It’s tough times for the kids. First House & Garden folded, then domino, then Fulcrum, and now… and sorry, we mean holded, us. Still, we’ll confess to having had a few dreams here and there. Regular features for the shelter magazines that remain. We were thinking “Eva and Ian Talk About Architecture in a Print Format,” perhaps a little “Edifissure” column. Unfortunately, looks like it’s gonna be our architectural-themed party-planning company that’ll be pulling in the real funny money, as word comes—via Women’s Wear Daily, via erstwhile Official Edificial Contributor Stephen Zacks—that magazines are just as pigf*cked as we are. Let’s play with some numbers, shall we?

Herewith, the Edificial Index.

2: number of new beauty product-focused columns in Coastal Living.
2: number (at least) of new beauty product-focused advertisers in Coastal Living.

22: percentage Elle Decor ad pages are down.
27: percentage Metropolitan Home ad pages are down.
70: percentage of new House Beautiful advertisers.
190: pages in Metropolitan Home.
253: pages in Elle Decor.

10: number of pennies Architectural Digest publisher says the title “doesn’t do design on.”
50: percentage Architectural Digest ad pages are down.
80: age, in years, Architectural Digest editor Paige Rense will imminently turn.
1: flatly denied item that Rense will be replaced.

8: dollar amount that typical Architectural Digest contributors are paid per word.

350: exhibitors at this year’s Architectural Digest home show.
250: exhibitors at last year’s Architectural Digest home show.

235: monthly cost of a mid-grade Freelancers Union insurance plan.
14: average number of times, per day, that we contemplate opening a bakery.
4: number of offers from our mother to “stay in my spare bedroom.” In Aberdeen.

Memo Pad: Less Shelter [WWD]

Anytown, USA: “As the recession deepens, the retail industry continues to take a huge hit. Nowhere is this more visible than in the rising vacancy rate in shopping malls across the country. Mall owners are gambling on various businesses to draw people in, from water parks to educational services. What happens, or should happen, to dying or dead shopping malls?” The New York Times Room for Debate blog explores that question with the help of a panel of experts and a whole mess of commenters—without, remarkably, a word from Big Box Reuse author Julia Christensen. Boo oversight. [Times]

London, Ol’ Blighty: “Frivolities of the past cannot continue, says new Arup Chairman, Philip Dilley.” Thanks, chief! That would tend to explain the global engineering giant’s 400 layoffs redundancies in its UK office. World Architecture News has the exclusive scalp massage interview with Dilley, the Magical Recessionista. [WAN]

Everywhere, Everyday: You want economic disaster porn? Architectural Record will give you economic disaster porn. Their Recession and Recovery section could as easily be titled Around the World in 80 Financial Disaster Areas. Recent highlights of the grand tour du Global Pigf*!k: “Britain is facing the most severe recession in the developed world…” “In Japan, architects are feeling the chill of an economic recession and the effects of the U.S. subprime crisis…” “A study by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat predicts that we will start to see a dip in the completion of supertall towers in 2011…” It’s a stalled world after all! [Record]

What do you get when you mix one part recession, one part design shenanigan, and one part tax time? The Downtown Design Galleries Private Sale. Today through Saturday, from 10am to 5pm, 520 West 19th Street is hosting a 30-70% off sale of pieces from galleries like Cristina Grajales, Antik, Johnson Trading Gallery, R20th Century, Sebastian + Barquet, and uberlord Moss. We can’t speak for the actual inventory, but Grajales tends to have Judd, Johnson Trading Gallery the earthy Max Lamb, and Sebastian + Barquet a Nakashima or five. And then, of course, there’s Murray. We won’t delve too far into the general economic ramifications of all of this, but let’s just say that when the big hitters like Moss and R20th Century are throwing big clearing-out sales, it’s good for our personal collection—the shrunken Muji rug could use a little something to go on it—but not so good for that sense of “it’s all gonna be ok” we’ve all been looking for. Still, we’re with the ever-optimistic David Rockwell on this one. Next week, this will all be different. This week, this will all be on sale. Race you.

