Craig:
Again, very fine questions--even better than the last, in fact! These kinds of questions are just what Ron Prichard was hoping for on this website with the Aronimink restoration!
I'm a bit surprised there aren't more who are interested and contributing to this but I can certainly understand why you are with what you're doing at the moment with your club and what's being planned.
I'll try to speak for Ron Prichard on those questions from what I saw over there and the conversations I had with him on the phone later about some of the details of the Aronimink restoration! If I'm wrong about anything I'm sure he will see this and correct it!
I believe there has to be some form of "learning curve" when any architect works with a shaper on a restoration such as Aronimink's and on bunkers such as those that were done at Aronomink with Ross's original plans in hand.
And yes, I believe that mistakes were probably made to some of the bunker shaping early on in the bunker project. But the point, according to Ron, is it got corrected and done to his satisfaction, something Ron specifically said he insists on before he approves the finished product.
Personally, I feel this particular phase of restoration or new construction architecture is immensely important and is one of the primary reasons some architectural companies are better than others, ultimately.
Those that have their own crews would seem to me to be more foolproof in this way as there really isn't the need to get to know a shaper from an architect's perspective and vice versa! And I also believe the deeper the crew in this way the better it is!
Of the crews that I'm aware of it's my believe that Coore & Crenshaw and the "Boys" are probably the deepest of all and the most "symbiotic" in the way they work together. They've basically been together so long they know almost exactly what each other is thinking and explaining!
Other than that familiarity, I think just assembling a talented crew is important although they may not be that familar with each other at first.
A good example of that, I believe, was the Stonewall2 crew who appeared to have a good number of talented people on site although they may not have worked together before. For that the product obviously depended on Tom Doak to bring everything together during his site visits.
I certainly know Gil Hanse & Co. as he's doing my course's restoration right now and it's impressive to see that crew in action. Gil is doing most of the bunker shaping himself and I watched him redo one green and was really impressed with his talent both in concept and with the equipment.
Rodney Hine is there almost every day too to do shaping and the more detailed work and to really monitor the other people who work on the project!
I knew going into our project that having Gil doing some of his own work on the ground to a large degree would be important and frankly was the primary reason we hired him in the first place!
But as time goes by on our project the value of a guy like Rodney is reinforced every day. Rodney is just unbelievably good and a great guy to talk with about architecture and the many little details of it that ultimately show through.
I saw a little bit of the same thing from Jim Wagner out on the Hanse project at Rustic Canyon and how GeoffShac and he worked together!
Ron Forse and Jim Nagel I think are the same and that kind of coverage on their projects is very benefical!
But Ron Prichard has very definite architectural ideas on these restoration projects, I believe. Ron could be the most historically interested and in tune with the original architect and his intentions of any I've seen!
That's one of the primary reasons I'm so interested in his conversations about how and why even he must "interpret" the original architects plan's and intentions sometimes!
In essence, on the Aronimink project, particularly the bunker restoration (technically the Aronimink bunkers are not a restoration as they were never built to Ross's drawings!!), I believe Ron is saying that if he just handed the Ross plans to a shaper (he didn't know) that tremendous problems could have resulted on some of them--and not because of the shaper exactly, just that Ross's specs and construction instructions on many of the bunkers simply never could have fit the land in particular cases!! And so they needed "interpretation".
As far as I could see it was Tom Elliot (from the green committee) who was on site almost all the time and had a large amount of interreaction with Ron.
The chipping area connecting #8 & # 10 green, for instance, was Tom Elliot's own idea and eventually Ron approved it! Things like that are a bit more than they would seem, I'm sure, as one of the times I was over there drainage patterns and so forth through that chipping area had to be worked out in detail to make everything work out satisfactorily!
And so it goes!
But I'm of the belief that just having a committee or whatever tell any architect what they want and then having an architect tell those that actually create it what to do (who they may not know) is a potentially mistake-ridden process!
I've discussed this process with Pat Mucci on here and elsewhere about this kind of interreaction in architecture. Pat seems to be of the belief that if an owner or whatever just tells any architect what he wants it will happen to his satisfaction. I suppose Pat feels he can do this and may feel he has at Boca Rio!
And that may be true to an extent but my personal feeling is that it's little known how important the process is of the architect communicating really well with those that do the actual work--all of it!
And that's why I believe I prefer those companies whose architectural styles I'm personally in tune with but also the companies that have some depth and a certain "symbiosis" to the people in the field, if you know what I mean!
I think that particular aspect is just so important! So much more important than most know!