Louis Sullivan said, “Great architecture requires great clients” or something close to that. This weekend, I was thinking about this in a moment of design rage and it dawned on me. I’ve never had a class, seen a lecture or read an article on how to get or even recognize great clients. I was hoping the collective C77 board intelligence could help me out. Any clues?
One example I have is an architect once told me about when his office got successful enough to start turning clients away. He had a client that just kept insisting for bad design in their million dollar house project and after 2-3 meetings the architect told them he wasn’t their man.
The problem with that is that it depends on judgement based on hundreds of client meetings. Even then, he had to burn 8-12 hours on preperation and meetings just to turn the job down. Are their signs we can depend on earlier?
Another example is organizational structure. The boards discusses sales-oriented organizations a year ago and we concluded that it was difficult to make great design when sales is in charge and they are insisting that they need a copy of the competitor product, costing $10 less and with Mickey Mouse branding.
Any other organizational signs?