Empathy

Preparing a lecture for Edinburgh University’s Update in Architectural Management Course forced me to reflect on what we mean by the word ‘client’.  And also, what that word means to an Architect - I use a capital letter because the audience were all students about to sit their final professional examinations after at least seven years of study and experience.

 

And for me their critical lesson needs to be the importance of empathy.  We need to see clients as representing people like us, not as representatives of the other.  

By assuming that they share our own drives and foibles, we can begin to identify with each other, and perhaps cease to be divided by a common professional language and simply be united by a common humanity.

 

Descriptions of the briefing and design process tend to use a shorthand of what makes all of the participants different – the unique skill each brings to the project.   I have heard an economist actually say – “as an economist I think this, however, as a human being  . . “

 

What we mean by ‘client’ is someone who is first and foremost another human being.

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Les Miserables

Airdrie Academy’s school production this year  was Les Miserables.

So, I guess that’s the benchmark then for ambition and aspiration. This is the equivalent of asking design students to have a go at architectural productions based on Gaudi’s Cathedral in Barcelona, The Sagrada Familia.

It takes courage to make that decision.  “Right, this year we’re going to do Les Miserables.” 

It also takes belief in what can be achieved and trust in those around you. And of course it helps a lot that the new facilities are there to accommodate your ambitions.  Because that is the true nature of an accommodation schedule – a description of facilities to accommodate ambition.

 

Next time we say ‘fit for purpose’ remember Airdrie Academy and Les Miserables. 

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Concrete Poetry

25 years ago I worked for the Department of Education and Science (DES), and with the Scottish Education Department (SED) and the Programme on Educational Building (PEB) at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Most of these acronyms have been updated and relaunched with different initials.

It is easy to reel them off with a sense of irony, but there is real force in these abbreviations when they are allied to significant values. Shorthand is powerful when it is used to convey complex messages – a kind of concrete poetry of policy.

But there can also be an unearned familiarity which convinces us that we know what something means when all we really know is how to abbreviate it.

CfE is not the same as Curriculum for Excellence. SFT is not the same as the Scottish Futures Trust. By saying the words we remind ourselves what they are about.

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