An.Other.Archy

I was conversing with an engineer the other day about a public works project for a local city we had been asked to help his firm work on. We were going to prepare renderings of the proposed street elevations for the property where they were designing and installing a water tank and a pump house building.

The project manager for the city – a city engineer – asked to see examples of our work prior to authorizing the engineering firm to engage us for this work. We submitted a couple of examples of rendered street elevations we had done for recent housing projects. They showed trees, walls, landscaping intent, massing of the buildings and other structures beyond the walls, as well as the relative level of the street to the proposed construction.

The city project manager, after viewing the submitted sample drawings, asked whether or not we had any examples of pump station buildings in our resume’ that she could view. At first, I laughed, and then fired off an email to the engineer we were attempting to be hired by, somewhat facetiously asking – does it matter what kind of building it is behind the wall and landscaping, we are architects, we can draw it. We are professionals. It is a building for goodness sakes! (more…)