So, I’ll tell you my favorite architect joke:

A man is flying in a hot air balloon, aimlessly drifting for hours when he realizes he’s lost. He spies another man standing in the field below and he lowers the balloon to yell at the man.

“Excuse me, could you tell me where I am? And how to get to Lerwick”

The man in the field says “sure, you’re at precisely 58°59’5.24″N by 2°57’31.43″W. to get to Lerwick you need to head NE for 166 km.”

“You must be an Architect” says the man in the balloon.

“Why do you say that?” says the man in the field.

And the balloonist says: “Because, what you told me, though technically correct, doesn’t help me in my current situation at all”

“Well, you must be a contractor” says the man in the field.

“Why’s that” says the balloonist

And the man in the field says:

“Because you have no idea where you are, and no idea how to get to where you’re going, but somehow this is all my fault.”

I think it’s possible that the relationship between contractors and architects is broken. Contractors seem to assume that the Architect is simultaneously the only person who can answer their questions and completely wrong at the same time. Architects assume that all the answers to the contractor’s questions are spelled out in detail in the drawings if they would just look at them occasionally.

The truth is somewhere in between.

Contractors have a special understanding of how to build things based on their years and years of experience in … um, building things. Architects usually lack the hands-on experience of building, but instead, have a knowledge of design and all the technical aspects of constructing a building. And most importantly, the Architect serves as an advocate for the owner whose vision we’re all trying to achieve.

We’re coming at the problem from different perspectives, but ultimately, we’re both trying to achieve the same goal. And the key, as that joke tells us, is in communication. And we’re not going to be able to communicate well if we bring all our preconceptions and prejudices to the table. We all need to leave our assumptions that we know “what’s best” at the door and just try to address the problem at hand. I once had a contractor say to me: “Jody, you don’t have a stick up your ass like some of those other architects” I took that as a good sign, I shook his hand and thanked him. Then rolled up my sleeves and tried to help figure out where we were and how the hell we were going to get to where we were going.

I think the key is to work together. Otherwise, we’re never going to get out of this field.