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I seem to have missed where they have any Houston projects even listed.  Texas wasn’t a selection for locations.  Would be nice to see what they have been working on locally - that said, it is possible I missed it!

 

They certainly have a lot of work in Boston.  Which reminds me that Houston really lost out when the big firms: CRS, 3Di and Morris all floundered and either went out of business, or merged and then eventually lost clout as original/key designers left and/or died.  What’s our largest local firm?  Kirksey?  pagethink (or whatever they call themselves now)?

Houston has no major firm with national exposure.

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On 5/16/2022 at 11:42 AM, arche_757 said:

I seem to have missed where they have any Houston projects even listed.  Texas wasn’t a selection for locations.  Would be nice to see what they have been working on locally - that said, it is possible I missed it!

I think it's odd there are no Texas projects listed given that, at least locally, they are responsible for the designs of 3737 Buffalo Speedway, 4 Waterway Square24 Waterway Ave, The Westin at The Woodlands, and the Waterway Square Garage.

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On 5/25/2022 at 1:18 PM, ChannelTwoNews said:

I think it's odd there are no Texas projects listed given that, at least locally, they are responsible for the designs of 3737 Buffalo Speedway, 4 Waterway Square24 Waterway Ave, The Westin at The Woodlands, and the Waterway Square Garage.

It's remarkable how bad most architecture firms are with their web sites. 

I've worked with a few that built buildings of 80, 90, or 100 stories, but never list them on their web sites.  Meanwhile, they have an entire page gushing about some two-story house because it belongs to the neighbor of one of the partners.

Some seem to get all new web sites each year, right about the time the latest batch of interns is settling in.

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14 hours ago, editor said:

It's remarkable how bad almost all architecture firms are with their: web sites/marketing/PR.

There I fixed it for you!

But to your point, yes, architectural websites are often either overly artistic with difficult to figure out graphic interfaces, or they are oddly outdated with regard to projects they feature.  Many firms even seemingly hide their actual work, which is odd, particularly since that IS what an architect does.  First, second and third.  HOK (for example) has oodles of info about some “place making,” or their take on “the future of workplaces” before you can get to what it is they have done.  Some firms even have people listed ahead of projects.

Of course, the target audience isn’t other Architect’s.

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  • 9 months later...

I noticed EMA does not include Texas in their portfolio section on their website.  I wonder why? They have some very large, expensive, projects here.  

They should at least include the famous TMC Helix Park development on their website. Maybe they can loop it into their life science section?

I wonder if they would ever open a satellite office in Houston specializing in healthcare/life sciences? We sure do have the industry to support it!

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On 6/10/2022 at 4:14 PM, editor said:

It's remarkable how bad most architecture firms are with their web sites. 

I've worked with a few that built buildings of 80, 90, or 100 stories, but never list them on their web sites.  Meanwhile, they have an entire page gushing about some two-story house because it belongs to the neighbor of one of the partners.

Some seem to get all new web sites each year, right about the time the latest batch of interns is settling in.

This goes to the fact that for a long time the AIA either overtly or covertly established an "ethic" within the discipline that it was taboo to "advertise". This is why the only time you really get to interact with the latest firm work is by going to specific architecture publications, as asking a magazine, journal, or periodical was not seen by the AIA as advertising, but an academic enterprise of "contributing" to the "discussion". The AIA has always been stuffy about this for reasons I could talk about another time, but there is an entire old guard of Boomer, and Gen X architects who were raised within the discipline with this hanging over their heads. Its only been within the past decade or so that the AIA has quietly relinquished this because of threats by younger architects (and I believe lawsuits as well), and the fact that the internet makes it impossible for the AIA to police how architects interact with the body politic, and clients in general. I have a lot of say about the AIA, but again that is discussion for another time.

The other half of this is that architects are not properly educated in business in school. Architects are first taught to almost exclusively think like pure artists all the way until graduation which sets them up for failure in actually treating their work like products that are part of a greater market which can be shown to bring in more clients. This is starting to change again with the internet, but it has a long way to go. Your typical firm Founders, CEO's, Partners, and Principals still don't fully utilize the internet or even advertise and instead default to word of mouth from client to client to client to client. If architects were actually trained in the art of business instead of only being trained to be artists, but who need to see themselves like lawyers? then this would change.

On 6/11/2022 at 6:40 AM, arche_757 said:

There I fixed it for you!

But to your point, yes, architectural websites are often either overly artistic with difficult to figure out graphic interfaces, or they are oddly outdated with regard to projects they feature.  Many firms even seemingly hide their actual work, which is odd, particularly since that IS what an architect does.  First, second and third.  HOK (for example) has oodles of info about some “place making,” or their take on “the future of workplaces” before you can get to what it is they have done.  Some firms even have people listed ahead of projects.

Of course, the target audience isn’t other Architect’s.

Which is why architecture websites seem overly artistic because your old guard has it engrained into them that Architecture is not a profession where you advertise yourself, and instead the website is a digital portfolio to show work that will focus usually on how they present themselves not to clients, but to other architects peers. Most firm websites are not built for finding new clients. They are built to signal who they are to other architects.

@Highrise Tower was going to get to what you posted, but I'll get to that later. Realized as I was typing this that I need to get to work.

 

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