It is hard for architects to be transparent. As a profession, we’re shrouded in cliches, both internal and external: the Corbu glasses, the black garb, The Fountainhead. As a result, simple honesty about how we work can be complicated. I am more than happy to debunk those absurdities, but many architects prefer to use the PR value of that image to assert worth.

But the branding and cultural projections of architects are a misfit in two essential ways. First, architecture is not product design. Despite the profession’s long history of marketing stock designs via “plan books” (I even sold one this summer!), design is an interactive, human process, more akin to psychotherapy than the fine arts. But it’s often hard to sell time as therapists do. Second, the way any business survives is through money, so if architects do not charge by the hour, they use fixed fees, often based on a percentage of the construction cost or charging by the square foot.

Fixed fees tend to hide how architects actually work from what they charge. Early in my career, I learned that I couldn’t disconnect how we worked from what we charged, because it didn’t reflect the value each part of the process has. When a client has to have a fixed fee for budgeting purposes, we use industry norms for what is owed, and when. We can limit our costs when money for the project is tight. As a result, design work for not-for-profits is usually on a fixed fee, factoring in my time as free, calculated to break even, often after a pro bono design phase. For private clients, however, we work based on hourly charges, paying our employees by the hour and billing by the hour.

But we document those charges in a transparent way. Some firms use job definitions—“intern,” “associate,” “architect,” “principal”— to define hourly wages, with no relationship to what each person is actually paid, thus hiding their true cost. At our firm, each billable hour is based on what we actually pay the employee, multiplied by 3.5 to cover our other costs. My own hourly rate, after 45 years as an architect, is $175 per hour, because at that rate I can be useful to almost any project. If everything works out, we may realize a 15% net profit, but often not, as we do a great deal of pro bono work. We offer complete estimations of the totals of the hours we work. In that contract, we describe the differences in project types and the variety of the level of our services. If we’re inefficient, we deduct those hours from our bills.

 When a potential client calls, I vet their needs on the phone and ask them to look at our (very) unsophisticated website, which features more than 100 projects. I’m sure it turns some potential clients off—it’s not “cool”—but those who hire us say they appreciate the breadth and depth it reveals. If they still want to see me, I visit every potential client, gratis.

And while public buildings do require licensed professions to design safe and legal structures, much of what architects seek to promote is aesthetic desirability, not public utility. Even though more architects work at the large firms, the greatest number of design offices employ fewer than 10 people, which means that architecture for the average consumer is more personal than corporate.

That ethic is also applied to how we help create buildings. To begin the process, we offer multiple plan options; then we create study models to show shape and space. No “killer” presentations. Some designers do not give copies of their renderings to clients, let alone build physical models; nor will they offer additional options beyond their chosen path. For full disclosure practices such as ours, the project evolves as a dialogue. 

This is not idiosyncratic—it’s an ethical choice that will become the way some of the profession survives the impact of artificial intelligence on client expectations. The old, fading “genius model” of the architect sold a persona that resulted in a product, created by the architect. Although we end up with a built product, the process is our value.

Part of the architect persona is that we “make a lot of money,” a bogus selling point for students of architecture. No similar brand exists for engineers, and despite endless TV shows, doctors and lawyers have no similar image to live up to. 

When expectations have little to do with reality, some architects find value in image. But opacity in what real services are provided often results in unbuilt projects, most often due to unexpected costs and clients not fully understanding what we actually do. Since what architects do is based on who we are, my firm offers up a complete description of what we do before we begin work. (Many architects have told us they’ve lifted this language for their use.) The result of that openness is that we build about 70% of the projects that we are contracted to design.

This reflects a simple truth: Making buildings is a fact-based reality. Each site has undeniable realities; every project has a budget; every user has hard needs. Architecture is not about the rosy perceptions of the designer’s value. We participate in the messy realities of construction; we don’t have a special “cool factor.” But what architects do has value. Architects create enough knowledge to form a “scope of work” that establishes a budget. Hard truths of time and cost need to be clearly and accurately defined. These determinations have value. 

We know construction, while the client knows their needs: design is the dialogue that connects the two. Those realities create value. To make that connection, honesty is the best policy. 

Featured image courtesy of the author.