At the exact time of writing this sentence, Archiendo is 1 year, 9 hours and 31 minutes old. So well done us.
To celebrate this epic milestone, I thought I'd give you a breakdown of our first year at Archiendo Towers. In pie charts. Yes, pie charts are dull. Yes, they're intentionally poorly presented, I ran them through MS Paint just to give that authentic crap-tastic feel. And no, I didn't use any scientific methodology for any categories, it's just my opinion - but then if you havn't gotten used to that yet, you must be new.
Don't worry, I'm going to give out some joke awards at the end, hopefully that will be a laugh.
So, Category number one: Contributors!
Pretty self explanatory really. The number of posts by proportion of our four* contributors.
Category 2: Content!
These are a rough grouping of the categories of each posts. Surprisingly, after a beginning in farce and bursts of creative output, the writers seem to have largely settled in analysis of small projects, or an opinion on real architectural news (talking of which, my own take on the new Pritzker Laureate is in the pipeline). It could be argued that this shows a move from something genuinely new and creative, to falling into the comfortable, tried and tested world of mainstream architectural blogging... but really, do I care? Not really. Innovation is overrated anyway.
Category 3: Mood!
We've always made a big deal of how negative we are. Need any more proof?
Category 4: Style!
When I mention this blog to others (which is surprisingly often), I often use the word "irreverent", and not just because it's a word I like. Considering I was the one that named and assigned these categories, I guess it shouldn't be surprising that almost a quarter of the posts supposedly fit this category. But In recent posts, there seems to again be a shift from the cutting, over the top style that we used in early posts to the less sarcastic, mainstream style in more recent posts. Again, we've largely settled into a safe zone - informal but generally with a serious point.
Maybe we've sold out a little? Maybe we've grown up? Who knows?
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Sooo, on to the fun part: Awards!
The Prince Charles Award for commitment to a cause goes to...
Random Point of Interest! Posting nearly half of all of our entries, there have been periods of time where this entire blog has been kept afloat by one man. Well done, and congratulations are well deserved.
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The Vitruvius Award for being very serious and professional goes to...
Paul Wood! It seems strange that when you combine Paul, who is very... shall we say... light hearted in real life, with such a very not-serious blog, you should get posts such as "Who's Boss?" and especially "Tough Times for Architecture Students". But there is much appreciation for Paul, who has used his connections with the establishment to keep others in the loop. You could almost call it 'journalism'... but only if it was on a more respected website.
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The Hundertwasser Award for artistry goes to...
architectsconscience! No surprise as the majority of his posts are almost entirely scans of drawings. But mostly, the award is given for his drawings of architects in "Arrogant Architects" and the fantastic likeness of Souto de Moura in "YAWN... Pritzker Gets Dull".
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The Nick Clegg Award for broken promises goes to...architectsconscience! Specifically for this sentence:
"Your weekly dose of "Arrogant Achitects", can you guess who they are?"
Yes, this blog was in fact founded on a lie. In the week of the scheduled release of "Arrogant Architects 052", a second installment of this series has neither been planned or even discussed. Sorry about that.
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The Bjarke Ingels Award for extreme popularity goes to...
Two People! This award is shared by Random Point of Interest, for "Avoir Respect pour Votre Context?", which is currently our post with the most individual hits at 397. But the young pretender is "RIBA RIBA on the Wall" by architectsconscience, a post which has amassed 124 individual views in around 5% of the time of its leading competitor. I find it really encouraging how much attention this is getting, and the general reaction of the architectural community regarding the state of architectural education.
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The Tiago Barros Award for missing the point entirely goes to...
Anonymous (one of them) for the following quote:
"This is stupid. Of course you don't need sustainable features to make a building exist, no-one with half a brain cell would ever suggest that. You ask what a turbine on a tower or solar panels on a roof do. Then you are a moron. They're producing energy because the world is running out of non-renewable energy sources. Photo voltaics are usually on the roof of a house anyway and i'm pretty sure if you were showing off something in society from society you wouldn't place it on the roof"
Awwww, bless. It's like a snippet from "Baby's first flame war".
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The Shigeru Ban Award for reckless charitability goes to...
Architectural Review! Or, more specifically the fine folks in charge of the AR Folio. For some reason they only get about one new entry a month, and whether that's because they get very few submissions or because they have strict criteria to get featured (which we somehow bypassed), the fact that we were featured so early on in our development accounts for a reasonable portion of our traffic, and about 99% of our credibility.
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*And finally, the Award for backing out at a sensible time, sponsored by Will Alsop's plan for Middlesbrough goes to...
Archiholic!! Ok, a name most won't know. But as I believe in honouring all of our contributors, I thought I would bring to light a draft which has been sitting, unfinished and unloved, for seven months.
"Well That's Original...
It has now been several long months since I started looking for jobs and, simply put, it's really not a fun or enviable task. To persuade a company/individual that you are the best candidate to fill the position they may (or may not have) is tough. For all the effort I have been putting into finding companies, putting together a CV, Portfolios, Covering Letters"...
So much mystery. So many possibilities. Why was your effort in vain? What part does the originality mentioned in the title have to play? What was the outcome of your search?
If you ever feel the urge to return, Archiholic, you are more than welcome. And if you'd like to give us some closure on that first half paragraph, that would be much appreciated.
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On the whole, it has been an intriguing and exciting first year for us. I can only hope that our second year takes us to as many unusual and diverse places as our first. It's been a pleasure.
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