#ArchiTalks 45 "happy accidents"

December 03, 2018

#ArchiTalks 45 "happy accidents"

"happy accidents" uhhhh...

I have looked over this prompt several times in the last couple weeks and I can think of no accidents that were happy besides the one that I gave birth to 18 years ago. And yes, the one that I was 54 years ago...

And I know what the author of this #ArchiTalks 45 prompt was thinking, he was thinking about accidents that happen in architecture that turn out to be a benefit to the project.

and i just still can't think of any...

i can think of several things that have happened on projects but I can't think of any of them that made the projects any better. I think I managed to deal with them with little repercussions, I mean they didn't break contract. .

Any accidents that have happened on projects have been mostly the result of the contractor not reading the drawings correctly and framing things the wrong way and then it's like,

"oh, ya, i forgot to tell you about that and we can't really do anything about that at this point...."

I have never had a "oh, we ordered the windows and doors ahead of time and then we couldn't fit the window in the half bath because the electrical panel is on one half of the 4.5' wide wall on one side and there's a shear wall and a post carrying load from above on the other half...

So we have this extra window that we can put in the house somewhere else!!!!"

NOT

Or

OK, I ordered the tile that they wanted through my tile place with the amount that the general contractor estimated without asking his tile guy and then we ended up with an extra box of tile and the client didn't think that they would ever need a whole box of tile, so they wanted to take it back and they couldn't because it was special order and then the contractor told them that had they ordered it through him that they would have been able to return it, in spite of the fact that he was the one that had ordered too much... lesson learned:

Never order their materials for them.

But that was not a happy accident.

I think I also probably put those things out of my mind after the project is finished and it isn't until I look at the project a few years later and I see the "happy accident" that was the contractor stopping the fascia at the new part and not continuing it into the old, thus not minding the

"New Fascia to Match Existing Fascia"

However, the client was not paying me for Construction Observation and probably not paying him to do cmplete the job so I never did a punch list sooooo

"that was not a happy accident"

my mom and i

my daughter and i years later

we asked this guy to take our photo 5 times
and this was a good as he could do...
at the Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen

I did however one day accidentally come upon "Life of an Architect" and I don't ever recall hearing about it prior to seeing it one day and I cannot even remember where I saw it. Maybe from another person's post, but I don't think so because at that time I didn't have that may architecture friends on that social media venue because I didn't want them to see my life. I am not even sure that I even hit "Like". (apparently from my email, i did) But anyways, I guess that was a happy accident because as I have said before, I had started a blog but never wrote anything beyond this post started on 01/16/2012:

I have decided to blog about my life... , the trials and tribulations, as one could say, of being a woman, a mother, a wife, a volunteer, a public servant, and last but not least, an architect.

That was it and that has been looked at over a thousand times.

And I am not sure if I ever commented on "Life of an Architect" but I had read Rosa Sheng's article about "the Missing 32%" and the "where are the women architects?" and etc., etc. and then I commented on "Life of an Architect" asking about something that was based on that and I guess I posted a link...
Which is a no-no for posting on people's blogs because it put up a red flag and won't post your comment, it goes to the moderator inbox. So I got an email from Bob (all of these details were not memorable, I actually looked them up and saw the email because in addition to having over 10k unopened emails (nor important ones, things like GAP ads from 2008) I also save most emails because of work correspondence and not going through and deleting them...

But apparently I had posted something like this:

"...and it said that you had just two women post about their life"

I clearly don't even remember what I said but it was in regard to how many women were writing for the #ArchiTalks series and at that point. there were only two. Then he asked if I wanted to contribute and that he would like to see more women and a more equitable group of architects blog about their lives.

And this email occurred on December 10, 2014.

Of course my response was this:

Bob,

Rosa Sheng had posted that there were only two women who posted on your site about their "day in the life of an architect". I follow you on facebook so i don't always see what you post or I probably would have sent something to you. But it's the holidays and with the new code starting January 1st, many of us have been busy getting done with projects so that maybe we can get paid! I will most likely send you something later, but I had spent the previous 24 hours trying to get airfare home for my daughter (who is studying in Spain right now because I had relied on an architect's ex-boyfriend who works for An unspecified Airlines to get us stand-by seats, bad decision!!! I would be more than happy to contribute to any architectural subject, if you need anyone to ever do that.

Thank-you,

Michele Hottel

they made me climb up to this castle on
3 hours sleep after a 30 hour flight

So, I went to Spain and Copenhagen as a 50th birthday gift to myself, and we had Christmas with the Danish family that I had lived with as a student twenty-eight years before, My daughter took me around her study abroad city and I took her around mine and I brought my daughter home and started blogging in the following February.

#ArchiTalks 5 "favorite things"

the courtyard of the house where i lived with "min danske familie"
while i was studying abroad and where two of
my danish sisters lived with their families when we visited again