Blog | Happy 6th birthday

Today Panfilocastaldi turns 6, meaning I have survived another full year of blogging. As I have on each prior anniversary, I’m going to take this opportunity to reflect on the scope and focus of my writing. Why do I write? What do I write? Who is it for?

As I review the content I’ve published this year, what strikes me most is the stark contrast between my first year of writing and my most recent:

2011

• My early articles spanned a wide range of topics, covering 17 different categories from food to theatre and many things in between.
• I wrote prolifically, publishing an article on average every 3 days.
• Though frequent, my articles were short. My very first piece, on the 2009 Mies van der Rohe Award, needed just 365 words.

2016

• My articles this year focus almost exclusively on architecture practice, with all but one so categorised.
• I write sporadically now, publishing an article on average every 21 days.
• Though infrequent, my articles are long. My most recent piece, on the incremental tasks fee method, needed 1,119 words and was in fact the last in a series of 5 articles of similar length all exploring the architectural fee.

Why the contrast? Well, I suspect that the changing nature of my writing is the result of the changing nature of my life.

When I started Panfilocastaldi, I was living in Milan (in a street called Via Panfilo Castaldi for those of you who didn’t know) and travelling a lot. Even when I returned to Melbourne soon after, I was still doing and seeing a lot of different things. Indeed, the inspiration for this blog came from a desire to continue living the traveller’s lifestyle: it encouraged me to seek things to write about, so I attended festivals and lectures and exhibitions, then wrote about them, then sought more things.

Today, I live in Melbourne, run a thriving architecture studio with my wife, and spend the majority of my spare time being a dad to my two young children. My daily experiences have narrowed considerably, and thus so has my writing. To be fair to myself (and parenthood in general), I do still get out and do things, I just can’t seem to find the space in my life to write about them.

I often reflect on the carefree and exuberant time I spent in Milan. I even yearn for it on occasion. There was an oasis-like quality to my time there that reminds me of Ann Patchett’s sublime Bel Canto. It was a vivid experience insulated from the tough job of growing up and working out how to contribute to the world.

But returning home and having kids have done a wonderful thing to my perspective. My early writing was personal and mostly self-indulgent. I wrote broadly but shallowly, and primarily to amuse myself. Did anyone really need to know what I thought of kitchen utensils or nuclear fallout in Japan? In contrast, now that my time is so much more limited, my writing has become narrow but deep, and I like to think useful.

I still write for myself, as a sort of catharsis that helps me process the challenges of growing our architecture business. But I also write for all the other young architects going through the same challenges I am, and the many wonderful people thinking about engaging them to build something.

My earliest article on architecture practice (in early 2012) was fittingly about reinventing the wheel, and appeared amidst other articles on urbanism, product design and photography. Gradually, these other subjects have fallen away, and the intersection of architectural culture, practice and business has emerged as my (almost) sole focus.

This slow transition has helped me find my voice, one underpinned by the expertise I’ve gathered from founding, growing and improving Mihaly Slocombe for the past six years. Architecture practice has become my focus because it’s what I know and care about. It has also helped me understand two important things about the world:

Sharing is better than hoarding

There aren’t many architects in Australia, and of course far fewer architecture practices. In contrast, there is an ever-growing cackle of rival occupations eating away at our authority, territory and opportunities for creativity. Individually we sink, together we swim. This is why I share the things I share, some of which are quite private insights about our business. Whatever wisdom I’ve earned I feel the need to contribute to the profession.

Data is everything

Data about time spent on things, resources divided between things, money earned from things. I’m certainly not the first person to realise that knowledge of the underlying truths of our architecture practice helps us make the right decisions about its future. I may be the first to collect data about these truths so passionately. For me, data is just another way of saying the science of business.

Where does all this position Panfilocastaldi within the bigger picture? At the cutting edge I hope.

Architects love to talk about design. We share ideas via print and online media, within awards programmes and in exhibitions, during workshops and conferences. We gobble up every photo, diagram and sketch like a fat kid does a bucket of fried chicken.

But we don’t love talking about business. At university, I learned about the history and theory of architecture, about construction, detailing and sustainability, about design principles, communication and execution. I did not however learn about business. I remain incredulous that all that I know about client acquisition, marketing strategies, future planning, workflow management and income generation I’ve learned on the job by trial and error.

No wonder the profession is in crisis.

So anyway, this is my voice. I talk about these things because by and large very few others are. I have set about in my own small way to inject questions of money and productivity and marketing into our broader discussion. It’s my hope that this injection steers the conversation somewhat towards pastures more open-minded about the political economy of design.

I was chuffed recently to make it onto a list of important Australian architecture blogs, but a bit disappointed that the author used adjectives like pragmatic and everyday to describe my content. Yes, the articles I write are about the everyday, but I believe they are the things that facilitate the momentous. The crisis of the architecture profession is fuelled I think by a resistance to business. But design and business aren’t mutually exclusive, indeed they are tidally locked. Each can’t and shouldn’t exist without the other. Good business facilitates good design, and vice versa.

The origins of this blog may have been frivolous, indistinguishable from the hundreds of millions of other blogs floating around the internet, but I’m pleased they’ve led somewhere productive. This voice that I’ve found and am continuing to find has become a new source of inspiration, one that has evolved well beyond the original purpose of Panfilocastaldi.

So what next?

For me and my time-limited life, one of the attractive qualities of blogging is how incremental it is. The idea of sitting down to write a 200,000 word book scares the shit out of me, but taken together, that’s about how many words I’ve written across my 310 Panfilocastaldi articles over these past six years. One article at a time isn’t so scary.

Despite this, I think I would like to write a book. Something that gathers together the various threads I’ve explored on this blog into a cohesive, narrative-driven resource for the architecture profession. I have a few ideas about the what and the how, but I’ll keep them under wraps for now for fear of putting a mozz on myself.

A question for you though, dear readers: would you buy and then read a book I’ve written? Would it be useful to you in your daily lives? What do you think it should be about?

I think I’ll leave it there. Thank you for your support this year. Who knows what 2017 will bring, and whether I’ll ever find the pathway to putting together an entire book. For now, Panfilocastaldi continues to be a labour of love, self-sustaining because it’s enjoyable for its own sake. If you promise to keep reading, I’ll promise to keep typing.

Yours sincerely,
Warwick Mihaly.

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1. Happy 6th birthday, author’s own image.
2. 2016 vs 2011 word count comparison, author’s own image.
3. 2016 vs 2011 categories comparison, author’s own image.
4. Article montage, author’s own image.
5. All time tags, author’s own image.