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Gregory Walker replied to the topic State of the Profession in the forum PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 14 years, 2 months ago
john – i agree that there are limited markets and the model isn’t quite as landscape friendly. however, even in your answer i see more of a focus on design process and not really ‘product’. things like outdoor furniture, lighting – whatever along those lines. could be residential in focus, could be commercial. could be a type of product that you…[Read more]
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Gregory Walker replied to the topic State of the Profession in the forum PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 14 years, 2 months ago
at the risk of wading in again – i’m with john on this one. venting is great, but at some point you have to try and move towards something more productive.
a lot of the sentiments on this thread about the general powerlessness of the l.a. profession are going to be shared by the architects as well. rather than see them as ‘competition’, i’d…[Read more]
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Gregory Walker replied to the topic Will LAs always be at the mercy of architects? in the forum PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 14 years, 3 months ago
cevrena – this question of who the ‘prime’ is comes up a lot with one of the l.a. firms we work with on a regular basis. and it really depends, in my opinion, on what the prime drivers on the project are (in the client’s mind). case in point: on a project that we’ve done at georgia tech, the l.a. firm was the prime on phase one of the project,…[Read more]
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Gregory Walker replied to the topic Will LAs always be at the mercy of architects? in the forum PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 14 years, 4 months ago
well, i can’t quite defend some of my colleagues in terms of their approach – it is what it is and we don’t spend too much time looking at those projects for inspiration (either aesthetically or as a working model).
gets a little stickier when talking about projects that may have a more deliberate ‘non-design’ landscape. in some cases, that could…[Read more]
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Gregory Walker replied to the topic Will LAs always be at the mercy of architects? in the forum PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 14 years, 4 months ago
as an architect, this has been an interesting (and slightly amusing) discussion. from my perspective – and we love working with strong landscape architects – there are a few things i can offer from my end that we see fairly often:
1- someone has to, imho, maintain the overall ‘vision’ for a project and how all the corresponding parts work…[Read more]
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Gregory Walker replied to the topic State of the Profession in the forum PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 14 years, 4 months ago
It was primarily because they couldn’t bring the fees in, per their partnership obligations. Still, I’m not sure that the days of the rainmaker are over – if you can’t bring work in… how do you pay for a practice? Firms that treat their employees as ‘cad monkeys’ are hopefully going to be killed, but that won’t diminish the fact that even the…[Read more]
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Gregory Walker replied to the topic State of the Profession in the forum PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 14 years, 4 months ago
Nate – it’s very simple in concept. My partner and I both left a rather large firm, which has weathered the storm well (overall – they’ve had some layoffs though). They subcontracted two of our employees for a fixed duration of time – pretty much it followed a particular phase/timeline they had. We did have a one page letter of agreement…[Read more]
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Gregory Walker replied to the topic State of the Profession in the forum PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 14 years, 4 months ago
Hi all – relatively new to this particular forum (and an architect to boot), but hopefully I can offer a little different set of observations on the topic…
First, I’m one of two partners in a small, 6 person firm in Atlanta- we’ve been in business since 2005. Like most people, we had a sharp drop in work (3 major, for us, projects canceled in…[Read more]