Interview– Jim Kettig
Project Architect @Edward I. Mills and Associates
Photographer: Goseong - Website - IG
Editor: Ryan Kane
“It's such a crazy, big, complicated industry. You've always got more to learn. Nothing should be beneath you, right? There were some people who were at Skidmore, and they were like, ‘Oh, I'm just going to be an expert in doing curtain walls. That's what I'm going to do.’ Well, then when the recession hits and nobody's building big buildings, you don't have any idea how to do little projects — you're cooked! So, I just think you have to be willing to be interested in learning everything. If you’re in a big firm, don’t get pigeonholed into one little thing.”
What does good design mean to you? I started in ‘72 at Cooper. John Hejduk had been there for just a few years at that point, and they’d just come out with the big Museum of Modern Art book. So, for the first few years under Hejduk, what that produced in terms of student work was what was in that MoMA show. And if you look at that, it was what people would call formalism. It was all about architectonics and that classic . . . 9-square grid project when you came into first year. The curriculum was similar to stuff they did in the Bauhaus. That was the kind of thing where you drink that Kool-Aid. The initial idea was to kind of break everybody down, get you out of your own personal preconceptions, and introduce you to what is thought of as a universal language of basic visual forms and spatial stuff. And I thought it was great. I definitely signed on to that.
But what interested me was, in my later years at Cooper, and then after Cooper, that period of so-called postmodernism, which I never understood. I understood that there needed to be something beyond the white box. Not everything can be a minimalist white box, and if you don’t ever go beyond the 9-square grid problem, you just get a bunch of white boxes. So you know that there is something else out there. But postmodernism, at least as most people practiced it, just seemed so superficial and kind of random decorative.
I think that whole formalist training is basically what I got at Cooper, although I will say that the other interesting thing about the time I was at Cooper was that it was also when Hejduk very deliberately brought in Raimund Abraham as a big influence in the school. Ray’s stuff had nothing to do with the 9-square grid. He was kind of an attractive figure because he was all about stuff that was much more tactile and much more emotional, and that was the kind of person and designer he was. So I think there was the basic 9-square grid dogma, and there was Ray. And it struck me that some combination of that made sense.
If you look at my master’s thesis . . . the formalist stuff is all there for sure, the basic language. But it was all about, what is a way to look at history that is not just, like, stealing a classical pediment and putting it on something? What I was interested in was the historical concepts — not the historical language of physical parts, but concepts. That was the whole thesis: a timeline through western civilization that tied together, in each period, whatever was going on in garden design, whatever was going on in theater design, and whatever was going on in urban design. And I think that's kinda still where I’m at.
When you say, ‘What is good design?’ I think that there is that thing that they taught very well at Cooper, and they teach it very well at Cornell, which is the basic 9-square architectonics thing. Certainly if you look at the work I did back then, like my thesis project, it had to do with all that 9-square grid formalism. But it was a farm. It was a farm made of stone. And it was agricultural. It was kind of soft. It wasn't some kind of concrete or steel. So I think that there is some truth to this notion that there is a basic kind of universal language. But it has also got its limits. And you have to look beyond that and incorporate cultural stuff.
There is a reason why people respond to really well done old classical buildings. It goes beyond. It’s not the same thing as the 9-square grid. It's a slightly different kind of language and vocabulary. There is always going to be some version of that architectonic language there. And the whole ‘form follows function’ thing is sort of true up to a point. The program is very important. The building absolutely is somehow a reflection of the program if it’s going to be successful. But things vary — there’s individual cultural differences, references, etc.
What is your strongest architectural memory? As a little kid, I was attracted to the blocks. I played with blocks, played with erector sets, played with Lincoln Logs — whatever was available when I was a kid. My parents were encouraging, and they were enlightened enough. I actually still have one of the first editions of the House of Cards that Eames designed. They bought me one of those decks of cards, and I used to use those in my buildings.
So I was inclined to do that before I even went to school. But the real turning point for me, I remember, was one day in fourth grade. Everybody in class would subscribe to this little newspaper, and you’d get it once a week . . and it was current events, news. So one day the weekly reader shows up, and on the cover is a photograph of Ronchamp. It had just been finished, Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp chapel. And I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. What's this? This is a building? This is what you can do with a building? This is what I want to do.’ So that was the turning point, when I saw that. Then, on our honeymoon we went to Europe, and I said, ‘There’s gotta be one stop.’ And we went to Ronchamp. And it was great. It was beautiful.
