I’ve been a fan of Archiboo ever since becoming involved in the business of architecture, and I was one of the judges for the Best Written Content category of their Web Awards last year.
Now they’ve asked me to write a blog about the writing workshop I ran a few weeks ago for Archio, who happen to have been the winners of that category.
It’s disappeared from the Archiboo website, so here it is, for anyone still interested:
Writing about what you do: a quick guide for architects
The phrase ‘writing workshop for architects’ doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, but I’m hoping it won’t be long before it does. Over the last few months I’ve found that herding a group of architects into a room with just me, some paper and pens, and then shutting the door behind us is the best way of getting architects to rethink how they write about what they do.
A couple of weeks ago, it was the turn of the Archio team – and some fellow architects who work in the same building – to be my subjects. Archio happened to be the winners of the Best Written Content category of the Archiboo Web Awards last year, and I’d been one of the judges. So I knew what they were capable of, and I knew I’d be preaching to the converted. But I know, too, that writing is often the last thing architects want to do once a project is done, dusted and photographed.
How would it work, then, if architects decided to grab hold of the blank page with more enthusiasm and make more of it? Words are your chance, as an architect, to alight on the kind of moments that we, as humans, can’t help but respond to and which photographs and floorplans can never convey: your excitement from the moment you set foot on the site; how you overcame the challenges along the way; and how the views through the finished building are just as you’d hoped.
That blank page is your chance to make your project so much more than a here’s-one-I-made-earlier moment. It’s your chance to let your voice do the talking and express something of the excitement of designing a great building. In other words, it’s the perfect spot to tell a good story.
Writing shouldn’t be so different to talking, and we do a lot of talking in a writing workshop. We describe a project first with a sketch to hand and then without, and I’ll leave you to work out which makes for a more interesting story. We talk to a blank wall about our practice and then tell the same things to a fellow human being. The difference here is obvious (the first is difficult and acutely embarrassing, and the second is a pleasure), so shouldn’t we just find a way of tricking our brain into imagining our audience when we write?
Actually, tricking our brains gets us quite a long way. Archio and their fellow architects seemed surprised – and delighted – by how much easier writing can be if you approach it differently. Without knowing it, you’ll be getting back to what really matters about what you do. And from there it’s just a short hop to getting the words down on paper. And then another short hop to inspiring people. You might even remember why you became an architect in the first place.
Juliette Mitchell worked as an editor at Penguin for many years and now runs architypal.co.uk. She runs writing workshops for architects, and she’ll be speaking at the RIBA Future Leaders event on 17th May 2018.