Carla has worked in the UK and Hong Kong for 12 years in the Multimedia, Advertising and Software industries. She is an ACMA qualified, commerciallydriven business partner. Carla strives to provide businesses with the finance rigor, information, skills and commercial acumen to deliver increased profits and efficiencies. Cultural awareness is one of her key strengths gained through working internationally and managing teams spread globally.
The value of design for a sustainable future Vanessa Bird, Australian Institute of Architects Victorian Chapter President and co-founder of Bird de la Coeur Architects, implores designers to value their skills for the future of the industry. The following is a transcript of Bird’s speech at the Victorian Architecture Awards, with credit and thanks to Parlour (http:// archiparlour.org/fairer-fees-to-future-proof-the-profession/; Twitter @_Parlour). When I opened the Awards exhibition two weeks ago I was struck by the exceptional quality of the work given the current fee climate. It is astonishing that while fees are driven down, architects continually find ways to do good work. We are resilient, but this is not limitless. Expectations for ever-higher levels of service for the same fee can’t continue. Fee pressure is applied at both ends of the process. First, at the front end, there’s pressure to provide concept design for free; and second, at the delivery end, there’s pressure to do more for less. I encourage you all to value your skills more highly. Put a decent value on your intellectual property, and don’t sell yourself short. Why are we giving it away? Architects will always need to compete for work, but cut-price design fees or no design fees sends the wrong value message. This doesn’t create a future for our upand-coming practices – or acknowledge the value of design. Concept design is not a loss leader. It is our most precious commodity. The contributions you see here tonight are undeniably excellent and involve significant expertise, developed over time. How can we expect clients and the market to value our expertise if the message we give is that we don’t value it ourselves? Your intellectual property has value – in