A few weeks ago we brought word of Metropolis’ brilliant current issue, which asks, in large part courtesy Official Edificial Top-Five-to-Seven editors Martin C. Pedersen and recently birthdayed Kristi Cameron, What is Good Design Now? And then we went to Pecha Kucha, where we saw some more plausible answers, and then we didn’t go to LVHRD WRK/PLY or Slate’s “What is Good Design?” panel complete with Pentagrammer Paula Scher and mysterious architect Ahmad Sardar-Afkhami. But our sister-from-another-mister and Domestic Officer Kelsey Keith sure did.

And ripped our hearts out, dredging them through acidic vinegar as she thought about all those confluences for Flavorwire. Points for the namecheck of Edifave artist Roy McMakin, the reminder of the epic fail that was Arnell’s Tropicana rebranding, and a mention of the glorious sun that lit up this weekend.

This is a debate that’s going to go on, forever and ever, until we’re living in a day that’s after the day after tomorrow, and it’s a debate we’re happy to keep chiming in on. Let’s keep the conversation going, people. You never know what answers we might discover, in between the Dewars and the schmoozing, the presentations and the contemplations. Some of them might even be useful.

Design Boom or Bust: What People Are Talking About Now [Flavorwire]

In part two of a continuing series, we cut one slice at random from the epic timpano that is contemporary design and try to pick out the meaty bits. Today, the story is a city: Dateline San Fran, where all is not well. Strap on your bullet point vests.

In case any of you missed Karim’s epic talk at the Museum of Arts and Design last night (we did, so send any reports/sightings to tips (at) edificial (dot) com) and feel the need for a little Mr. Rashid in your lives, head on over to the Karim Rashid Shop. In a blatant sign that we are not alone in living in these economic times, everything at the West 19th Street store is 50% off. We’ll trade you one Wikkid for the Koochy chair. It’ll be big enough to hide in until the mess blows over.

New York, NY: Interior design and corporate space planning behemoth MKDA appears to be remaining bullish through the Pigf*!ck. The company “has relocated its Manhattan office from 11 East 26th Street, where the firm had been located for 20 years, to 902 Broadway in the Flatiron District. The firm designed its new 12,500-square-foot office space, located on the 17th floor at the building, to represent the firm’s commitment to the ‘next generation’ of space planning.” Sez founder Milo Kleinberg, “’We moved into this new space at a time when the world is also moving in a new direction, but because we view our business model to be as timeless as our interiors, we remain relatively calm amid the current economic chaos and focused on our future.’” Not answered: Is the space actually smaller or larger than the old one? Hmmm? [BDC]

[Redacted], [Redacted]: Blind item time! Right smack dab in the middle of a recession, which American architecture firm(s) are getting the shaft from a large foreign developer on a major overseas project? It couldn’t come at a worse time, says our source, and with all the press the development has gotten you’d think that somebody would have seen a check by now. Why is the project’s main investor playing hide-and-seek with the fees? (Hint below…) [tips(at)edificial(dot)com]

China, Red Menace: Et in Arcadia ego… “Not even China is immune to the impact of a global recession…. Aedas recently halted work on its projects on Macau’s formerly booming Cotai Strip, including the Four Seasons Hotel and new phases of The Venetian mega-casino. Like other foreign firms operating in China, Aedas—which had projects in Macau comprising some 50 million square feet—has laid off 30 of its 800 Hong Kong-based employees and contemplated salary cuts. Other firms with offices in Hong Kong and China have laid off 25 percent of their staff.” [Record]

A tipster (tips[at]edificial[dot]com) served up the following dish this morning—a few pointers on how to get ahead now that you’re out on your pipig pursuing some free-lance projects. Start by rubbing your hindquarters with your dominant hand in a gentle, circular motion, scowling over your shoulder at the heartless project manager who just kicked you into the street. Then dust yourself off and listen to what Australian business magazine Anthill has to tell you.

Author Kelly Magowan, in the great tradition of Aussie opportunism, wants you to know that the Global Pigf*!k is really just a smile turned upside down. You, sh*tcanned architect, can make the recession work for you—by thinking like an entrepreneur!

While some are concerned about job security and are adopting the strategy of sitting tight and crossing fingers to weather the storm, others are feeling more empowered and see the market as ripe with opportunities for them to advance their careers.

