Sunday, December 7, 2008

Like Pouring Guiness

In case you hadn't heard (and how's that bomb shelter treating you, by the way?) the economy is F*CKED!  Sorry about that, but there really is no other equally appropriate descriptor.

Our relationship to this downturn is particularly acute as we are right in the heart of the industry that went down first.  Architecture, and the construction industry in general, is notoriously the first to collapse (pun intended) and the last to be built back up (again).  This time, however, the egregiously large, thin-membraned bubble that we (construction industry folk) were all happily bouncing around on was right at the heart of this plummet.  The catalyst.

This, I think, darkens our viewpoints a bit more than those outside of this industry.  I am surrounded by architects.  I have very few friends not in architecture these days, and all of them are back in the US, so all around us is doom and gloom; the status of the economy reflected painfully in the faces and conversations we see and hear every day.

Take staffing and redundancies (layoffs, for those reading at home), for example.  The most evident reflection of our economic status.  When I think about architectural staffing in Ireland I think about someone tipping out a pitcher only, instead of dark, thick Irish beer flowing out, it's people, all toppling out straight onto the sidewalk.  I'm not going to detail any specifics here, but, suffice it to say, it's not pretty...

We still have jobs!

I just thought I would throw that out there in case all of my morose harping was starting to make you nervous...

This was #1 on my list of things to be thankful for this past holiday and it looks positive that I will get to continue being thankful for it, at least for a little while.  As much as people would like to reassure us that the worst is over...they don't know sh*t!  Every partner/director is walking around with a big "?" on their forehead.  We might be OK for now, but without new work coming in we could just as easily be twiddling our thumbs (on the street) in a few months time.  We can only hope that some of the work governments are doing to try and spin things back up will take hold.

This is, by no means, to say that other industries are not feeling the crunch.  Obviously this misery is well on its way to saturating other markets, but it seems like most of the people outside of Architecture, here in Ireland at least, aren't incurring quite as many stressed induced comas as we are.

2 comments:

Michael Great said...

you know I was going to guess that Ben wrote this entry........yep there it is at the bottom.

Ben said...

Why ever would you say that?

:D