Capitulation of Excess

“One watches them on the seashore, all the people, and there is something pathetic, almost wistful in them, as if they wished their lives did not add up to this scaly nullity of possession, but as if they could not escape. It is a dragon that has devoured us all: these obscene, scaly houses, this insatiable struggle and desire to possess, to possess always and in spite of everything, this need to be an owner, lest one be owned. It is too hideous and nauseating. Owners and owned, they are like the two sides of a ghastly disease. One feels a sort of madness come over one, as if the world had become hell. But it is only superimposed: it is only a temporary disease. It can be cleaned away”.

D. H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

A small voice awoke me from a deep trance only to realize that I have not recorded my thoughts for far too long. At the point where you are convinced that it is impossible to travel more than what you are, you allow the world to crank it up another notch. The opportunities to speak and convey a message of hope, a solution to the madness, a future of balance are endless. As a result I attempt to reach every eager ear willing to listen. From Charlotte to Tampa to Toronto to Philadelphia to Seattle to Baton Rouge to Vancouver, I travel in an endless march with a sense of urgency for our time to prevent the tipping point is limited.

We have begun to enter the dark ages, a period of regression from an era of excess and greed. As a small boy I watched my father commute each morning to Wall Street and learned the arcane language of the stock market. As a system once entirely devoted to raising capital for an expanding economy, it has recently digressed into a manipulated arena of speculation and gambling. Without emotion I witnessed the total collapse of the system that provided my father a career for over forty years. My father would not recognize Wall Street today, with the bodies of power brokers and market makers smoldering in the flames of a conflagration unimagined. Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns were once the powerful barbarians at the gate, the piranhas that would strip a company of its flesh, discards its bones in the gutter. I had to admit some sense of retribution when the piranhas turned on the mighty Wall Street elite and erased billions of dollars of equity in a matter of weeks. The poor stockholders who reaped the rewards of years of greed and plunder cried for the government to protect them from their own imprudence. I do not weep over their loss, for they were a parasite feeding on the sweat equity of Main Street.

Where we not warned there will be blood? All of these troubles are attributable to the failure to exercise reasonable prudence. Why should I be responsible for paying to guarantee the sins of others? It’s ironic that the financial conservatives, who proclaim the loudest that a free market is essential to our way of life, are the first to beg for intervention from the government. I have no sympathy for the greed that motivated the couple to buy a house they could not afford. I have no sympathy for the banker that made the toxic loan in hopes of unloading it within 30 days. Even our sub-prime market became drunk with profits and greet. Staring into an abyss we may never see again the world we have become so fond of.

This small financial event is likely to be obscured by a global cataclysm of monumental proportions if we continue to fund our lifestyle on fossil fuels. Skeptics surround us chanting in hopes of convincing us to destroy more of our planet in search of the opium of commerce. They ignore the impending death of the fossil fuel economy with righteous indignation while the slogan “drill baby drill” is repeated as a bible quote. As climate change is advancing with mythological speed many sit idle in their comfortable live of luxury assuming that it was just some 10,000 researches have gotten it wrong. The threat of climate refugees will number in the millions if not billions. The global economy is in jeopardy of total collapse, just look at one somewhat minor weather event called Katrina. It turned the gulf coast into a third world country. A total break down of the tenuous and fragile concept of social order. We need to consider our options carefully and with a great sense of urgency. We have reached the capitulation of excess.

“One of the weaknesses of our age is our apparent inability to distinguish our need from our greed.”

Author Unknown

“If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.”

Peter Ustinov (1921 - 2004)

Saprophytes and the Decline of the Empire

Sap•ro•phyte: noun (Origin: 1870–75) any plant that depends on dead plant or animal tissue for a source of nutrition and metabolic energy. Most saprophytes do not produce chlorophyll and therefore do not photosynthesize; they are thus dependent on the food energy they absorb from the decaying tissues.

“Strange new problems are being reported in the growing generations of children whose mothers were always there, driving them around, helping them with their homework - an inability to endure pain or discipline or pursue any self-sustained goal of any sort, a devastating boredom with life.”

