Stop Whining... Respect the market and its conditions...

Its 1:30 AM Sunday morning and I'm really supposed to be off to sleep after a round of required reading for Grad School... and I run into this article posted by Paulo Alcazaren on Philippine Star... its quoted below... please do read... but here's my 2 cents on it...

Its easy to complain about the fact that we local architects have been losing jobs to foreign consultants... and that practice is terrible in the Philippines because of perceived biases that big business has for branded designers from abroad... but this is something that all of us Filipino Architects have to face with full honesty. My fellow architects will hate me for saying this:

That is precisely how the market works. And although it would be easy for everyone to whine about how we always get passed over for big projects... We do have to ask ourselves... What have we done to deserve their (big developers) trust and honor? What have we done to deserve their confidence? Does being merely of the same nationality qualify us as competent designers? Does being educated by our so called "Centers-of-Excellence" in Architecture truly equipt you with the critical thinking and well-roundedness that a modern global practice requires? Does working as a CAD jockey, CG renderer, model maker in the Philippines or abroad for that matter qualify you as a designer or practitioner in the long term? The hard truth is... with honesty...all of those questions can only be answered with a resounding no.

We as a profession have to stop whining about these circumstances. That is how the market works. We have to respect these because that is the biggest irony of our profession... our existence as designers is not founded merely on our abilities... but moreso in our ability to gain confidence. The burden of proving our abilities and winning our clients' confidence is solely on our collective shoulders. Our clients do not owe us the project, but they owe it to themselves to select the architect that would help them make the project (be it a house or a mall) a success.

That is precisely the reason why I, like a growing number of my contemporaries are leaving... not just to find a living abroad... but moreso to learn through formal education or on-the-job training, so that in one way or another I  equipt myself with means to at least catch-up with how others do things... while injecting my own identity as a designer and as a Filipino.

Among the trickle of Filipino architects studying and slugging it out abroad, there will always be real talent, and I have a gut-feeling that future Pinoy designers will rise from 2 realistic avenues... from abroad, or from back home... not by doing big projects for big business... but for doing true, crafty and innovative work for clients at the grass-roots.

Good design need not be big, mass-market, branded, or well-funded to be good. Good design is universal... just as beauty is... transcending race and wealth. But... unlike beauty (which you're born with)... we have a fighting chance... because good design can be learned... good design can be inculcated... good design can be nurtured.

To close... I have two final points... first... the burden is purely on us... its not like we have been entirely faultless and without responsibility as to why things have come to this. How many really bad generic post-modern or imitation modernist buildings by local "architect-planners" dot our landscape? Can you blame big business for being traumatized by their experience with local architects?

For my last  point... I think all of us have to thank the clients that do commission us. (Clients that don't necessarily come from "Big" Corporate Business) It is through them and not merely because of our "innate Filipino design sense" that we get to practice. It is through them that we make a living. It is through them that we learn and hone ourselves... It is through them that we research about new methods... It is through them that we prepare ourselves... so that when we do get our chance at the big one... we are ready... tested... tempered by the market... and ready to show that we can match up and be just as good as our foreign counterparts.

Yes... I've read the Fountainhead... Yes... I've spent years working to help build my family's design practice... And yes... we also owe it to our clients... we owe it to them that we get to excercise the sheer joy of doing what it is we do... big or small. And for that I thank them. 

Modern Living

Desperate architects
CITY SENSE By Paulo Alcazaren
Saturday, October 20, 2007

The brouhaha over the insult to Filipino doctors aired on American primetime television has not died down. Millions worldwide saw the segment from Desperate Housewives’ new season-premiere episode. It has been viewed tens of thousands of times more on YouTube and blogged in a cyber-torrent of indignation that has fueled signature campaigns, calls for boycotting the TV show, picket lines in front of Disney stores and now class-action suits.

In the segment, Teri Hatcher’s character Susan Mayer says, as she is about to be examined by a doctor: “Before we go any further, can I see those diplomas ’coz I just want to make sure that they’re not from some med school in the Philippines.” The line was meant to get a laugh — but at the expense of the thousands of Filipino medical practitioners without whom the American health care system would be seriously compromised.

 The quip reflected the scriptwriter’s ignorance of this reality as well as a bias against Filipinos and other immigrants that exposes the bigotry that still pervades many societies. The reality is that Filipino professionals are well respected by their peers abroad. Their expertise and services are sought after in many specialties and fields of endeavor. In my field of design, Filipino architects, interior designers, landscape architects and urban designers quickly gain employment in international consultancy firms. There is little bias abroad against Filipino architects.

The sadder reality for Filipino designers actually lies at home where such a bias does exist. Glib references in American primetime comedies may unjustifiably paint migrant Filipino professionals as dubious in competence. But the insult cuts much deeper when it comes from fellow Filipinos in your own country.

The Asian crisis of the late ’90s left many Filipino architects with few projects to sustain them. With the economy recovering and real estate development booming one would think Filipino architects would be in demand and that Philippine architecture was about to see a renaissance. Not so.

