This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Repositioning the Architect and Practice Management Member Conversations .
-------------------------------------------
vv Help vv
The Blue Sky Group of the Culture Collective needs your help. We are looking for architects who have connections or would be willing to contact a college with a program in Film and/or TV.
BTW, the Blue Sky Group is sort of a small "fringe" committee, working on ideas that would defy conventional wisdom. To give you an idea of who we are, Watts Wacker, the famous futurist talked about the fringe. He said "Put in more conventional business terms the Fringe is where innovation is born; the Edge is where the innovation builds its first audience; the Realm of the Cool is where it gets its first media coverage and where the initial market potential emerges; the Next Big Thing is where latent market potential begins to expand; and Social Convention is where full market potential is realized."
In other words, we are working on ideas that are way out there, but have real potential to reach Social Convention.
In this case, we started with the premise that some form of TV series or reality shows that portrayed architects in a positive light would be a good vehicle for informing the public about what architects do and how they do it.
We were reminded of Marshall McLuhan's famous phrase "The medium is the message". He said this when TV was coming of age in the 1960's. Fifty years later there is no question that TV and movies have affected how we perceive the world we live in. There is example after example of how our impression of everyday life, world affairs, sports, entertainment, food, fashion, travel, etc. etc., etc. is influenced by how it is portrayed. Before CSI was on the air, how many people really thought about being a crime scene investigator? Moreover, what about the lawyer shows? Starting with Perry Mason, we have seen legal show after legal show. Some portrayed women and minority attorneys in such a favorable light that it has elevated their position as lawyers. Societies view of other professions has been elevated as well, i.e. doctors, firefighters, nurses, police officers, chefs, etc.
When talk about architects there is a long list of shows that included architects in their character list. For example Wilbur Post from "Mr. Ed", George Costanza from "Seinfeld", Woody Harrelson in "Indecent Proposal", Frank Gehry (voice) in "The Simpsons", and Paul Newman in "The Towering Inferno". These are just a few, but you get the idea.
In most cases, the fact the characters were architects was incidental to the message of the story. You may even have a hard time remembering that they were architects. In other words, the entertainment industry has done nothing to help further the image of our profession. You might even say it has hurt it. Looking at the list, one might conclude that architects are white males. This does nothing to encourage diversification in our profession. If you are interested, Why Hollywood Needs to Change its Conception of "The Architect" is a noteworthy article on the subject.
After looking for methods to promote different types of productions, we came upon an idea that may influence how architects are portrayed for years to come. What better way than to involve ourselves with film makers of tomorrow when they are still young and impressionable.
To do this the Blue Sky committee is offering to act as technical advisors to film schools that have writing and production laboratory courses. The idea is to convince a school that there students would benefit from an assignment that would have the students prepare an pitch a program that included architects as characters and the fact that they are architects is significant to the story line. The students might even have to produce a pilot.
This is where you come in. Our Committee is a small one and we do not have the resources to make contact with many schools. Since we want to do this in a big way, we are asking practicing architects who are interested in helping our efforts to volunteer to help us by making contact with film schools near them. While this list of the top 25 schools is not all-inclusive, it is a start. If you have others that you would like to contact, that's fine.
So, that's our story and we're sticking to it. If you are interested in helping an exciting game changing effort, please contact us.
-------------------------------------------
David Brotman FAIA
Past AIA Regional Director
Sunset Consultants
Malibu CA
-------------------------------------------