Quote:
Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile
Welcome to Kalifornia.
If you ever want, I can bore you for literally HOURS over a beer or two regarding the gymnastics and gyrations that architects need to go through trying to keep:
- the owner happy
- the developer happy
- the city planning commission happy
- the neighborhood council happy
- the fire department happy
- the police department happy
- the water reclamation districts happy
- the inspectors happy
- the general contractors happy
etc. etc. etc.
It's all a balancing act. By the time you get done, there's very little latitude in anything. "Design" was stripped away from the architect years ago - for the most part anyway (there are still those occasional "golden" projects that show up, but they're rare).
Planners are tricky - a lot of them are great and don't get into "micromanaging" the design, they just want to ensure general contextual appropriateness with the neighborhood and overall City plan, but there are a few (well, more than a few) that are Grade-A arseholez. "Wanna-be architects" we call them. Most aren't, but some are and will get into everything down to the color of your steel, above the ceiling on the inside of a building (no, I'm not making that one up).
Best of luck to you.
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I can empathize, I think your sentiments ring true for a lot of so called 'creative' industries. I work in advertising as a writer and death by committee is a daily occurrence. I'm constantly baffled by clients that pay us large sums of money for our professional opinion only to then ignore it and change everything we've done because them, their wife and their dog apparently know better.