Bear with the bullet points.

An Entrepreneurial Approach to Job Seeking in a Recession [Anthill]

Just in case we’d hoped that the finer particulars of architecture—the structural detailing, the joinery, the rebars—were impossible to outsource, lest we rest on our laurels of developed world construction methodology, should we entertain the possibility that we’re not entirely replaceable, allow us to be of service in passing along the latest wave of assistance offers to hit our stateside architecture pals. This just in, sent specifically to a friend on internet [sic] and in the, er, industry (Gold Star to you, Sir!), with a subject line reading Structural Detailing @ USD 10.00 Per Hour!!!:

Hello,

Thank you for your attention!

I have obtained your name and address from internet, and I’am writing to
enquire whether you would be willing to establish business relations with
us.

I can help you reduce costs, improve quality, and increase market share
about high quality Structural Engineering Services.

My Detailing services include:

1.) Structural steel detailing (shop / fabrication drawings)
2.) Rebar detailing
3.) Post Tension detailing
4.) Pre-Stress/Precast detailing for structural components
5.) Steel Joist, Trusses, Decking and Duct detailing
6.) Bill of Materials / Material Take-offs

Your kind cooperation in this respect is greatly appreciated.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Hope to hear from you soon.

With Regards,
[Redacted]
7Solutions India | 34, Prashthan | Nr. Vijay Cross Road | Navrangpura |
Ahmedabad 380009 | Gujarat | India

Blogging is totally New York-specific, Lat, we swear. Totally.

Condé Nast is cutting costs, and some things will simply have to go: staff, magazines, employee pension plans. Also on the chopping block, according to Cityfile, is Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter’s (left) “architecture consultant.” Questions: 1. Did anybody know that Graydon Carter had an architecture consultant? 2. Who is this architecture consultant? 3. What the hell did they consult Carter on, exactly? (Hair.) 4. Is he/she really being laid off? We’ll work the phones at Edificial HQ and root around in various garbage cans, but we ask for the cooperation of the citizenry in apprehending the perpetrator: lend us your comments. Good luck and good hunting.

Graydon Carter’s ‘Architecture Consultant’ in Jeopardy [Cityfile]

Architects, architects, architects. When will you stop getting tangled in public embarrassments? Conant Architects has been caught with their hand in the communal till: As designers of Citibank’s just-announced $10 million plan to renovate executive suites, the architects, whose portfolio includes Café St. Bart’s and Donghia’s Mount Vernon headquarters, would effectively be paid with federal bailout dollars. (‘Cause Citibank doesn’t have any dollars of its own.) For shame, principal Peter Conant, formerly of Swanke Hayden Connell! You’ll rue the day you left nine years ago to start your own practice with offices on East 42nd St. and a longstanding relationship with Citibank. (Of course, SHC recently designed offices for Moody’s. Everybody gets dirty.)

Citigroup Said to Commit $10 Million for New Executive Suite [Bloomberg]

David Barringer, winner of last year’s Winterhouse Writing Awards, and all-around brilliant person we’d be jealous of if only we weren’t so green with envy, has written a spectacular take-down of the realities of freelancing. We have to just quote, as even to paraphrase is pathetic:

It’s a paradox, the home expanding its functional independence as the world expands its functional interdependence. The more globalization enables temporary collaboration of individuals across the globe, the more individuals are forced to become permanently self-reliant. I work collaboratively, but I survive on my own. I am paid for the task and no more. No benefits, healthcare, insurance, overtime, investments. I’ll be repaying my own school loans as I’m taking out new loans for my kids, and I’ll be paying for my Boomer parents’ aging lifestyles even as I can’t afford to invest in my own retirement.

Given that we’re currently embroiled with more than one magazine which treats payment as a post-game favor—get it together, Surface—we thought we’d turn it over to you, our cadre of similarly like-minded individuals.

Who pays? Who doesn’t? What’s the time-frame like, and what do you do when it reaches obscene proportions? We know of one freelancer who sends an x’s and o’s-filled reminder on Day 91, and we know of another who just asks what’s up. What works better? Phone calls or emails? Legal threats or bare-assed pleading? What’s the farthest you’ve gone, and have you ever just given up? Who are you willing to keep writing for because of the status or support, and who have you had to cut loose?

