I also conducted brief phone interviews with Howard Davies, a Montreal architect and Claude Berri, a Montreal Based architectural motivator who works with architects to educate about professional practice and liability.

Interview with Marianne McKenna
Of Kuwabara, Payne, McKenna, Bloomberg Architects, Toronto
February 1, 2001

Paraphrased Excerpts/Ideas

Design Exchange
Design Exchange gave out "Design Effectiveness" awards which sent out the message: good design is good business be it objects, industrial design
They (KPMB) got one for Providence Centre (an old age home in Toronto) the project has a community aspect-longterm care for the sick and elderly (Marianne is in charge of all the community projects)
Health care, taking care of the frail and elderly
Everyone in office thought there was no chance a healthcare project could win a design award-this is a problem, people need to change what is recognized as good design, rethink criteria

Design Effectiveness awards were conducted by the national post and the design exchange, in joint venture
Need to substantiate that good design is good business
Need to celebrate them (clients) for being enlightened--should acknowledge them for spending more-thank them
Instead, we are all just looking at each other: only architects are aware of who gets awards or noticed-this is another problem

Architectural Bodies Existing Today
Bodies are quite ineffective-not promoting the profession of architects-protecting the public from architects

Myths of the Practice
At KPMB, we try to dissolve the 'myths' of the practice
Myth of the white male, sole proprietor
Their firm challenges these notions
Myth one-all equal,
Myth two-that it is Bruce (Kuwabara)'s practice

Importance of Good design
Promote good design-best thing
example the house built on the mcgill campus-not good design
Lost opportunities
Need to tantilize with good design

Fields Institute in Toronto is a benchmark for change-example of good design

Give arch 80% of fee laid out by decree-which is much lower than their fees

Push for higher fees

Complexity of construction

Building for all time-not just building for now-need to develop the attitude that building will last forever

Values of ensuring quality

Institutional means a higher level of quality-money isn't coming out of someone's pocket
Empowered to spend all the money don't have to save the money

Community Involvement
Bring neighbourhood problems to the center
Teaching design in school-not just art
Not just looking at painting-looking at objects
(Woman who teaches at Earl Bales-teaches architecture at a high school level)

CCA-no bar for architects to gather-this is another lost opportunity, no way to bring architects in the space to use it.

Community architecture school-also bring together other disciplines
Clear need to educate what architecture can do
Profession is changing

Lawyers, accountants, communication specialists-all the disciplines you need to tap into
Avoid the isolation of architecture

Centre
How to bring a center-touching down into a more accessible neighbourhood
Invent a program and society to fund
Product gets out from the school-displayed in a convenience store window

Avenue roads art school is a good example-model-experimental center
Shouldn't set out to do one thing for everyone

Architecture is about transformation as well

Cappuccino bar at Woodsworth (university of Toronto)-whole university comes there because it's a great little spot
To give people an excuse to be there

What could work in neighbourhood- need to have a link to community
Some small retail element-also brings in a salesperson that doesn't know about architecture

Notion of cross-merchandising- chapters, indigo

Create a square footage program-create an identity and market it
Bookstore?

Interview with Annik Shooner
Of Menkes, Shooner, Dagenais Architects, Montreal
February 15, 2001

Paraphrased Excerpts/Ideas

Need for promotion
Yes

Body successful in promotion?
Not their role for promotion-more government, administrative roles

Problem in our society that people are not going to museums anymore
People don't go any where-only the cinema

Generate more business from old clients
Upper class clients are already aware, educated about architecture

Is it a building that can answer my needs?

Architects don't have time to talk to journalists etc, to make sure the work is getting noticed
Publicity is always generated for the same architects

Doctor vs. Architect
People feel like medical services are very obscure, but in architecture, since everyone lives in a home, everyone feels they know what to do-they can do it
Need to promote other architectural services like: cost control, schedule control, technical control, quality of the envelope

OAQ-prix d'Excellence always a project of good design
OAQ don't even visit the building-judged on pictures only
Projects have won in the past with pieces of façade falling apart

Should be a prize for a building after five years
Subject to bad maintenance from the owner-good materials

Budgets are very low
Architects put so much energy in the design that all the other budgets get reduced, everything won't work but the building will look good

A friend asked after she had been working for five years:
What do you do architects in a building
Engineers do the structure what is left for the architect?

How do you get people to value projects?
Lowest bidder process ends up generated more work for the architect-because the contractor will try to make his profit anywhere he can-resulting in the same level of quality and price as hiring someone more expensive

Education should be linked to the public about what a good building is

Marketing is based on supply and demand

What they have done is hired a marketing person-not trained as an architect
Marketing specialist-offer of services, makes cold calls, manages the brochure
Marketing director

Better to hire someone from marketing than placing an architect who wouldn't be interested in that type of work

Community center won't work-convinced on making people aware of real role of architect-what is done by architects
This can be done by a magazine ex: magazine Interieurs has just come out with a new magazine called Exterieurs-which incorporates architecture, landscape architecture-this type of magazine is read by everyone
Not like Canadian architect-it is more accessible

Accessible and good quality on the graphic side, professional

Could be a center where the magazine is published, media house, web site
AAPPQ-could house their organization-almost don't exist anymore because no one has time to take care of it-
Not so successful because the members don't see what they do-just seem to deliver them a cheque

Bring people into building for other reasons, subtle way to bring them in

Reaching out to people on many levels and at many scales-media campaign, building itself and the media generated form within the building-cyclical


Publicity could be further helped if all architects acted like professional
Every time a project comes over budget it reflects badly on the whole architectural community, global reputation goes down

Starts in school, design is very valued but the rest is not important
Shouldn't be allowed to win design awards if youre failing the other courses
Engineers are starting to steal a large part of our practice-one thing they are doing well is that they are everywhere, why are we only in private practice why aren't we clients, heads of companies
There are many things we as architects can do from what we learn in school
We can perform in anything
Should encourage the degree to serve as a starting point for many types of careers not just architecture
Than architects would be everywhere and more people would be aware of architects and architecture in general