The House Whisperer
When called in to renovate a house, you as the architect are interviewing the potential clients as much as they are assessing you. There are several items to note: if interviewing a couple, who is asking the questions? Who seems to have the vision for the project? Who would rather be undergoing a colonoscopy without anesthesia than sitting here with you? You will learn there are many reasons why people hire an architect, but two really stand out above all others.
1. An architectural modification is necessary.
This occurs when there is a dramatic change in the family structure, such as the initial purchase of the house or when children make their imminent arrival known. In the latter case you will always be asked if the house can be ready before the baby arrives. This is always a dicey situation. You want to say yes, but there is so much that is beyond your control that, if you are being honest with yourself, you have to say no. But you need the job, so you rationalize saying yes by assuming the best of all possible scenarios will happen simultaneously, that for instance, you will be able to finalize all decision-making in one month, that it will take another month to do the drawings, a month to get the permit and the contractor on board, and that all the construction will take less than six months. Which would mean you would have to start work the moment the baby is conceived, which could be awkward for all parties involved. In any case this is an example of when a true lack of space must be addressed.
2. A relationship needs healing.
This occurs when a couple can no longer tolerate a particular spatial relationship with one another. For whatever reason, something has soured between them and they imagine the easy fix to be an alteration of their physical environment. Unless you are a scholar of the human psyche, you are in a lose-lose situation. If you listen to one half of the couple the other half feels left out and can never quite get behind the project. If you try to appease both of them, they gang up on you. If you need the money and can handle the abuse, obviously take the job; however if you have the means to avoid the project, do so.
Often both sorts of House Whispering need to take place. The wisest course of action during design meetings is to deflect the conversation away from the personal needs to the physical. When issues of snoring or foot odor come up, turn the conversation to the office/den off the master that could double as a guest room if necessary. Truth is, who’d want a guest that close? But you should always strive to address the problem without embarrassing the offending partner.
3. Your career comes first.
There is another option when all else fails. This is the opposite of House Whispering. This is when you ignore everything that the space and the clients are telling you and listen only to the voice in your head. This is when you force your will upon the couple. They hired you for a reason, right? Clearly they want you to design a space in your style. So you exploit this. You design whatever you want and make them pay for it. Oh sure, you may have to divert them with grand theories and intimidating concepts and suggest that if they don’t quite comprehend to just trust you to deliver what they need. At first they will be relieved -- they will be happy the burden of decision-making has been removed. They won’t really have a sense of what you did until far after they’ve moved in and paid all their invoices; and when they wake up several months down the line and realize they hate what you’ve done, you’re long gone, having settled into a new project or two with new sets of clients to snow.
However, in this New Economy, I’d try House Whispering first.