Comments or tips(at)edificial(dot)com. Anonymity is, as always, assured.

Generation Squeezed [AIGA Voice]

Today we read:

The architects’ billing index rose in February after hitting an all-time low in January, the American Insitute [sic] of Architects said Wednesday. A leading indicator of construction spending, the index rose to 35.3 in February from 33.3 in January. Readings over 50 would indicate more work at most architectural firms. “Despite a higher score than last month, we are likely to see light demand for new construction projects through much of the year,” said AIA chief economist Kermit Baker. “There is hope that the stimulus bill will result in more project activity, but that is also dependent on banks easing lending standards in the months ahead.”

That’s disencouraging!

Architects’ Index Improves [Marketwatch]

Anytown, USA: Thank you, Associated Press, for your in-depth and timely reporting. If it weren’t for you, we would have thought everything was just ginger peachy! “With the recession and credit crunch wreaking havoc on the construction industry, architects are often left holding the bag. The practice is becoming so common that it’s threatening the future of many architectural firms across the nation.” There follows the customary wearying statistics: “The AIA’s monthly Architecture Billings Index sunk in January to the lowest level in its 14-year history…” “construction spending dropped more than 3 percent in January…” “collection times increased 12 percent last year…” Yadda frickin’ yadda. [Washington Post]

Queens, New York: The Queens Museum is slowly going broke, and can’t afford to keep up their (truly fantastic, if you haven’t seen it) scale model of New York City. Solution? “”Starting Monday, you can ‘own’ an apartment in the tiny world of the model — say, the one you live in — for $50. A single-family house will cost $250. And for $10,000, developers can have their brand-new glass-tower condo buildings added to the panorama.” [Curbed]

Spain, Europe: Ay, qué lástima! “Spain’s long-running love affair with cutting-edge architecture has come to a dramatic end as high-profile projects from the world’s greatest architects fall foul of recession and a countrywide building bust.” [Guardian]

Image: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty

As everyone here experienced or read about or saw or felt, it was seven and a half years ago that the Lower Manhattan towers fell, and a labyrinthine and frequently bonkers process of power grabbing and forcible removal, public competitions and private dealings, murmurs and rumors, began. All in the name of rebuilding, all for the force of healing. For a few short years, all everyone ever talked about was what would or might happen, and then, over a few short months, the chatter subtly died, replaced with speculations about the High Line, the MoMA tower, the future of the death of the expensive glass box.

All the while, relatively unobserved, work chugged along. The Freedom Tower—Tower One to you, Sir!—was designed and engineered, the temporary PATH station opened, and surprise among surprises, progress was made. Still, they asked us what was happening. Would the towers be rebuilt? Where was the money coming from? Was the tower really going to be that high and that tall?

David Dunlap has the answers, and the New York Times an interest in expanding their multimedia platforms. Just this morning the bow-tied reporter—whose pen was out and notebook in hand at every press event during the earlier headier days, so boyfriend knows what he’s talking about—inaugurated what will be a series of videos covering construction for the next few years (just in case anyone was worried about the Times’ public stance on their future). And it was good.

It’s no Project Rebirth—a video work devoted to documenting the entire World Trade Center reconstruction through twelve cameras that have been on and running since 2001 and will continue until at least 2015—but Dunlap’s coverage is a ground-up and reported and welcome addition to Rebirth’s artiness and image saturation and placenta-evoking (sorry!) name. Let’s just hope the Financial Pigf*ck of Epic Proportions doesn’t rain on anyone’s lens.

When Are They Going to Build the New World Trade Center? Just Look Up [New York Times]
Trailer [Project Rebirth]

You ever read the Baltimore Business Journal? It’s a chronicle of pathos, man—mega-sad stuff going down in Charm City. But here’s that silver lining:

The four-day workweek, once a novel idea to help employees save money on commutes, has now become a concrete tool of survival for many Baltimore-area companies, particularly those tied to the anemic home-building industry.