Yes, there has been a rising demand for local architects’ services since 2002, but in the past year — when the really big and important projects started to be launched — it was disconcerting to note the increasing number of media announcements from name developers that highlighted the involvement of foreign consultants. A great number of ads and press releases now proudly proclaim this or that (usually American) architect, landscape architect or planner contributing to make a featured project “a distinctive master-planned community (or resort, or mixed-use commercial complex) comparable to those in the US, Europe or even Singapore.”

Now, hold on, before we go any further, aren’t there any laws that regulate the practice of architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and planning in the Philippines? Yes, there are. It seems though that many developers are unaware of, or are circumventing them, to be able to improve the marketability of their “products.” These companies (or their advertising and marketing consultants) are convinced that branding the structures and spaces they develop with the expertise of Filipino consultants diminishes their perceived value. I remember the head of one big company telling me, “The Philippines is not ready for a Filipino designer.” Now, that’s an insult.

Filipino design consultants in the Philippines are a discriminated-against lot. Many clients squeeze them to accept smaller and smaller fees for larger and larger scopes of work.  Often they are paid late — three to four months after a billing is due (try doing that to a Filipino doctor or lawyer). On the other hand, the same client will pay an arm and a leg (often in dollars) for a foreign firm to submit a mere concept for a project (which the local architect will have to correct, anyway). One frustrated local Filipino consultant put it this way, “They (foreign consultants) get 10 times our fees to do one-tenth of the work without any of the legal liability (for public safety, which is the rationale behind licenses) and yet still get all the media mileage.”

Filipino architects and related design professionals are a creative lot. But when they try to submit fantastic designs they know will fit Filipino culture and climate, they are usually met with “Huwag na lang, mukhang masyadong mahal at sayang yung area na mabebenta. (Let’s not do it. It seems to be too expensive and we will lose sellable space.)” Architects have related to me that the same idea espoused by a foreign consultant gets clients’ heads nodding — despite the huge amount of space and cost “lost” to non-revenue-generating design fillips.

There are current steps being taken by professional design associations like the United Architects of the Philippines, the Philippine Institute of Interior Designers and the Philippine Association of Landscape Architects to prevent illegal practice, but mainly these have been aimed at fellow Filipinos who do not have legal licenses to practice. Many of these well known designers have become celebrity consultants mainly because of the extensive media coverage that they have gotten from creations for the Philippines’ rich and famous. (It’s the media’s fault again!)

As it turns out, almost all of these Filipinos graduated from American or English universities and worked for a spell abroad. Obviously local wealthy clients do have a bias towards these talented but otherwise unlicensed architects. For the licensed ones, a degree from a foreign university or track record abroad does carry much weight in a client’s decisions. Are our design schools not producing architects with the skill sets, creative capacities or talent good enough for local clients? Are our local design firms not prestigious enough to guarantee a pedigree for future Leandro Locsins and Willy Coscolluelas (both of whom were schooled in the Philippines)?

The whole situation has Filipino architects and related design professionals desperate. They are talented but cannot find good work. Filipino design firms are desperate to make ends meet because, often, clients are only willing to pay minimum fees while expecting unreasonable amounts of time and energy from them. These firms cannot design noteworthy buildings because clients tend to scrimp on construction budgets if the architect is local (they reserve the bigger budgets for foreign consultants — who get the prestigious projects anyway). Local banks are no help either as they do not lend capital to architectural firms — biased as they are to lend to large industries, BPO or IT companies or to, well, other banks.

Individual architects or designers working for Filipino firms themselves are desperate to earn a living because these companies cannot afford to pay them any better (because of the low fees above). So countless young architects look for a job abroad to improve their lot. The irony is that many Filipino designers end up in the very foreign firms that find work in the Philippines. Even worse, foreign firms have now set up shop locally to process work from America, Europe or the Middle East — hiring even fresh graduates and further eroding the local talent pool needed for Philippine projects. Local firms now see that they need to pay much higher starting salaries for fresh people who will leave them soon anyway for abroad or local outsourcing operations. As one Filipino architect with a small design firm succinctly remarked, “Architectural practice today just sucks.”

How can Filipino consultants survive? Even worse, how can Philippine architecture and design progress when the opportunity to create distinctive buildings, interiors, landscapes, and urban design is given to foreigners or Filipinos regurgitating foreign form and spaces? How desperate have we become as a society when we aspire to live in structures and settings alien to our culture and will pay the price for the illusion? How vacuous could Teri Hatcher have been to mouth what should have been an obvious racial slur?

The truth is that we still have that colonial mindset. We (or at least advertising and marketing people) believe that foreign is better. We can’t change it. Or can we? Malaysia banned advertising that used foreign models and it has mitigated this bias. Foreign architects there and in Singapore can only practice within strict laws and limitations. Philippine architecture designed by Filipino architects can be world-class if only local clients would trust them to do what foreign clients know they can do (and so long as Filipino consultants get paid justly and on time). Philippine architectural education can improve their curricula to shore up architectural history, theory and criticism so we can produce real architects with ideologies, social consciousness and intellectual depth and not just robots with computer drafting skills.

The final truth is that Desperate Housewives is rating low and may be on its final season anyway, so a boycott will only hasten the inevitable … and when will we see Filipino doctors and nurses on those American hospital TV shows?

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.