“This seems a little too appropriate since I’m currently ending a really terrible client relationship with an architect, but I thought other designers might enjoy. I’m sorry if this seems spammy, I really needed to share with people who understand.

Dear Mr. Architect:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year. Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet.

However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers. Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often. Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case..”

true, there is a ridiculously overused trend for websites and designers to use those annoying reflections in their graphics, such as logos or product/photo galleries. gradients are also important in this new trend. oh, and don’t forget the large social and interactive component where everybody can post anything about everything… tag it… and post comments about someone else’s meaningless ramblings. don’t get me wrong, social interaction and engaging the user on a more personal level in the design of web sites is critical, but of course it has to be done correctly and hopefully there’s some great aesthetic behind it. all of this supposedly constitutes as being web 2.0…

unfortunately we have to deal with poorly put together, visually unappealing and continuously error-prone web sites like myspace. yeah it’s popular (and i admit… i have my own account on there mainly for the social aspect), but why is it popular? obviously NOT for its aesthetic appeal. just look at the way in which some user’s personalize their pages… lack of taste, dysfunctional and overall irritating to view. and now third-party sites exist that offer even more of this crap for people to customize their pages with… so as time progresses we are plagued with more and more crap not only on myspace, but across the web. social networking sites like thefacebook, youtube and flickr thankfully care a little more about how their sites look and function!

and today on newstoday, someone posted a topic asking “Anyone know of a good Web 2.0 Dbase System?” what!? a web 2.0 database system? good gawd!

so anyway, can we all please stop using this meaningless “web 2.0″ phrase? oh and while we’re at it, let’s avoid putting reflections in all of our graphics from now on. thanks!

i came across this blog post which further explains this disease and realized i’m not the only one. anyway, it’s definitely a good read…

“In very dense urban environments, you get local shops and facilities mixed up together,” says Townshend. “People tend to use those more. There’s an awful lot more walking involved, just because of the inconvenience of driving.” High-density housing, in other words, can help create what is known in the trade as the “eco-slob” effect, whereby the healthy, environmentally friendly option is also the path of least resistance.

By contrast, low-density housing leaves the resident with few options. If you want to get anywhere, you need a car. “Far too much housing is built on a cul-de-sac format with a huge great wall around it and one entrance in and out,” says Townshend. “It’s for motor traffic, with high-speed distributor roads around the edge of the compound. Usually these places have no local shops or facilities.” The cul-de-sac has another obvious disadvantage: it doesn’t go anywhere. When designing an exercise-friendly environment, connectivity is king. “What happens in really poorly designed housing estates is that people have very indoor lifestyles…”

so it’s apparent that architecture is not holding up to the social responsibility it holds (well in most social aspects… not just in terms of obesity). we must change people’s behavior, yet that change also must be the easiest solution and the environment must encourage such change in order for society to follow. with this in mind, according to the article we’re “back to the idea of the eco-slob: the healthy option has to be made the easiest option.”

architecture’s problems run much deeper than just this one issue… there’s a whole slew of problems that architecture completely ignores in favor of only answering to those with money. isn’t it about time that architecture gets its act together and stands up to what it actually defines itself as, responding to that which it says it responds to? no, i don’t have the complete answer at this point, but at least i, as well as others, are actually making an attempt to understand architecture’s disconnect with the people, with culture and with society overall.