And for perhaps the first time in its history, Baltimore might be ahead of the curve. Or at least on the curve—the AIA is reporting reduced billable hours nationwide, especially in the south and northeast, while a Watson Wyatt Worldwide survey of 245 companies showed that 13 percent of them reduced workweeks in February. If Baltimore is any measure (as it so often is), a sizable proportion of those companies reducing workweeks could be in the design trade: the brief BBJ piece cites no less than four firms, and the AIA is already fretting over the practice. Sez spokesman Matt Tinder, cutting back to four days is “not really a useful exercise… Not coming into your office is not something the clients are very happy about.”

Could the four-day workweek become the new seven-day workweek? Maybe, but then again Baltimore has always been… different. We’re reminded of the words of the late, great Mr. George Carlin, in character as radio newsman Scott Lame: “It’s eight o’clock in Los Angeles. It’s nine o’clock in Denver. It’s ten o’clock in Chicago. And in Baltimore, it’s six forty-two! Time for the eleven o’clock news…”

Four-Day Workweek Goes from Luxury to Necessity [BBD, via MSNBC]

Hum dee-dee. Oh! Why, hello there. Nice to see you again. Say—did you hear the news?

Despite the plunge in real-estate values, most Americans remain very proud of their homes. So interest in home decorating and interior stories is fairly strong, even with the slumping economy and the closure of Domino magazine.

Thank you, David Ward of PR Week, for giving us hope in these excremental times. But aren’t there any, you know, trends, such as design writers like ourselves can look out for? Coming right up:

…home decor media is shifting away from aspirational coverage toward cost-effective projects.

Design editors and writers, be on the lookout for the following pitches: flacks will “highlight the eco-friendly features of [their] client’s products”; they will deploy “high-quality images with every pitch”; and they will assault us with samples so that we can see how easy it is to be green with the splendiferous econo-trinkets they’re hawking. But can we really bemoan the PR-ization of recessionary design if it’s necessary to promote quality products that suit the times? Yes, but let’s do it nicely.

Home Design Coverage Still on Solid Ground [PR Week]

There are as many differences between your two editors as there are grains of sand in one of those “write your name on a grain of sand!” things. And one of these differences is the predilection of one to read certain things on the internet and others in analog form, and the predilection of the other to do the exact opposite. And so, this morning, as we discussed the various traffic for the day, the stories we would plant and the others we would invent, we brought ourselves around to talking about Key, the New York Times real estate magazine launched with great glory a few years ago. One of us had planned to write about the writing—to get into the stories, to see what was shaking out in the language of the crash—while the other had planned to write about the format—this formerly stand-alone publication’s new home as an in-book supplement to the regular New York Times Magazine.

And so, being ever-cooperative, we’ll touch on both. But first and foremost, the real story. Which is, we believe, the stories. Jonathan Mahler writes an elegy for the city and its Bloomberg-aided development that is, with sentences like “New York is again a city of abandoned lots, half-finished buildings and free-floating anxiety,” worthy of a soundtrack by his namesake. Introducing an element of humanism into that now-epic debate as to whether this recession is good or bad for design and architecture, Mahler says that “the current downturn, like the previous downturns, is not something to celebrate; the city and its residents will suffer.”

Andrew Rice spends six (internet) pages trolling around the Hamptons in search of someone’s buying—rather than closetedly-frantically selling—a property and personalizes the faces of abstracted tragedy, a “the way we live now” approach repeated in Susan Dominus’ profile of super-broker Dolly Lenz, who says, in between less-frequent Four Seasons lunches, that the game is “just not as fun.” Jim Lewis introduces In Sook Kim’s photos, one above, controlled images that are part Rear Window and part Playtime, and a series of sidebars goes from WTF with a lap around Manhattan’s private pools to down-to-earth with a look at the city’s only trailer park, and from obscene to funny (even if New York’s Jessica Pressler infamously did it better—and funnier—four years ago).

The last note is the deepest.

