Designing Practice is a collection of conversations aimed at Moving Architecture Forward. In this installment, we hear from architect Duo Dickinson and his perspectives of the contemporary climate in regards to the profession as practice.
Looking to the future, Designing Practice is a series that explores how the practice of architecture can evolve in the 21st century. Framed by contemporary conditions, the series asks architects and designers to consider the discipline’s broader context and imagine new models for moving architecture forward.
In case you hadn’t noticed it, architecture is changing. It is just that many in this profession’s “Deep State” do not want to address it. Sadly, the symptoms of change are unavoidable.
I have helped make 800 built things, taught a little at 3 academic programs of extreme diversity, written 8 books, been published - both as a writer (often about other architects) and as a designer - in perhaps 100 places. I was even declared a Fellow in the AIA. I have lived the work of an architect and writer, mostly on architecture, for 40 years.
I have had my own firm for over 30 years, so I have no dog in the hunt of intellectual or professional justification via the “Deep State” as many I know have opted to dedicate their careers to. Despite this, at my suggestion, after a year of pestering, last fall I met for over an hour with the editor of one of the Big Two Architecture mags in the U.S. with writing, publishing and project ideas. I have not heard a peep, in any way, since that very positive meeting. So it is reasonable to conclude that what I do is not relevant to that part of the “Deep State”.
When 55% of those trained can’t do what they were trained to, something must change...
In architecture, irrelevance is not just an aesthetic misfit. The “Deep State” attitude of silence towards the larger bandwidth of architecture is just whistling past difference. Canon is comforting. Change is not. When 55% of those trained can’t do what they were trained to, something must change, despite the silence of “those in the know”.
In a “special reporting“ article in the January issue of “ARCHITECT” magazine, AIA economist Kermit Baker buried the lead of his story “How Many Architects Does Our Economy Need?”. Baker notes, after a fair amount of rose-colored commentary, that “…we’ll need about 25,000 additional architectural staff over the coming decade to handle growth in the construction industry and replace those who will leave the workforce. This need accounts for about half of all future graduates of accredited architectural programs nationally who are eligible to work in the United States.”
There are 6,000 students who annually receive a professional degree in architecture. And there are, according to Parsons, 2,500 jobs available each year: From now to as long as we can reasonably guess. If you are in San Francisco this is nuts: it’s booming. If you are in many areas of Trump Country you could marvel that there are any jobs at all. But if 3,500 people who have invested between $150-300,000 to get an education, and fewer than half of them will ever get a job in it, something has already changed.
IF it is a building profession, it is wrong to say that it takes “architecture” a long time to change. Construction swings from boom to bust all the time: simultaneously in different parts of the country, so the need for what we do is always changing, too.
Ah, but “The Canon”: the capital “A” Architecture, the Secret Society of academia, media, and fine arts culture is a glacial CYA of mutual admiration of the convinced. That Canon does not tolerate change as it endangers the validity of those who live through and by the Canon.
The problem is that the explosion of technology that eliminates jobs in the design and description of building is only going to accelerate, and the nature of Artificial Intelligence changes the roles of anyone doing anything that is affected by it. The 6,000 professors who teach the 24,000 students in architecture school and the other thousands in the “Deep State” can not be expected to do anything but play catch up to a technology that is rampaging through every aspect of every life: especially in America.
That Canon does not tolerate change as it endangers the validity of those who live through and by the Canon.
In a period of dramatic technological change that outpaces our capacity to effectively teach it, the value of abstraction in communicating the core realities of the profession has more value than faking control via making a better CAD Monkey. Rather than be controlled by the rampaging change, if we convey the essence of architecture to the next generation, including how to build, those taught will use that technology - it will not use them. That is why I have dedicated my teaching to the new “Building Beauty” program in Sorrento, Italy that just completed its first year.
The way I work now has no future, because the best practices of the way buildings are designed will universally transform architecture. I am a dinosaur in all but one aspect of architecture – building beauty. Fortunately that aspect is the seminal, central, essential focus of architecture. The ineluctably compelling inspiration of creation, no matter what technology we use to manifest our best hopes, has always been the North Star of architecture.
Motivations matter. When “Beauty” is seen by “The Canon” as an invalid standard to aspire to because it is amorphous and subjective, and the realities of “building” are largely unknown by so many entrusted with teaching architecture, this technical revolution becomes an existential crisis for those in that self-perpetuating “Deep State” – no matter what the profession.
