A Quarterly for the Real Estate, Design, and Construction Industries

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Fall 1998
Volume 18, Issue 3

 


Professionals Should Have More FUN!
by Barry B. LePatner, Esq.

This article is excerpted from Barry B. LePatner's presentation made at Harvard's Graduate School of Design in August, 1998.

Professional services firms must learn the value of honing the practice skills of everyone in their firms who works on a client's project. In doing so, principals must also recognize that they can improve these skills and make their practices a fun place to be. Professionals are well aware of the wisdom of the quote by Will Rogers: "You never get a second chance to make a first impression". It is startling to see how many principals do not know how to WOW! a client with a well-prepared, thought- provoking presentation. There is no magic to making this happen. Small and medium sized firms have learned that they can steal the best projects from their more established peers by spending the time and effort on learning skills that show their enthusiasm while exhibiting the hallmark of the best marketing-oriented firms.

Here are some thoughts and suggestions that may jog some and provoke others into moving forward to a more exciting, energized and, the truth be told, fun-filled practices that will make your firms places that retain talented staff while improving the caliber of their clientele. All can be implemented and the resultant successes achieved while increasing the fun element of serving your clients.

It is important to recognize that the essence of a professional services firm is the delivery of pure, raw brainwork. Combining ingenuity and design skills with today's advanced technology can be exciting and fun as it enables the firm to recognize that you must improve and re-invent yourself each year if you are to DIFFERENTIATE YOURSELF from all others in your field. What could be more exciting than adopting as your firm's motto the words of the late Jerry Garcia:

"You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be ONLY one who does what you do!"

Tom Peters, in his excellent new book, The Circle of Power (Knopf, 1997) notes that professionals don't get paid to show up. They get paid to push, nudge, cajole, in short, to provoke. Smart leaders will make this concept the essence of what their firm is about. Increasingly, today's projects do not lend themselves to pat answers, or easy solutions. Your clients consistently come to you for unique ideas to their thorny problems. When you delight them with a result that exceeds their reasonable expectations they generally do one or two things: they send more work your way and\or recommend you to others.

Innovation is in, the moribund is out. It is time to discard tired, outdated ideas that date your firm to the 1980s and, heaven forfend, the 1970s. Try really listening to your fellow principals and associates or get an objective colleague or business friend to listen to a firm practice presentation. If you do not discard and replace at least fifty percent of what you see and hear, you have not been trying hard enough or just don't want to try to make the improvements needed. Remember the words of John Maynard Keynes: "The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget about old ideas."

Develop a defined marketing strategy that is consistent with your firm's strengths and is directed to a clientele whose business environment you know and understand. If you need help to do this, hire a sophisticated outside consultant, even if it's one from the business world. For an excellent three-day program enroll in Harvard Graduate School of Design's summer course, "A. Eugene Kohn on Marketing" which will expose you and your colleagues to one of the world's best marketers of design services (and guest lecturers — including yours truly — on a variety of marketing topics).

Identify whether your firm needs to add staff with different or better skills to meet the marketing strategy you have defined. Making changes in personnel to meet your business goals is a critical step in becoming a firm for the millennium. Keep in mind the sage advice of Jerry Krause, general manager of the Chicago Bulls, who must know something about putting the right team together: "If you have two people who think the same, fire one of them. What do you need duplication for?"

Define your client's expectations on each project and then do what it takes to exceed them. Nothing else can be as exciting or more fun as strategizing how to make your client see that you have brought your creative talents to their project and helped make the client team look great by helping them achieve or exceed their goals for the project. The thrill of accomplishing this goal will only be exceeded by the thanks you will receive from the client and the desire on the part of your staff to repeat the thrill on every project in the firm.

Identify whether the leadership of your firm cares about having fun. If they are not so inclined, and if you see the light and the value of building a successful practice that can bring different talents to a client's project, work hard and have fun, find others who see things the way you do and form your own firm. You will never regret doing so as you will have traded the old and the tired for the new, the heroic and the fun attitude you will undoubtedly bring to the new venture. Clients will notice the difference and ask you why you didn't strike out on your own years ago.

WHAT FUN!!!



Minimizing the High Risk in Building the High Rise
Building for the 21st Century
by Roy R. Pachecano, AIA

It was the worst hurricane to hit the east coast since the National Weather Service began keeping records. The devastation it left in its wake was an estimated one trillion dollars to property and real estate. The natural disaster also claimed thousands of lives as even the ‘safest' places to take cover were not adequate for providing shelter. From city-center to the suburban outfield, the ruins of the storm left an impression of an image out of a science-fiction film: A metropolis wasteland visited by warring aliens where even the tallest sky-scrapers were toppled by the implosion created by the turbulent wind.

