoot and after watching Butch Cassidy miss the rock, The Sundance Kid takes careful, steady aim and misses also.
The Sundance Kid then asks the foreman as he’s walking away:
“Can I move?”
“What do you mean, can you move?”
The Sundance kid then falls to the floor, shooting as he moves and obliterates the rock with bullets.
What does this possibly have to do with architects and architecture? Well you need a client that allows that movement in the architect, the freedom to ‘move’ and explore different ideas. The permission to be free with thoughts and to ‘let go’ in terms of designs and concepts. This freedom of design and ‘movement’ comes when the client allows the architect to formulate a brief of the clients requirements, matches the brief to the site & context and then proposes a design that fits all of these considerations. The opposite to this is simply getting the architect to draw exactly, room for room the clients design. As one exceptional client eloquently put it; “Hiring an architect and then doing all the design yourself is like buying a dog and then doing all the barking”