Betty Friedan (1921 - 2006)

Every generation has expressed concern with the judgment and commitment of the succeeding generation. The process highlights the gradual evolution of societal values and changes in social morals. I struggle to gauge my opinions against this historical experience of the elder generation, but after considerable personal debate, I think something is fundamentally wrong with the future of the empire. Throughout history succeeding generations have wrested the mantle of leadership by sweat, blood and physical endurance. The continued growth of the empire has always survived and prospered on the strong backs and minds of its youth. Exertion and determination has historically forged the values of the nation’s youth into a collective commitment of success. In our society has always encompassed a range of classes from the overachievers to the underachievers. Capitalism tends to polarize society into the haves and have not’s which has served to illustrate by example the perils of underachievement. Never before has underachievement represented such a majority opinion in the succeeding generation. The current direction of the next generation alarms me over the rapid decline of the once great empire.

Look around the signs of decline and decay is overwhelmingly oblivious. Take your pick of the seven deadly sins lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, anger, envy or vanity which infests our youth of society. To differing extends all of these traits are engrained in our youth coated with a thick patina of apathy. The next generation has assumed the role of saprophytes in the ecology of our society. Saprophytes produce nothing of value but only exist on feeding off the decaying efforts of other plants.

The origin of the decline rests with the do no harm parenting approach and continuous pampering of what I call the marginal generation. Every aspect of daily life is filled with praise and supportive nurturing regardless of the meaninglessness of the activity which provides such a smothering environment of regressive development and emotional dependancy. Attending every baseball or soccer game, mommy is present ever vigilant to treat any emotional distress as dependence on social support is engrained while stifling motivation as every need is met in overabundance. Excessive coddling has manifested itself in an entitlement mentality which is pervasive in society. It’s not my fault that I murdered someone; it was the fault of my abusive family environment which never bought me the newest computer games. Who ever said life was going to be perfect?

Showered with closets overflowing with the newest toys which are objects of interest for a few minutes, they sit in front of the television being trained in a life of consumerism. The process of selling has been so refined and instilled in our culture it is considered a recreational activity. Our youth now makes life decisions purely to support their need for consumer gratification. However this quest for the finer things in life is not focused into dedication and hard work, but rather in ingenious plans to obtain fame and fortune by entitlement and laziness. Large percentages of college graduates, if they graduate at all, move back home so they can live off their parents in order to support an excessive lifestyle of new cars and designer clothing. Increasing percentages of college graduates have never held a job by the time they graduate from college supported only by mom, dad and the student loan program. Ask most first year students why they chose the program their enrolled in and the answer overwhelmingly is it where I can make the most money and get rich. How can you ever succeed in life without a burning desire beyond holding out until payday? Our future is going to be disastrous fueled by an entire generation who refuses to invest but expects wealth to be given as an entitlement. How many malpractice attorneys does the world need? Talk about a monumental wave of midlife crisis covering a large number of the population, when the realization that nothing is given when nothing is earned.

The implications for society are abysmal when we look at the shift from social networks to virtual networks. Social skills are developed with constant interaction with people of all ages, not by being cooped up in mom’s basement playing video games for seven hours a day. We are creating a generation of social minimalists that only feel comfortable in the virtual worlds of gratuitous violence. We wonder why the dramatic increase of schoolyard killing has the education system in a panic. What can you expect from teenagers who spent all their spare time acting out ritual violence in isolation with blunted social skills? This has resulted in one of the lowest professional and public participation rates by youth in history. Why value contributing to society when most is your waking day is seeking fulfillment of self absorbed gratification. It is truly all about me and what will be given to me. All of this activity is reinforced with submissive parenting skills.

