Counting the cost of competition

One of British architecture’s more piquant moments of recent years took place at the Stirling Prize ceremony on Saturday night. Marco Goldschmied handed over a cheque for £20,000 to Richard Rogers, following the announcement that the Maggie’s Centre in Hammersmith had won the 2009 award. There wasn’t too much eye contact.

Readers may recall that Marco famously fell out with his erstwhile partner – and fell out of the practice too after an internal power struggle. Various consequences arose: the practice was remodelled and renamed Rogers Stirk Harbour (and has won two Stirling prizes since the revamp); Marco fought a legal action over his part-ownership of the practice’s building, and ended up owning all of it following an agreed sale by the practice. He is thus RSH’s landlord, and is no doubt waiting for an opportunity to expel his former firm once their lease runs out. If Marco had been able to speak as he handed over the cheque (tv timetabling prevented any comment) he had planned to say: ‘I hope this helps you with the rent’. (Amusing but sad — Marco is a big man behaving like a small one.)

Meanwhile newspaper reports say that RSH is suing its former client, Qatari Diar, for £2 million of fees in respect of the blocked Chelsea Barracks design. That would certainly help pay the rent. A speedy settlement would be appropriate given the amount of emotional as well as intellectual effort which went into the project, and indeed the sums now being spent on starting again and choosing a replacement practice, following You-Know-Who’s unprincipled (right word) intervention.

I notice the architects taking part in the new short-listing process were expected to do an extraordinary amount of work for next to nothing in the firsts stage of that procedure, while all the other consultants involved in the process were paid. This is just another example of the cynical way in which architects and their creative ideas are regarded by a good proportion of developer carnivores. Architects delude themselves if they think that this earns them respect from the property industry. In reality it thinks architects are useful idiots, and will carry on exploiting them until the worms turn.

An analogy for what architects willingly subject themselves to would be a cab journey where the fare invites the cabbie to start driving in one direction, and at a certain point decides that yes, they like this cab, and yes, the direction of travel is broadly desirable, and yes, they have finally decided where exactly they want to go. At this point the fare invites the cabbie to turn on his meter. The next time you do work for nothing, ask yourself if your next cab-driver will be as generous.

The crazy thing about all this is that the value to be derived from smart architectural analysis includes real cost control (not the same thing as price control, especially in this market). Architectural thinking, allied with constructive cost strategies and value engineering (if done properly) can save clients million of pounds, while economising on fees saves a few thousand. Do developers choose their haircuts, suits or brain surgeons on the basis of the lowest tenders? Why, then, do they think it could ever be appropriate in relation to the buying in of design brain-power for their day job?

Nor is it a question of minimising costs at the expense of everything else. Outcomes, not outputs, are the most significant factor for many clients. The Maggie’s Centre project cost more than £5,000 per square metre; but RSH’s other fine Stirling shortlisted building, the Protos winery in Spain, came in at under £900 per square metre. Both clients were hugely happy. Developers take note.