Ambitious architects used to jockey for media attention with glossy renderings and photos of their latest funky Dubai skyscrapers or cutting edge Silicon Valley lab complexes.
But after a bloody three years in which architecture and design firms have slashed payrolls by a third, some industry players are now touting a simpler message: We’ve survived.
A case in point is Architectural Resources Cambridge, or ARC. While certainly proud of its latest projects, the 70-member firm also makes clear that survival – all without having to jettison longtime colleagues – tops the list of accomplishments.
And given how the field has been savaged the last few years by an unforgiving economy, that’s no small feat.
“We have held our own,” said Robert Quigley, a principal at ARC. “To date, there hasn’t been a single layoff.”
By The Numbers
Any way you slice and dice them, the numbers have been brutal.
The onset of the Great Recession in 2008 brought construction of all types to a screeching halt. Plans for new office towers and condo complexes alike were abandoned or put on the back burner. After their endowment funds were hit hard by a stock market gone mad, colleges and other nonprofit institutions tabled plans for new dorms and classrooms.
When building grinds to a halt, architects stop working. It takes a while for projects to wind down and the checks to stop coming in, but in the end, it’s that simple.
Faced with a dramatic drop in incoming business, architectural and design firms have slashed 70,000 jobs nationwide over the past three years, bringing the total down to 150,000, notes Kermit Baker, senior research fellow at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, and chief economist for the American Institute of Architects in Washington, D.C.
For Cambridge’s ARC, the magnitude of the economic collapse and the grim fallout of the crisis for architects everywhere were driven home in the fall of 2008.
“In one week in November of 2008, we had six clients call us and put projects on hold,” Quigley said. “That was devastating.”
Faced with this crisis, some local architects shifted their marketing attentions overseas in hopes of getting more work in then still-booming building markets in Dubai and China. Of course, the global downturn eventually reached Dubai, short circuiting projects there, though that was not apparent at the time.
But instead of chasing frantically after everything that moved, ARC stayed focused on what it did best, designing buildings for schools and universities as well as high-tech and biotech firms.
That, combined with the luck of having a couple pending projects break in the firm’s favor, helped get it through that rough patch, Quigley said.
Eventually, the clients that put their projects on hold have gradually drifted back, and business has picked up a bit this year.
ARC is designing a building for the new University of Massachusetts Medical School campus in Worcester, and has completed a new dorm for Deerfield Academy.
“A couple of things broke at the right time,” Quigley said, looking back. “We are in some good markets.”
Master Planning
Moreover, the Cambridge firm has also managed to hang onto its independence at a time when other, well-know players have had to go the merger route.
Giant Seattle-based architecture firm NBBJ snapped up Cambridge’s Chan Krieger Sieniewicz last year, while over the summer, a big Toronto-based firm scooped up a prominent landscape design firm founded by Carol R. Johnson.
Other firms, not as lucky, have quietly folded and gone out of business. “Starting in 2008, there were a lot of architects laid off, while some firms closed and some firms were bought out,” said Laura Wernick, president-elect of the Boston Society of Architects.
Still, it may take months, if not years, before firms like ARC can shift from survival mode back to expansion.
While the architectural business has stabilized, it has stabilized at the bottom, the AIA’s Baker noted.
There was a small flurry of excitement earlier this year as some architectural firms got hired to work on the early stages of new towers and other major projects, but that has since faded as developers face difficulties landing financing, he said.
In a move to help get some of these projects into construction, the AIA has launched its own initiative to find ways to bankroll these new endeavors, even launching a website to hook up financiers with builders.
But until the economy picks up, it’s likely to be slow going. ARC’s Quigley sees lots of planning taking place, but still no shovels in the ground.
“We are doing more master planning projects than we have done in recent years, but I am not sure there are a lot of people stepping up to the plate and building buildings,” he said.
