Wayside Architecture

After 10 + years of practice, I founded Wayside in order to improve the way people get to and through projects. Many Architects have lost focus in the most fundamental parts of our job. It's 'PPP' but it's not a loan. Its People, Projects and Process. In other words, the who, the what, and the how of our work. Failures in some or all of these have resulted in negative reviews and bad relations during otherwise badass projects. Time to grow up. - People | Figuring out who people are. For starters, talk to people about who we are similarly to how they discuss themselves. Same applies in reverse, as well. Figure out who we aren't. Architects, for example, are not and never were more valuable than ANY other link in the construction chain. The unearned aura of entitlement that follows an Architect into a job trailer is pollution and unhelpful. The cockiness needs to end and Designers need to get their heads out of their asses and back into reality. A reality where Architects know their place. We belong to a world of analysis, prediction, judgment calls, and communication for the betterment of teams of people smarter than us. - Projects | It's a mission and a vibe, a verb in disguise, and responsibility in plain sight. Projects we make will outlive those of us making them and they will do so with an incalculably complex amount of transactions that reach beyond exterior walls and property lines and into our communities. - Process | Laws change, societies shift, funding vanishes. You name it, we face it. Best to approach projects with honesty, transparency, and anticipatory thinking because projects will connect us in unimaginable ways. Consider, for example, the Hyatt Regent indoor bridge collapse in Kansas City, Missouri. 114 dead, over 200 injured. Were these stakeholders parties of the project's AIA contracts? Unlikely. Did the design team's methodology matter for those building occupants? Turns out it did. The 'how' matters. Communication and life safety matter.