the question of style

Years ago, in the days before cyberspace, Madison, Conn., architect Duo Dickinson, AIA, remembers toting a slide carousel of his work to the home of a prospective client. Halfway through the show, he heard a massive sigh. “Shall I stop?” he asked. “Yes, I think you'd better,” she replied.

Dickinson laughs about it now, because fortunately, such awkward moments are a thing of the past. Matching up aesthetic ideals between client and architect has never been easier, thanks to Google. By checking out a firm's Web site, clients can tell at a glance whether they're on the same wavelength—and if not, no harm done. Homeowners have their pick of architects who are well-versed in their vision of paradise, whether it's an ivy-covered cottage or a vernacular post-and-beam house. However, even in the most compatible of professional relationships, differences of opinion crop up in the myriad decisions that go into designing a home. Maybe the architectural mismatch concerns the site: the client wants to put a rustic farmhouse on a suburban plot, or a symmetrical Colonial on hilly terrain. Maybe it's a matter of mood: those cherry kitchen cabinets on the homeowner's must-have list don't strike the right architectural tone.

Whereas commercial clients are hiring someone to reflect an image or brand, designing a home is personal, and the ability to negotiate aesthetic differences goes right to the heart of what it means to work with residential clients. It doesn't help that the message from academia is often that doing a “pure” design which doesn't get built is better than adapting to what the client wants. On the other hand, when inexperienced architects try to design something outside of their own artistic predilections, the result is often mediocre.

“There's a little bit of the chicken and the egg thing going on,” Dickinson says. “You have to create an oeuvre someone can look at. The best residential architects I know are those who have an aesthetic vision that's adaptable to different clients and sites. The only way it's ‘hackish' is if you do something not aesthetically valid for you.”

While some architecture practices strive to be all things to all people, artistically speaking, others hew to a clear stylistic direction. Modernist architect Brian Messana, AIA, of New York City-based Messana O'Rorke Architects, insists he has never had a major disagreement with clients, because they want what he offers. Still, familiarity can breed dissent. On a recent project, Messana resisted giving his clients the book-matched wall of walnut cabinetry they'd seen and loved on another of the firm's projects. “In each project we evolve, and our ideas change,” he says. “In this project, we wanted the wall to be all white so it would be more abstract. In the end, they decided to go with the walnut, because they felt it was easier to maintain.” In the grand scheme of things, it was a minor setback. But the firm's biggest struggle is convincing clients to pare down. “If your work is about reducing everything, the most difficult part is not so much the materials as the program,” he says. “How do you merge this consumerist mind with more of a reductive aesthetic?”

Miami architect Max Strang, AIA, has also staked his reputation on a distinctive contemporary look. The firm's clients share his love for tropical-inspired modernism, so they're generally willing to go along with his ideas. But to ensure that there are no surprises, his contract includes a project description that refers to “environmental modernism”—a catchphrase meant to clarify the firm's philosophical bent. “If, in midterm, someone wanted to change the style to Mediterranean Revival, I could not do that,” he says. “It would constitute a change of scope, because of what we have in writing.” Even so, every project brings the inevitable compromises. “At the end of the day, I am providing a service to the client,” he says. “If I lose the argument, I just won't photograph the building from that angle.”

In the world of design decisions, some of the misalignment between client and architect can be avoided with a frank, upfront discussion about the thinking that drives an aesthetic. Rick Harlan Schneider, AIA, LEED AP, a principal of Inscape Studio in Washington, D.C., says his firm's modernist style evolved from its mission of sustainability. He tells clients that there's a type of function and detailing that goes along with that value, such as choosing streamlined shapes over ornate ones and letting the grains of materials show instead of covering them with paint. “Clients, even the savvy ones, don't really know that on a conscious level,” Schneider says, “but if you talk them through it, they quickly get on board.” And although he loves the classical detailing and old construction style that characterize the homes of many of his clients, it's simply not what he has chosen to practice. “We pose it as making a good fit,” he says. “We don't know the details of a Georgian or a Craftsman bungalow as well as we know contemporary. We want clients to buy into that so they're not asking for something that doesn't play to our strengths down the road.”

Sometimes, too, it's the practical arguments that prevail. Just as artists face pressure from galleries to do work that sells rather than experiment with new ideas, architects have to deal with clients who fixate on work they've already done. Basalt, Colo., architect Harry Teague, AIA, says his work has changed quite a bit over the years, mostly because he's figured out how to make buildings that are better suited to the climate. “When I wasn't sure of myself, we based a lot of our work on vernacular forms because they worked here,” he says. “As we've done more work, we've learned how to use materials that improve with age,” such as metals, stone, cementitious board, and porous screens that shield a house's skin from the harsh weather and ultraviolet rays. “With those practical concepts, I think we're able to take what people were expecting and have them learn along with us,” he continues. Teague makes sure people understand the point to which his firm's work has evolved—and that it doesn't want to get stuck in a rut—before they sign on.

That said, it's the house's interior where clients often feel they have more of a right to express themselves. In a tug-of-war, Teague has found it's better to pull clients along than to push against their wishes—a lesson he attributes to noted architect Charles Moore. “If you push against their wishes, that builds resentment, and it's not a very effective way of getting a good result,” he says. In contrast, pulling is, by a conscious process, embracing what they want and moving it forward—a stepping-off point for something creative.

In one Teague project, however, every effort to take a different tack was rejected—not by the client, but by a dogmatic design review board. In response to a dormer mandate, Teague tried “dustbin” dormers instead of peaked ones and redesigned some window screens to satisfy another guideline, but he was thwarted at every turn. “It didn't kill the house, but it wasn't where we wanted to go,” he says. “A lot of people come to us because they want the exposure, and we aren't excited about having it photographed and published.”

