October 13, 2015  by

A Front Cover Worthy Reputation

What do you get if you ask 18 architects to design a magazine cover story in 30 minutes? Lots of creative magazine covers, that’s what!

As part of a two-day workshop at the CallisonRTKL Design Conference in Los Angeles, CA, Alanna Levenson, founder of I Love My Life! Coaching, presented us with this challenge: Envision a headline about CallisonRTKL that could appear in a well-known magazine in 12 months’ time–what would it say? Responses ranged from recognition for acclaimed design projects and sustainability excellence to what it means to recruit and nurture well-rounded architects and have a desirable workplace environment post-merger. While our imaginations were allowed to run wild, a collective theme emerged: reinvention resulting in quality design.

My team chose as our medium Surface, a magazine covering the best in global contemporary design. Our winning cover was based on the idea that sometimes the most revolutionary approach entails simply getting back to the basics. While the story was about CallisonRTKL specifically, it was really highlighting something we all yearn for, but are challenged to achieve in the face of heavy workloads, limited budgets and tight deadlines: the holistic role of the design professional. The headline read:

‘THE POWER OF AN ORIGINAL IDEA’ 

We felt that rethinking the role of the architect could be what would ultimately lead the way for the future of this company. The ‘9 to 5’ and ‘copy and paste’ culture has taken grip of our industry like never before. Local pastiche has always generated an architectural vernacular, but the ease of accessible information has narrowed the spectrum of creativity for a design professional. We are all guilty of Google image searching for inspiration. But is this acting in the best interests of our clients? Are we doing a disservice to ourselves? They say love is blind, so is it time to look at ourselves and our approach to our profession? Our sub-title hints at the pervasiveness of these issues and the impact on our industry:

‘CallisonRTKL: the firm that rediscovers the lost process of originality’

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Lively debate amongst the team acknowledged that the design and construction industry is not an easy sector and that the ‘copy and paste’ culture has its value in the right context, often playing only a minor role in a project. But the point of the story was to delve way beyond this—to uncover the essence of design and the purity of our passion. In essence, the objective is to renew our focus on why we all got into architecture in the first place: to design honest, original solutions to real problems that could change the way we live and work for the better. We agreed that our approach to the design process is critical to a project’s success.

Steve Jobs, in his later years, was often referenced in discussions about the importance of research and development in conceiving of ground-breaking ideas. CallisonRTKL knows how to design buildings, particularly retail schemes, but have we lost our edge in designing outside our comfort zone? When was the last time you designed something that you haven’t worked on before? Is this healthy? What would Howard Roark think?

Let me give you an example. Imagine designing a building in the Middle East from the comforts of an air-conditioned office. Perhaps it would be a valuable exercise to sit in the relentless summer sun and design the same building again with the heat bearing down on our backs. Would the solution be similar? Would the integrity of the design be the same? The perhaps crudely made point here is that sometimes we need to take ourselves—figuratively or literally—out of the comfort zone in order to spark our creativity and provoke the inner heart of us all to achieve something great, something that has never been done before—an original idea. The synergies that can be formed across the Arcadis network certainly present us with exciting prospects to achieve this.

Tongue-in-cheek, we acknowledged that, in all likelihood, none of us will become legendary original thinkers like Da Vinci, Shakespeare or Michelangelo, but as a collective, we have the potential to reinvent ourselves and evolve into better architects—not for our clients, or for the money, but for the future of our profession. Imagine the day when we have such absolute belief in our own skillset that clients seek us out for our design principles alone, rather than our precedents.

So the 2015 CallisonRTKL Design Conference attendees leave you with this: listen to your intuition, forget the mental limitations of the past, take risks and never underestimate the power of original thought.

What are you going to do to achieve it? It could very well be the making of your life and career, and if all goes well, perhaps you may find yourself on the face of a magazine cover in 12 months’ time…

CallisonRTKL

CallisonRTKL

For more than five decades, Callison and RTKL have created some of the world’s most memorable and successful environments for developers, retailers, investors, institutions and public entities. In 2015, our two practices came together under the Arcadis umbrella, expanding our sphere of influence and the depth and breadth of our resources. Our team is comprised of nearly 2,000 creative, innovative professionals throughout the world who are committed to advancing our client’s businesses and enhancing quality of life.
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