This is like 3 days late….but whatever. :-\
How do you communicate differently online than in person, if at all? How do you communicate emotion and intent in a purely written medium?
When you think of “architecture” or “architect” the first things to come to mind are most likely your favorite or most often seen buildings, rolls of drawings, or Keanu Reeves from that movie The Lake House. What probably doesn’t come to mind is a guy in a suit standing in front of a projector screen giving a presentation to a group of old white guys or at a construction site with sleeves rolled up arguing with a contractor about one thing or another. But let me tell you, this is much closer to the truth.
The first and last thing we do, as architects, is communicate. It is the first and most often used tool in the Architect’s repertoire. And we’re not talking just verbal communication here either, though that is incredibly important. We must also communicate visually with hand sketches, models, drawings, specifications and even random, insane looking hand motions.
And how you communicate, whether via email, speech, drawing, sketching or frantic waving of hands, is just as important as the information being communicated. There needs to be a consistency in your delivery. If you’re all over the place and can’t keep things moving smoothly then chances are you’re not getting a ton of call backs or referrals.
At the end of the day an Architect needs to be consistent in their communication, no matter the medium. And we should be ever improving ourselves in this skill in order to provide better service to our clients, build more solid relationships with engineers and contractors and ultimately aid in building a better world for future generations.
r | one studio architecture 