MANIC MONDAY – ARCHITECTS AND BLOGGING

In honor of a new year and new possibilities, I’m trying something new here – a regular blog post *shocked gasps from the crowd*. I know, I know, you’re thinking “he can’t possibly stick with this, he’s too scatterbrained.” And you’d mostly be right. But then, that is what new years’ resolutions are for, no?

Anyway, to kick off the new year and a new sense of discipline and dedication I’m starting the Manic Mondayblog post. This will be a regular weekly post on topics ranging from groove-tastic products that I like (but don’t take money from) to other blogs and architects that I find particularly interesting (I may or may not ask their permission first). These posts will be in addition to all the other random, scatterbrained posts you’ve come to know and love. 🙂 So here we go:

Architects and Blogging:

In an attempt to set things on the right foot, I thought it would be nice to look at why architects and blogging are such a perfect fit in our modern times. You see, architects are natural communicators. We communicate through almost any medium, be it graphic, written, oratory or just waving our arms around like a lunatic. Communication, and more importantly communicating that which others can not, is simply what we do. What better way to do that than through the world wide web and blogging?

Now, there are many out there that would say there is a line to be crossed when sharing information via the internet. Many architects believe that a website is good for nothing more than showcasing their best most flashy works, their email and physical address and phone number. Anything else would be giving away billable services. I think these architects are idiots and part of the problems facing our profession today.

When we share expertise, when we share successes, failures and the lessons learned along the way, we bolster and build up the profession as a whole; we make future architects better at what they do and in the process we make ourselves more accessible to the general public, which in turn is going to send that same public racing to our door with future projects which equals billable time. In the immortal words of Charlie Sheen, “Winning!”

In honor of architects out there who I think are genuinely in love with architecture and want to share it with the world, here is a small list of blogs that I read regularly, and you should too:

Life of an Architect
Build Blog
Architangent
Think Architect
Runkle Consulting
Content Design Group
Eco Modernism
I am [actually] an Architect