In 1996 , I was part of the team designing the destination Atlantis in the Bahamas. I was a young, tenacious project architect. I had worked on the first renovation of Paradise Island, when we converted the old Coral towers and placed in the large aquarium.
On this day I was traveling to Paradise Island for a design review and coordination meeting. This was for the much larger 1200 key resort. This meeting included the executive architects, structural, MEP the works. We were also getting an update on the budget. I was traveling with the Senior Partner Mr. Sorin Zdrahal, we arrived and immediately joined a large coordination meeting. The first topic was the budget and how the project was some % over budget. Of course this message was delivered by the owners team in such a way that it was clear that all disciplines would contribute to the costs saving over the next few days.
We were scheduled to be first up to present the exterior design. I started to get up to retrieve the roll of design drawings I had carried from California. Sorin placed his hand on my arm, for me to stay seated. He then announced to the room that our design drawings would arrive by the morning and we would present first thing the next day. The owners team was not happy with us and proceeded to tell us of their unhappiness with us. But agreed that we couldn’t present what we didn’t have. The next several hours were spent by the interior designers and landscape designers presenting their designs, and sadly getting a great deal of their designs “value engineered”.
We broke for the day and as I walked back to our rooms before dinner I asked Sorin why we didn’t present the designs we had brought. Sorin is a great mentor and taught me a lot. He pointed out that he would rather take criticism for not presenting our designs on time, rather than present them and have our design stripped of quality design elements.
The next morning we presented our designs and sure enough most of our design was spared the “value engineering “ hatchet. Sorin is crazy like a fox. I learned a valuable lesson, one that I was able to simulate a few times in my career.
I have had the pleasure of having mentoring relationships during my career, this was just one lesson I was taught. Thank you Sorin.
Destination Architect 