Journal

I have a confession to make. I have a dark and sordid secret.

I watch Married at First Sight. There it is. I love it. I’m not proud. Don’t judge me (or judge me, I don’t care).

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching hundreds of hours of this trash TV, it’s that 95% of relationship problems have a single root cause; lack of communication. Petty grievances left undiscussed slowly fester, ultimately blowing up in a storm of expletives, red wine chucking, broken crockery and tears. Someone ends up wheeling their suitcase down the aparthotel corridor, out of ‘the experiment’ and out of our lives despite the best endeavours of the plucky ‘experts’.

Anyway, the other day I bumped into a former colleague and she told me about a mutual friend who moved from architect to client-side a while ago and she’s telling me how she gets it now. She now understands why procurement and clienting is the way it is. She has a new perspective on the pressures of time, resources and money that clients face. It gets me thinking about many discussions I’ve had over the last year or so with clients and architects and it strikes me that everyone’s frustrated.

Architects are frustrated because they never make any money.

Clients are frustrated because they don’t get what they want from architects.

Architects are frustrated because they don’t understand why the client doesn’t care about their beautiful lintel/coping/rainwater pipe etc detail.

Clients are frustrated because they don’t understand why the architect is so fixated on their beautiful lintel/coping/rainwater pipe etc detail.

There’s a disconnect between what clients value and what architects deliver which is likely one reason for low fees.

And the thought (informed by hundreds of hours of watching MAFS) pops into my head.

Why don’t architects and clients COMMUNICATE better what each of them needs out of the relationship?

It feels like we’ve arrived at a system which is broken. Where no one is happy. The clients are crashing crockery into the dishwasher while the architects have sulked off to bed. Communication has broken down.

So here’s my suggestion;

ARCHITECTS:

• Ask clients what they want from you.
• Check in with your clients. Have you delivered what they want/need/value?
• Try to understand your clients’ pressures and demands.

CLIENTS:

• Tell architects what you expect.  
• Explain what you value, and what you don’t.
• If they’re not delivering. Explain why.

Let’s get date night back on and start communicating.