Cocktails & Conversations: Peter L. Gluck and Inga Saffron

“The architectural world tends to focus on the really high cost of buildings, the zip-a-dee-doo-dah buildings—music halls, museums, luxury condos, corporate centers. No one talks about how much these buildings cost while, simultaneously, the whole city is being silently rebuilt under our noses with a different set of criteria, and different budgets. As part of our practice, although we do those zip-a-dee buildings, we seek projects that are not high-profile buildings with generous budgets, but more ordinary projects with ordinary budgets. One of the problems that developers and the real world face is a kind of fear of ambitious architects. When we’re trying to do these kinds of projects, we’re faced with the assumption that architects cause problems rather than adding value to their tightly budgeted projects. The rap on architects in the real world is really not so great.

Architecture, in this context, is seen as an unaffordable kind of luxury or worse. A path for many architects is to make problematic, costly buildings. I think, as architects, we really need to turn that vision around. The question for our profession is simply how do we, how can we add value in this context, and what is the framework within which we must operate.” - Peter L. Gluck