After being mesmerized by such a cataclysmic event, a common response by high-end property owners whose buildings and improvements were erased is to ask - Could this loss have been minimized or the damage reduced?

Under circumstances of complete and total loss an owner may only be able to find relief through its property insurance. But chances are these coverages will not recover the effort and time spent on developing a corporation's image through design. With rising insurance premiums placed in these targeted high-risk areas, insurance companies are poised to reap substantial revenues. The increases are largely based on two factors: (1) fear of loss and (2) the increased atmospheric phenomenon known as El-Nino whose influence on design and construction is only now beginning to be felt.

Building Codes Upgraded

The above scenario describes the engineer's worst nightmare - structures failing under high winds designed for a locale where typhoons and/or hurricanes are common. Yet, this hypothetical disaster is a potential reality. Such a scenario of complete devastation has prompted today's design and construction team to consider worse-case scenarios in a new light. Furthermore, their code of professional duties mandates that they design spaces that will protect the public's health, welfare and safety.

It is estimated that 80% of the world's most desired commercial real-estate lies on waterfront property that is prone to seasonal disturbances and considered by many municipalities in those areas as regions that warrant strict building codes and regulations beyond those mandated by federal law. The incentives to lure land-development in such high-risk weather prone areas as Hong-Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Miami, Houston, New Orleans have been promulgated by local governments who vocalize an upgrade in the local building code to promote higher construction standards and consequently, higher grade buildings. Even municipalities as far north as New York City have put into place sweeping changes to their seismic and sustainable wind load building codes so as to provide an additional measure of quality construction. These city or township governments have sought to ensure the safety of their residents while simultaneously marketing their communities as providing an abundant, safe and buildable construction environment. In New York City, what high-wind damage looms is exacerbated by the close proximity of buildings which amplify winds created in the tight city blocks. Owners are asking design professionals how can they help protect their investments?

Solutions in recent years to this reoccurring question can be seen in the design and construction of Norman Foster's Commerzbank in Frankfurt and KPF's World Financial Center, currently under construction, in Shanghai. These are two of the latest sky-scrapers whose use of technology and aerodynamic profile influenced its design and brought a new look to the image of the high-rise -- something that owners in the corporate world still value - a distinct image. However ‘new-age' these technology driven sky-scrapers are, they have yet to defy the laws of nature and still employ the simple static equilibrium mathematics to calculate the resistance of wind loads. This traditional method of calculation takes into account, among other things, tremendous lateral forces at the top due to the pressure of the wind at a high altitude and gravity - which, when combined, are forces which have always limited the extent to how high a building could be. What distinguishes these buildings from their counterparts, however, is that both have large openings to allow wind to pass through the structure and are equipped with smooth curtain wall systems. Advanced as they are, they are the harbingers for the next generation of skyscraper.

A New Type of Structure

Much is being done to study alternative solutions in the area of high-rise design for locations where probability for a hurricane strike is good to likely. Most research in design and construction technology beyond the graduate and doctoral level at universities is being performed outside the United States in countries like Japan, France, Germany and Great Britain. Construction companies like Obayashi, based in Tokyo, for example have assigned significant amounts of resources towards research and development of building technology for the twenty-first century aimed at loss prevention. Much of the research currently underway is devoted to the integration of new building techniques while re-visiting the fundamentals of why buildings stand up. A recent series of experiments conducted in Kobayashi's Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel is based on the premise that a structure may also be a ‘dynamic' entity - i.e.; movable - in addition to its primary role of being ‘static'. The concept follows: rather than design a structure to resist the wind, why not design a structure to respond to the wind. This may result in less structural elements and possibly even a rotating base to position the entire building in alignment with the prevailing winds. Like sails on a boat, futuristic ‘wings' will improve the stability through turbulent wind conditions allowing air to enter and pass through the structure. Such an unconventional notion of a structure in motion has given rise to a new breed of high-rise structures that will use both static and dynamic elements that will play key roles in the overall design of the structure. This seemingly overthrow of classical notions of statics marks a turn away from the conventional way of building for the first-time in the history of high-rise design.

This Is Only The Beginning

Where the United States' lags in university and private research, it gains in governmental support. The United States' strongest export sector, aerospace technology, is helping the construction industry understand the effects of the atmosphere on buildings. Leading this front is NASA's effort in building the International Space Station which will directly benefit the design and construction industries through the discovery of new materials, automation and artificial intelligence in construction. NASA's mission "to accelerate breakthroughs in technology and engineering that will have immediate, practical applications for life on Earth" is being put to the test with the goal to have the US Habitation Module in place at the space station by January 2004.

A New Frontier

As these and other new ideas are being tested, the future of aerodynamic building technology will define the new role of the skyscraper in those regions where land is very valuable and limited supply places a demand on land-development but whose location is tempered by being in a high risk zone because of seasonal hurricanes and/or high winds.