Ever since we first heard of John Morefield, twice-laid-off Seattle-based architect who founded his own Peanuts-influenced 5-cent architectural advice stand, we have looked to him as our unofficial mascot (no disrespect to our Official): laughing in the face of adversity, pulling up his bootstraps, spreading the good word of home insulation to anyone who dares ask. We see a little bit of ourselves in him, to tell the truth; or maybe it’s that we see a little bit of him in ourselves. Either way, we’re fans. So, duh, we should have asked Domestic Officer Kelsey Keith to go talk to him, but we didn’t, sadly and obviously, languishing blithely as we were in our own vertiginous hell.

Fortunately, there’s enough blog to go round, and the divine Ms. Keith seems to have found a Flavorlicious home for an interview with Morefield. “The idea,” she says he says, “is to spur conversation about building matters.”

Now. If we had Morefield’s nickel for every time we were invited to a function whose function was to “spur conversation about building matters,” we’d be able to fund his very own Stockholm- and Nairobi-based cross-disciplinary investigative architectural research unit foundation of a paper-based investigation office, and have a few bazillion left over for our own novel-writing colony. The thing is, Morefield’s actually having these conversations. With people. Who, as Keith reports, stop by to ask things like “What’s the best insulation to use next to concrete in a basement?” or “We have a 700-square foot Seattle bungalow and want to add a second story because we’re expecting our first child — Help!” Which, as we know, have as much to do with architecture as van Berkel’s syncopation and Nouvel’s muscularity.

What Morefield’s doing isn’t just funny. (Although it is.) It’s making a point about how we talk about architecture, and how divided it is. So many times we tell our friends what we do—write about things to look at, particularly things to look at that you can also go into—and we’re met with a friendly blank stare, a “how nice for you, but it doesn’t really apply to me.” Really? Because chances are it does. Architecture applies to everyone, and should be available to everyone. Morefield’s Architecture 5¢ is on track towards making that real.

If only we had a spare dime.

Great Ideas Department: 5¢ Architecture [Flavorwire]
There But For the Grace [Edificial]

Our brother-from-another-mother (and -geographical location and -home base and -approach to architecture) Jonathan Glancey takes on, once and for all, the long-simmering “is the recession a) good or b) bad for architecture?” question. We have to admit that we took a while to reel ourselves over to the Guardian in order to read what we imagined might be yet another epic (which isn’t to say unwelcome) tract on how true innovation happens when we’re all starving (debatable: we’re so check-bouncing we can’t see straight) and how this is all a necessary break from a world in which creativity seemed to be about designers out-ludicrousness-ing one another (less debatable: we’re looking forward to objects and architecture helping people love and live), but once we focused our vertiginous energies on Mr. Glancey’s excellent prose, we were hooked. For one, he’s another fan of the one-word sentence. Of the pre-Y2K economic boom-provoked skyscrapers? “Bigger. Faster. Stronger. Shinier.” Of what we can look forward to? “Schools. Hospitals. Colleges. Training Centres.”

Lest that quick one-to-one comparison make the fast reader think that’s all the change is about—from exciting to boring—Glancey’s piece is actually a fascinating condensation of the push-pull of architecture and economics. We’re generally loath to get too into that relationship—we’re sort of purists in that way, interested in architecture itself and how it makes people feel about being inside or near it—but the upswings and downswings and pendulum-swings that Johnny charts suddenly make the entire seemingly nonsensical architectural history of the last few memorable (and earlier, as he gets into Venturi) years entirely sensical. People got rich, buildings got more dramatic, people got poorer, buildings got more conceptual, people got rich again, buildings became gesture, and now people are getting poorer again. Which, Glancey’s guessing, is going to give rise to the kind of architecture we’ve been seeing get attention lately—subtle boxes by SANAA, handmade-and-laid bricks by Roman & Williams—and then, once that’s over (and this is what we’re really waiting for), a Modesty Blaze, created by those out of work now, by the crush of bright young things trading in their assistant-ships for a stab at school. And who’s going to be teaching them? Those very same architects who, just a moment ago, were the bright young things before them. We’re thinking one below the Lindy Roy, Dan Wood, Galia Solomonoff generation. We’re thinking it’ll be curious to see what happens with architects like Chris Lasch, Ben Aranda, Front Studio. Then again.

All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

The architecture of recession [The Guardian]
We Don’t Need No Thought Control: 211 Elizabeth Pondered! [Edificial]