It’s interesting that youth is waiting longer and longer before getting married and committing to lifelong relationships. Their answer is wrapped up in an elaborate explanation of personal growth and discovery. Bullshit, I think that they are so self absorbed that they don’t want anyone playing with their stuff. Why should I have to share responsibility for someone else’s needs? That diminishes the time I can spend on myself. Instead, the marginal generation has created this new deeply emotional relationship called friends with benefits. In other words we can have sex with no emotional attachment, but don’t expect a birthday card because it would distract me from my self worship. I know of children who are a result of this wonderful relationship. Just imagine the conversation when the child gets older and wants to know about his mom. “Well I never really knew any thing about her except that after six shots of Jack we would crawl in the back of her car and fuck.” Friends with benefits are really a form of masturbation. Getting tired of screwing your girlfriend in your parent’s bed because your knapsack in the basement just isn’t GQ enough, no problem tossed the bitch like a rash and move on to the next.

The minimal generation is a walking poster child for the seven deadly sins. Which deadly sin should we focus on next? Why not focus on vanity? The fact cosmetic surgery centers are being filled with large numbers of teenage girls spending grandma’s birthday money on beast augmentation in order to fit in with the crowd. A female breast won’t even mature for another decade, why mutilate a body for a temporary mental insecurity which is part of growing up? The dependency on physical appearance is a result of consumerism exorcizing our basis insecurities. What about gluttony? I have to admit that the minimal generation doesn’t maintain sole domain over this sin. Thirty percent of the population is now classified as obese. Food is the perfect consumer product for a self absorbed population. Just think about it. It’s sold and consumed in a matter of minutes and has a short shelf life so that the industry is in constantly replenishing the supply in a never ending process of converting their product into compost.

Our consumer economy has cultivated the sin of envy to a status symbol. Why can’t I drive a Lexus or BWM like my next door neighbor? Children are trained from the earliest moments of life to envy someone who has more possessions or the newest gadget. We are driven to envy the lifestyle we don’t possess. The jeans we wear, the bourbon we drink, 600 count Egyptian cotton sheets we sleep in, the toasters we buy, all are driven at a fundamental level by consumer envy. Cities are blanketed with huge billboards of beautiful men and women whose illusionary lifestyle beckons you to envy them; maybe you can become part of their world if you would only drink the same bourbon. The best way to join that class of social billboard elite is if you drink the same bourbon, lose two hundred pounds, have a facelift and buy a winning lottery number.

The empire has experienced an unprecedented period of prosperity for over two decades. Many segments of society have never experienced an economic downturn, leaving them unprepared to accept a lifestyle aligned with their contribution to society, his is especially true for the minimal generation. I have little sympathy for those who have lived beyond their means and are now in financial collapse because of living on other people’s money. Like a bruise is the outward expression of an internal hemorrhage, our society is hemorrhaging from the inside out. Hard times which will test the will of a nation are ahead. We can recognize this decay and act to change society or take the lead of the minimal generation and head back down to the basement, crawl into an electronic game and masturbate until the power goes off.

“Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.”

Brian Aldiss

“We live in a time of transition, an uneasy era which is likely to endure for the rest of this century. During the period we may be tempted to abandon some of the time-honored principles and commitments which have been proven during the difficult times of past generations. We must never yield to this temptation. Our American values are not luxuries, but necessities - not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself. “

Jimmy Carter (1924 - )

Culture of No

“Frugality without creativity is deprivation.”

Amy Dacyczyn

There is a sinister and insidious process plundering the great public spaces of our nation and few seem to neither notice nor care. Public apathy and ignorance has given this plaque on our sensibilities a foothold challenging the value and even existence of great public spaces. The first victim executed in this all out assault is the creativity of design. It has taken years of close observation to understand this subtle shift away from civic responsibility to the absolution of risk in the construction industry. Society has entered a period of future uncertainty where the bureaucrat and accountant are responsible for the artistic and design values of public spaces. Around the office, we call this new period the “Culture of No”. I am deeply troubled by loss of opportunity to create public spaces of meaning and relevance to further generations. Consider what our world might look like with out Central Park in New York or the Mall in Washington DC.