What part of your job do you like and dislike? And Why? I like being a generalist. I like the variety that's involved with stuff we have to deal with. I mean, talk about people who multitask. That was the other thing about working a small firm on many projects versus working on one big project. I've got, like, eight projects I work on every day. So there's all different projects; and within each project I'm working on all the different aspects of it. So I enjoy that juggling. I enjoy the variety.
What do I not like? I really hate door schedules. Door hardware schedules. [Laughs] I would be perfectly happy if I arrived at a point where I never had to be responsible for one again, and somebody else could do that. I mean, even on these jobs where you have consultants helping prepare the door schedules, there's always a mistake somewhere. It's incredibly complicated to get it right. Nobody ever gets it 100% right that I've ever seen. So, I hate door hardware schedules.”
Do you have a set of rules you make for yourself to excel in your job? I don't think of myself as a perfectionist, because I think that would drive you crazy if you're a true perfectionist. But I sort of . . . aspire to be a perfectionist. I hate it when we get into jobs, and something pops up, and it's wrong — we made a mistake in our drawings. You know, you just try to avoid that.
In this office, we typically do a lot more detailing than other offices, we put a lot more in the drawings than a lot of offices. If you don’t figure all that stuff out and get it down on paper, nobody else is gonna figure it out. So, you always get into the job, and it turns out, if you haven’t figured it out in advance, there isn’t a good solution. There’s some compromise, there’s some problem, whatever. I do try to think about it as the builder — as the guy who's bidding on the project and building it. I'm looking at this and going, ‘What do I really need to do here? How do I price this? What exactly is going into this?’ I try to give those guys that information. Otherwise, there are endless, endless disagreements.
What are the kinds of changes you want to see in this industry based on your experience? I don’t really have a good answer to that, because what would I like to see changed? I would like to see society value architects more so the fees go up. You know, people don't do much to limit the fees in the financial industry. And doctors get paid well, lawyers get paid well, etc. I mean, I don't know how you make that change.
We’ve certainly had these huge clients who think they know better. They can be the architect, and you’re just pushing a pencil or something. And what are the results? It's awful. It's chaotic. It costs them money in the end because it's inefficient. And it generally results in ugly things. And they don't know better. Architects are trained to do what we do.
I do think there's a thing that is probably still true — it certainly was true back when I started going to school — that they do these surveys and they ask people about what they think of various professions. For the architects: ‘Oh yeah, it's cool, it’s great to be an architect.’ But society certainly doesn't actually seem to acknowledge that, do they? When it comes to paying somebody for what they do, it's not considered very important what we do.
What are the things you wish you had known before you started working in this industry? Well, I guess I kind of knew. I think architecture has a reputation of relatively low pay among professions. I knew what the deal was — that I wasn't going to get rich at it.
I guess what I certainly didn't think about was liability. Would it prevent me from doing it? Probably not. But it's something I wasn't aware of. And part of the liability, while not exactly the same thing, is the fee structure. There's a fundamental problem with the fee structure and the way architects are paid, which is that our fee . . . is some tiny fraction of the actual costs of getting the project done — the physical construction costs.
Since you are the generalist who has ultimate responsibility for the coordination of everything, you make at least a million decisions on even just a medium-sized project. And here's the problem: If even one decision is wrong, if anything goes wrong — the cost of the door hardware, or the windows, or whatever it is that went wrong is probably about equal to your fee. Which means, if you have a client who wants to hold you responsible for the cost of every single thing in the project, it's almost impossible to do a project and collect your whole fee. And even if you're perfect, in the private realm anyway, hardly anybody is ever paid our whole fee — you just get stiffed on the last payments. Nobody wants to pay it, and they know it's too small for you to bother to go to court and sue for it. So you just don't get paid. That is the nice thing about government work, and probably most institutional work. It may take you a while to get paid, but you get paid. In the private realm, if somebody doesn't want to pay you, they just don’t pay you. There’s not much you can do.
Do you have any last words or advice for prospective architects? It's such a crazy, big, complicated industry. You've always got more to learn. Nothing should be beneath you, right? There were some people who were at Skidmore, and they were like, ‘Oh, I'm just going to be an expert in doing curtain walls. That's what I'm going to do.’ Well, then when the recession hits and nobody's building big buildings, you don't have any idea how to do little projects — you're cooked! So, I just think you have to be willing to be interested in learning everything. If you’re in a big firm, don’t get pigeonholed into one little thing.
