Does your architectural offer speak directly to future clients?
I’ve had some interesting conversations with Architects about the nature of practice in the past few weeks.
Last week, an interesting conversation unfolded on Instagram, in response to my post below:
Responses included:
“Sure. But that’s not enough when most believe they can’t afford us, and usually can’t.”
and:
“Most people who live in houses clearly and simply can’t afford us, or we would all have a lot more work and a higher social status. People seem genuinely ‘interested’ that they’re speaking with an architect but the conversation can peter out pretty quickly, as we are seen as an ‘unaffordable’ luxury not required with a builder absolutely is required.”
I heard a very different take on this issue when I interviewed an Architect for a magazine article recently. We were talking about her second company, which creates architect-designed project homes, called ‘ready-made architecture’.
“Our xxx xxx housing product isn’t just for young people” she said. “A lot of Perth homeowners have lost value in their homes after the end of the mining boom, so issues of affordability are widely felt. Xxx xxx is helping make architecture more accessible to those who love design, but can’t afford the traditional architectural service.”
A slightly different take on this same issue erupted this past weekend on Twitter, when US-architect Donna Sink commented on a post by the AIA, and practitioners from around the world offered views from both sides of that particular fence.
To me, these exchanges throw up a couple of important questions for the profession to grapple with:
1. People say you can’t have hard conversations on Instagram; that it’s a platform for shiny, happy photos and positive spin, and that Twitter is for the difficult stuff. My experience of putting quotes on Instagram has been quite the opposite – many architects engage with them and share their views, concerns and thoughts on how to improve the profession. So which media channels (social or otherwise) are you using to communicate and engage with future clients?
2. If you believe that clients can’t afford you – because that’s been your experiencing so far – that becomes a self-perpetuating, limiting belief. You’ll continue to experience that reality, because you’re creating it. What might you do to dismantle this belief and try and different tack?
One possible alternative is to revisit your offer, and the way you provide services, and perhaps develop a new product or service that meets future clients where they are. Doing so will require you to listen deeply, understand, and respond directly to clients’ needs: acknowledging their love of good design and limited budgets, to accept that reality, and then work within it. (I’ve talked to quite few great Architects recently who work in the “project home” budget space, and good design outcomes are possible there.)
There are other ways that you can unpack and refocus any limiting beliefs that are holding back your practice too (assuming you can identify them!). I’m not suggesting that this kind of reflection and refocusing is easy, though: it’s hard to examine your own biases and perceptions, to drop what’s not working, and try something new.
I know because I’m doing it myself in my own business at the moment. There are risks involved, and vulnerability too.
But it’s worth it, because Architects have a lot to offer the world right now - some would say a social responsibility to act in the face of climate emergency - yet the existing ways of communicating those important messages are not currently reaching and resonating with the general public.
Are you keen to take the message about Architecture and its value to a wider audience, but not yet sure how to do that?
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