28 May 2018
The Adelaide hills are truly beautiful.
I spent last Friday and Saturday staying at the Stirling hotel for work and broke up the second morning with an enchanting walk around Stirling and through to Aldgate. In fact I was so beguiled by the experience that we drove back the following day to Woodside and a relaxing afternoon at Bird in Hand; watching the kids make friends on the lawns with a glass of ‘cellar door only’ Pinot Grigio quenching the thirst.
As I said the day before to my business partner and Mount George resident…they are so accessible… you could almost live there!
And living there would mean a short commute. But not a traffic snarled, six lane, jammed up, big city commute. I’m imagining a free flowing winding road with idyllic scenery, and for those who know the ‘car person’ that I am… that’s pretty attractive in itself.
Which brings me to cars.
If it were your thing too and you were able or willing to make the investment you could enjoy that drive in something remarkable like a Bugatti. Once in a lifetime kind of stuff, so maybe we should pitch a little more realistically at say a Porsche or an Audi, or maybe the Italian flavour of a Lamborghini – still pretty amazing.
But maybe cars are not your thing and instead you need three child seats in the back of a station wagon with diesel efficiency, or a ute to carry your work gear. In which case perhaps a Skoda wagon or a VW Amarok would tick the box.
The thing is, it wouldn’t worry Volkswagen which you chose….because they own them all.
And Fiat wouldn’t mind if you chose their base model diesel Punto, or styled it up in an Alfa Romeo, or 4 wheel drove in a Jeep, or jumped in the big hairy V8 Chrysler, or a Dodge or a Lancia….because FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles) own all of them too.
The car manufacturing industry learned some time ago how to agglomerate for efficiency but target market segments with completely convincing separation.
I’m sure you’ve seen my parallel.
Car companies offer us the chance to engage with them at many levels and accepting of many different price points.
I suggest however that we tend to promise and expect of architecture to try and do it all. To be innovative, to be cost effective, to be sustainable, flexible and so on all in one.
A standard architectural practice simply can’t offer every model, and a multitude of separate practices just race to the bottom through competition. Maybe the whole notion of how we structure our businesses could change. Maybe we could connect and specialise rather than compete at all levels. We are seeing more and more JV relationships; will some of us start to take the next step and cure the demise of the mid size architectural practice.
Mario Dreosti
SA Chapter President