In many ways, the basis for high-rise construction has always been to build to withstand the elements. Yet, the extent to which we allow these external elements to influence our built environment is a reflection of our desire to always relate back to those things from where we came: light, water, fire, earth and wind.


Roy R. Pachecano, AIA is Design Consultant to LePatner & Associates. He has studied and worked in the United States, Japan and Europe with architects, engineers and construction firms.



Protect Your Architectural Work
by Lina G. Telese, Esq.

The design, construction and real estate industries should all be aware of the protection which is afforded under the U.S. Copyright laws, which protect original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression. The copyright laws apply to the expression of an idea, but not the idea itself. An original design of a building embodied in any tangible medium of expression, including a building, architectural plans or drawings, is subject to copyright protection as an "architectural work" under Section 102 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C., as amended on December 1, 1990.

The use of the term "building" excludes many types of three-dimensional works worthy of copyright protection such as bridges, walkways, recreational vehicles, mobile homes, boats and gardens. However, the use of the word "building" does include not only structures inhabited by humans, but also those used by humans, such as churches, pergolas, gazebos and garden pavilions.

It should be noted that a copyright is distinct from a patent. There are three basic differences between the two. First, the subject matter differs because patents are directed at physical, scientific and technological things, whereas copyrights are directed at artistic and intellectual works. In general, copyrightable works are nonfunctional, such as a writing, painting or piece of sculpture. Second, patents offer considerably more protection. A patent is a seventeen year monopoly granted to the inventor by the federal government in exchange for a complete and thorough description of his or her invention. Third, unlike the patent process, it is a relatively simple matter to obtain copyright registration. An application is submitted, together with a filing fee and one original copy of the unpublished work to be copyrighted.

What rights inure to the author of the copyrighted material? Copyright grants four rights exclusively to the author or owner of the architectural work: the right to transform or adapt the work into another form; the right to make copies; the right to distribute copies; and the right to display the work publicly. Anyone who violates any of these rights provided to the author or owner of the copyright is committing an illegal act.

All authors and owners are advised to have their architectural work and the technical drawings registered with the copyright office. While registration with the copyright office is not essential for the creation of a copyright, the copyright holder is certainly not without incentives to register. First and foremost, a completed registration is an indispensable prerequisite to the filing of an action for infringement. Once the material has been registered, it is immaterial whether the infringement sued upon occurred before or after the effective date of registration. Additionally, a certificate providing a registration made before or within five years after first publication of a work constitutes prima facie evidence of the validity both of the copyright and the facts stated in the certificate. A court may not award statutory damages or attorneys' fees for any infringement of an unpublished work occurring before registration or for any infringement of a published work not registered within three months of publication. Other notable benefits of registration include preservation of the copyright, at least in certain circumstances, even when the work as published bears no notice whatsoever, and protection of the actual owner's interest when the notice erroneously names another as the proprietor of the copyright.

Because of the copyright laws, a developer-owner does not have a free hand to clone a building or one of its elements unless he or she receives an assignment of the design copyright or the architect is his or her employee, even if he or she owns the blueprints and drawings. If the developer is not the owner of the architectural work or the technical drawings and does not have an interest in the work by way of an assignment or otherwise, he or she may, be required to defend against an infringement action by the architect of the original building. The developer might consider purchasing the copyright, which is assignable like any other copyright, along with the blue prints and the drawings, especially if the developer intends to use the design at a different location.

Architects should be mindful that there is no such thing as an "international copyright", that will automatically protect an authorship throughout the entire world. Protection against unauthorized use in a particular country basically depends upon the national laws of that country. However, most countries do offer protection to foreign works under certain conditions, and these conditions have been greatly simplified by international copyright treaties and conventions such as The Berne Union for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Property and the Universal Copyright Convention. If the country in which protection is sought is party to one of the international copyright conventions, the work generally may be protected by complying with the conditions of that convention.

Architects can also protect themselves against an unlawful copying by including provisions in their agreements with client owners or developers that state that the architect is the author and owner of the architectural work and retains possession to and ownership in the work. In the event an Architect does anticipate having a developer clone its architectural work in another country, the architect should not only have its work registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, but should also determine to what extent copyright protection is available to foreign authors in that country by way of an international copyright convention or the local laws governing copyright protection in that particular country.

There is immediate protection under copyright law from the instant your work is created in a fixed form. However, there is not nearly as much to do to get your work copyrighted as there is to get an invention patented. No searches are necessary and there are no complicated applications that require specifications or claims to be made. All architects should protect their authorship and ownership in their architectural work and technical drawings and register their work with the U.S. Copyright Office.

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