Architectural review boards notwithstanding, Cass Calder Smith, AIA, San Francisco, notes that clients often think they want something, but it turns out they aren't actually set in their ways. “Most people don't really want a copy or something fake,” he observes. “If you can show them how to make their ideas more unique or interesting, everyone is better off.” Calder Smith's clients are typically looking for the user-friendly minimalism for which he's known, though he is open to variations on the theme.

Firms whose work is rarely pure in style have more latitude to explore ideas jointly with their clients. At Centerbrook Architects and Planners, which prides itself on eclecticism, it's up to the architects to make something beautiful out of the bits and pieces of client preferences and priorities. Partner Mark Simon, FAIA, also credits Charles Moore with the notion that the more particular a client is, the more freedom a designer has—and the more interesting he or she can make the architecture. “It's a very different vision of how you design,” Simon says. “We don't imagine there's a perfect solution out there for any project. There are good and bad solutions, and there may be many good solutions. It doesn't have to be any one way.”

Has Simon ever been overruled? “Yes,” he says, “especially when I was younger and didn't have the skills to work with whatever I was handed. If you practice working with a variety of different people's visions, you can get very good at making things you're proud of.” When there's a disagreement, Simon goes back—sometimes to the beginning—to work out new options and end up with something that has integrity. “That's really what I'm looking for, not to make a particular kind of statement,” he says. “You figure out a way of using that thing the client wants and making it your own. The trick with clients is to make them think they thought of it, and that takes some pretty good dancing.” And if the client asks for a pink marble foyer? “I'll come back with six different choices, all of which I like,” he says. “It gives them a sense of control. The first rule is to show respect—‘Oh, that's a very interesting idea; let's see what we can do with it.' Then you regain control.”

Indeed, in an ideal relationship, what clients are paying for, among other things, is frank advice. They bring magazine images to early meetings that reflect their style and wishes, expecting that the architect will sort through those things and create something that adds up to a coherent whole. Tom Meyer, FAIA, a founding partner and principal of Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, Minneapolis, looks for that attitude to determine whether a relationship should go forward. Over the years he's learned to gauge whether the clients are set in a package of conflicting ideas that he's going to be expected to literally execute, or whether they see it as a starting point.

“Sometimes when there's a great site, it seems like a wonderful and rare opportunity, and it makes you overly optimistic,” Meyer admits. “Yes, they are wanting to put Gothic arches all over the front, but you think you can talk them out of that. Or you imagine that there's some wonderfully creative thing in this type of architecture that it's time to revive. But the older I get, the more I trust my intuition. You occasionally run into people who take quick offense to being challenged, and there's a direct correlation between the end quality and the quality of the relationship between the client and architect.”

When there are inherent conflicts—a request for a tropical-looking house in a northern setting, for example, or a budget mismatch—Meyer works with alternatives. He politely points out the problems and tries to find the essence of what's interesting to the clients. To illustrate, he shows several options that respond directly to their requests, but he also brings sketches that reveal other aspects of their wishes—ideas he thinks will lead in a better direction.

“It's like herding,” agrees Max Jacobson, founding principal of Berkeley, Calif.-based JSW/D Architects, whose four partners encompass a collection of design proclivities from contemporary to traditional. “We're using our design instincts to keep the process well-ordered,” he explains. “Once we start in a direction, we're not shy about using our aesthetic sensibility to encourage and discourage ideas that come up from the client.”

That can be harder for some projects than others. Currently on the boards is a project for a couple whose trip to Mexico in mid-design sparked a totally different idea of what they wanted to do. The architects scrapped the original concept and are now banging up against requested elements that are inappropriate for a house that's not on the water. “We're drowning in this project,” Jacobson says. “We have to work harder to make the house work for this site, but isn't this true of all custom residential work? People are always traveling around getting images and trying to apply them to wherever they live. It's America.”

Jacobson doesn't win all of his battles, but for him, success is relative. Even if the clients decide to go ahead with something he thinks is an aesthetic mistake, he doesn't throw a tantrum; instead, he gives it his best shot. “Sometimes we've said, ‘You were right; that's pretty good,' and our aesthetic gets broadened,” he says, summing up the optimal architect-client relationship.

“As I look back,” he continues, “it's hard for me to remember which decisions were ours and which were theirs. People always think architects know what they're doing. But the creation of a building is such a mysterious process. We are never unsurprised when we walk into these buildings.”

balancing act

When it comes to a signature look, single-family clients have only themselves to please. But when the client is a builder or developer, aesthetic issues become more laden, driven less by the client's tastes than by what he or she perceives will sell. Architect David Senden, a principal in the Irvine, Calif., office of the KTGY Group, tries to steer builders away from the popular “lick-and-stick” approach, as he calls the practice of pasting pseudohistorical details onto a building's exterior, regardless of floor plan. “Builders ask for a four-story Spanish Colonial building with parking beneath,” he says. “You try to mediate that.”

Rather than ask clients what they want their buildings to look like, Senden takes charge early on by showing image boards that convey the appropriate feel and detailing of a condo or townhouse complex—something that relates to the neighborhood and is relevant to the 21st century. “That process sorts out the clients who will work with me,” he says. Usually the images provide a balance of old and new—something comforting and familiar but also new and exciting.

“People think contemporary is a purple canted wall,” Senden continues. “We show them that contemporary means of its time. Whether it's a big porch or large eaves, you can put them on a building in a way that speaks to today rather than some faux idea of yesterday.”

But it's hard to argue aesthetics with spec builders, who hesitate to stray from the tried and true. So Senden does his research, offering reassurance via examples of other developers who have successfully broken the mold. Even more convincing is the use of a contemporary design element to solve a basic problem. For example, he says, flat roofs come in handy for hiding the air conditioners on row houses.