The first was a 620 square metre house on a plot that could comfortably hold 300. The brief was fixed, the budget was generous, and the building would have had to be dug four metres into a hillside that has been terraced since before anyone measured it. We said no in the first meeting and recommended two other practices.
The second was a hotel on a coastal site with an existing consent for 84 keys. The client wanted the consent built. We wanted to test 60 keys with the same revenue per key and half the excavation, and after two months it became clear that this was not a conversation, it was a delay. We stopped.
The third we turned down for a reason that reflects badly on us: we did not have the people. It was a good project on a good site with a client who had done their reading. We were four months into two other buildings and we would have done it badly.
None of these is a moral position. Each is a calculation about what the studio can do well, and each was made faster than we would have made it five years ago, which is the only real skill involved.
We wrote to all three clients this autumn to ask how the projects went. Two replied. One of the buildings is finished and is, by the account of the person who paid for it, too big.
