The original note, as written at the time
The right way I should be negotiating with clients seeking my architectural design services is this. “I am willing to do this project for you pro bono if you will listen to everything I say and that I get the final say on design decisions. The question is how much are you willing to pay me to shut up and implement the awkward preconceived idea you have?”
Ongoing development
The right way for me to be negotiating with a client seeking architectural design services is this.
I am willing to do this project for you pro bono, if you will listen to everything I say and I get the final say on design decisions. The question is: how much are you willing to pay me to shut up and implement the awkward preconceived idea you already have?
I mean it as a serious proposal, not a joke. Because every design commission is already one of those two jobs, and the trouble is that we never say which one we are being hired to do. We quote a fee for “design” and the client thinks they are buying their vision executed, and we think we are being paid to have a position, and six months later everybody is disappointed in a way that cannot be traced back to the contract.
If the client is buying my judgement, the fee should reflect that they are buying judgement, and my liability for the outcome should rise with my authority. If the client is buying implementation of their own idea, then I am a highly skilled technician executing a brief, the fee should reflect that too, and my liability should fall to a technician’s liability. What must not happen — and what happens constantly — is being paid a technician’s fee while carrying a designer’s exposure.
I would go further. If you engage a consultant and then overrule them repeatedly on the things they were engaged for, you are not buying consultancy. You are renting a signature. That is a legitimate thing to want, and there are people who will provide it, but it should be named and priced as what it is rather than negotiated as design.
And there is a version of this that protects the client too. A practice that will tell you at the outset which of the two jobs it is taking is a practice you can hold to account. A practice that quietly agrees to everything has told you where the design decisions will actually be made.
So I have decided to put the question to clients directly, early, and in these terms. The awkwardness is the point. If the question is uncomfortable to answer, the commission was already unclear, and it is far cheaper to discover that before the drawings exist.