The creep toward chaos began thirty years ago when in a short sighted attempt to shed liability for the construction process the American Institute of Architects (AIA) positioned architects out of managing the construction process. The thought was if architects are going to be sued for managing the construction process then architects just will limit involvement and inherently shed their liability. This stupid act of contrition has relegated architects to a meaningless and ineffectual seat in the back of the construction industry bus. Once the master builder, the architect abdicated the only meaningful way of controlling quality assurance on the construction site and in the process exponentially increased their liability and risk of litigation. The architect is no longer at the table in a position of authority to defend the design or provide a rational for civic values. The AIA’s decision is one of the world’s greatest blunders. The only logical response to construction liability was for architects to take full control of construction process and insert themselves deeper into on site management. Alas this abdication created a vacuum to fill a fundamental need required by the construction industry and spawned the creation of a new profession, the construction manager.

While a few enlightened architectural firms recognized the opportunity and added construction management as a specialty service, most walked away from the table, leaving general contractors to fill the void. The fox is now running the henhouse as the industry spirals into an abyss that we may never recover from. Recognizing the enormous opportunity to limit risk and reap huge profits general contractors jumped at the chance to control the construction process, especially the budget. Within a short period of twenty years construction managers or what we call “general contractors at no risk” have inserted themselves into the construction process ahead of architects. While this seems benign the result is catastrophic, impacting every decision made during the conception and design of a project.

The sacred one on one relationship between the owner and architect in which design values are established, where art and civic responsibility are discussed, where the relevance of context is formulated no longer exists. Today the discussion managed by the construction manager constantly challenges every decision of the architect on the basis of cost or construction efficiency, before an architectural vision is born. It was once said that an idea at birth is most frail and ever so delicate that it can be easily killed before it has a chance to grow. In the current environment ideas never has a chance to be realized because it is suffocated immediately by the ponderous weight of substandard budgets and schedules exclusively defined by inept construction managers. The industry has evolved to the point where the owner and construction manager establishes a project budget before architect is even selected.

Consider the problem in this approach, a contractor with no training in design is formulating a budget before any exploratory investigations are begun. Without any real interest in design or commitment to artistic expression the construction manager assembles a series of simple white box assumptions which are primarily focused on square foot costs of other uninspired completed generic commercial buildings recognized only for their brutal ugliness. The budget is normally based on the least complex or vanilla solution. There is no consideration for civic responsibility or really any understanding of site context as the construction manager establishes the budget. The motives for the construction manager to set the bar as low as possible are oblivious, because in most cases it will be that same construction manager in the role of general contractor which will be responsible for delivering the project for that budget. In order to make it easy to achieve the goal, all unnecessary complications and complexities are avoided. The construction manager which is really the general contractor is now in position to play both sides against the center. Keeping the bar low and the pricing high allows the construction manager to reap huge profits at the expense of the public.

Once this uninformed vanilla budget is established it becomes law with few exceptions and the entire design process enters the value engineering (VE) stage. Early in my career value engineering was confined to the small world of bringing a project back into budget after prices were received by a competitive bid process. Today VE is a constant process of striping integrity from a project before it is fully conceived. The joke around the office it that “value engineering is of no value and it ain’t engineering”. For example a recent project was budgeted without geotechnical investigations. After the geotechnical engineer discovered a high groundwater table it was necessary to include a foundation dewatering system which would cost $500,000. Guess what the original budget established by some uninformed manager did not include a dewatering system, so it becomes the responsible of the architect to gut $500,000 out of a project which is already without frills. No discussion that this omission should have been considered by the construction manager. No discussion that the budget should be increase to accommodate the unknown site conditions. No, just cut the public improvements, just cut the plazas, just remove the grand entry, and just make everything we build look like a cheap target store. The worst of all is the construction manager doesn’t see anything wrong with that. A cheap target store is much easier to build, much more predictable to cost than a beautiful work of architecture.

