Thank you to everyone who came along to the London Specifi landscape event, and for contributing so generously to the Think Tank and the presentation. The discussion continued during the meal, and one person mentioned an important point that I’d missed. When I spoke about valuing (Landscape Architect) work I focused on confidence and self-belief, encouraging landscape architects to recognise the social and environmental value of our work. But I totally overlooked financial value. We discussed the problem of lower fees being associated with less important work, and that by not charging high enough fees we under-value our work as landscape architects.
As I mainly work as a sub-consultant I rarely see the fee rates for others in the design teams, so it isn’t something I’d picked up on. I’m interested to know if we are under-valuing our work as landscape architects, and how our rates compare to others in the project team. Do landscape architect lead projects command higher fees, or is it an issue across all of our work? Is it really an issue, and is there any way we can address it? I’d love to hear your views.
As promised here are the links from my talk
http://bit.ly/99invisiblePodcast
http://bit.ly/ProspectsLandscape
http://bit.ly/BeALandscapeArchitectSite
http://bit.ly/DesigningAwesome
http://bit.ly/JamesUrbanArticle
http://bit.ly/London2012LearningLegacy
http://bit.ly/CrossrailLearningLegacySite
http://bit.ly/HongKongPhooeyTheme
And check out this book by the wonderful Hal Moggridge which gives a great insight into the art of landscape architecture.