In another project of significance we were asked to submit a proposal to a nationally recognized architect. We explored the beautiful and elaborate preliminary concepts developed by the architect, estimating in detail what each component would cost based on similar projects we have completed around the nation. When we were done we estimated the budget to achieve the architects schematic vision was about 1.5 million dollars. Presenting the estimates to the architect, the construction manager piped up and said they had only budgeted $175,000 for the work, a tenfold difference. Somewhat in shock I asked “What is that number based on? Did you even look at these drawings?”

The construction manager said “We gave the drawings to Mullet Contractors to give us a price. You know the inept, unqualified group that has been in court constantly because of construction fraud. You know that group of thieves that has been kicked off every project in the metro because they don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.”

“You mean you accepted this unqualified unresponsive number without validating it and this was the basis for your entire construction estimate? There was no information on materials, no specifications, no allowances, no established schedule or no direction given beyond this rough sketch?” I ask not believing how this is not considered a criminal act.

With total lack of concern he replies “Yeah, that’s how we did it and no we won’t change it”.

How does one ever begin to close the distance between $1,500,000 and $175,000. What will the public get from the incredible artistic vision by the architect? They will get another cheap looking Kmart with a parking lot, never a functioning urban space which creates great cities. The saddest part is that if the owner really knew the cost early in the process, he would have authorized the additional cost, but the gatekeeper of the budget is the construction manager and his culture is no. Whenever the construction manager needs to increase the budget in order to build the minimum requirement, they blame the overage on the architect and get to increase their fee to manage the overage.

In a recent example on an important civic building in which hundreds of thousands of patrons will visit each year, we discussed with the owner over four months the budget to create a grand public space respectful of the grand public. Our assumptions were slightly over 2 million dollars, again based on extensive experience and knowledge. When out of the blue we receive an email from the construction manager blistering us for not designing with any concern for budget and that the design team was being totally irresponsible. Confused we called a meeting asking for clarification, knowing we were working off our budget assumptions discussed with the owner. In the meeting the construction manager finally had to reveal the secret budget assumptions they were working with and for the first time provided line item budget pricing. They estimated that the civic masterpiece costing hundreds of million dollars on a large difficult site would only require $650,000 for everything around the building. When pressed on what was the basis of that estimate? They only offered that it was an unsubstantiated guess without supporting documentation. Let it be known that we were not dealing with a new inexperienced constructor manager but one of the top ten largest groups in the nation. Once again an inept uncaring untrained construction estimator is making decisions about how are cities will be designed?

In each of these examples, the construction manager defined an unrealistic budget which eliminates all opportunity for public space. They achieve credibility because everything they build is basically cheap and ugly, and when a challenge to their budget is made they can trot out fifty examples of cheap buildings as comparison. How can they get away with the destruction to our urban environments while lining their pockets with huge profits? The answer is easy; they have a facilitator, the risk avoidance governmental bureaucrat.

The culture of no is endorsed by the public officials who are responsible with protecting the public good. Bureaucrats are a relatively benign group of wall flowers devoid of artistic appreciation. They are simple managers that do what they are told and only worry about the criteria under which their performance is measured. Unfortunately we do not ask bureaucrats to create urban spaces of great value to society, we ask them to manage projects that are delivered in budget, on time and that adhere with the rules. As a result government bureaucrats deny any discussion which could threaten the schedule or more importantly the budget. This myopic fear of not delivering a project on budget makes the bureaucrat unable to adjudicate project objectives that require advocating for increased budget funding. The culture of no places the risk avoidance governmental bureaucrat as the gatekeeper of public benefit. When the process combines the construction manager’s personal agenda to keep it simple to make money and the bureaucrat’s inordinate fear of challenging the process, the result is a culture of no.

What was once an infrequent imposition on creativity has now developed into a process that rewards inept managers, greedy contractors and ignores the public good. The future of social environments is uncertain. Having considered the trend for many years, I’m pessimistic about the system changing anytime soon. The architect is helpless, the public has no advocate, the construction managers won’t relinquish control and the bureaucrat won’t do anything to be criticized about so the urban environment will continue to be a victim of the culture of no.

“The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.”

Brooks Atkinson (1894 - 1984)