If the new technology continues to kill traditional jobs in architecture for humans, there are two options to employ the 55% whose education is irrelevant to the best use of it. First, those with degrees could find fulfillment in non-construction – a virtual fine arts reality or intellectual exploration without the purpose of building anything. Alternatively, the profession as a whole changes so dramatically by Artificial Intelligence, that the profession can be used by more people than was possible in the last 200 years because architects need to do, (and bill) less, simply because technology can do more. I dearly hope this technological explosion allows more people to afford more of us. We may earn even less, but there are many areas that are radically underserved by architects.
If the new technology continues to kill traditional jobs in architecture for humans, there are two options to employ the 55% whose education is irrelevant to the best use of it.
2% of all newly built American houses are touched by architects. New home building offers the largest number of projects of a single building type in the construction industry. Millions have come to use HOUZZ, I hope this will not become substitutionary for architects’ usefulness. Our cost may be lessened by the extreme efficiencies of the AI technology – especially in home design. My practice is based on that design, so I see this potential up close and personal.
Secondarily, my office’s “B-Roll” is Pro Bono Work for not for profits. It is 20-30% of what I have done these decades. There may be a new capacity for Artificial Intelligence to fill the gaps in liability and knowledge allowing more architects to participate at minimal cost to help create things for those who need it the most.
If architecture is to transform to fulfill the hopes of all of its devotees (beyond the 45% of graduates and those already having degrees but have left the profession) there is a more fundamental need to change our relevance to the whole of society. Our fine-arts-iness needs to mesh with popular culture. Builders, artisans, technicians do deeply important work without the jargon, affect and pretense that architects are steeped in. The word “fenestration” should be illegal. “Cool” eyeglasses and footwear are more off-putting and self-validating than those gotten at the outlet store.
If our usefulness is not for everyone, for any and all of us, what is the point? Building facilitated by a new technology may make our cost far less, and our availability far greater. My 40 years in the profession sees the central thing stopping us from being relevant to our whole culture is the perpetuation of our fine arts affect and our collective validation of The Canon and the “Deep State”.
If technology continues to end the need for more and more traditional jobs in architecture, more people may simply opt not to go to architecture school at all.
Sadly, there is a third option for architecture that might be more probable that what I have described. If technology continues to end the need for more and more traditional jobs in architecture, more people may simply opt not to go to architecture school at all. Fewer students mean fewer graduates, fewer graduates mean fewer or, at minimum, smaller schools. Fewer schools mean fewer degrees – and that means a lower percentage of those unable to use those degrees. 55% will reduce.
Duo Dickinson has been an architect for more than 30 years. The author of eight books, he is the architecture critic for the New Haven Register, writes on design and culture for the Hartford Courant, and is on the faculty at the Building Beauty Program at Sant'Anna Institute in Sorrento, Italy.
24 Comments
Architecture is a profession protected by the legal status of a title, not a profession dictated by a respected collection of knowledge and expertise. Unless the reality (dilettantes making pretty sketchup models and running grasshopper scripts) matches the idealized fantasy (master builder), it's all just a battle of legal boundaries and pretty words.
Get out there and design something that CAN BE BUILT. Don't rely on "Architects of Record" to make your images into buildings. That isn't what you signed up for and, if it is, you're doing a disservice to the industry.
A whole lotta doom and gloom here! “The word “fenestration” should be illegal. ‘Cool’ eyeglasses and footwear are more off-putting and self-validating than those gotten at the outlet store.” Um, true In some cases, not in others. Architecture is not monolithic and has become less so in recent years. Only dinosaurs insist in everyone doing the same thing. BRB, I see a meteor headed this way!
This February's ARCHITECT Magazine noted that architecture student numbers have dropped by 10% over the last 5 years, and, as the mag noted the month before, and I cite in this piece, that 45% of those getting degrees in architecture can expect a job in the profession, ever. Wheels far larger than pessimism are changing every aspect of the world, including architecture more than most, and if the current paradigm of the architect as imaged in our culture continues as is the wont of those living into that image its lack of relevance insures further reduction in our usefulness as AI takes the act of building design out of human hands: this dinosaur sees the meteor coming: many others do to: no doom here, because there is evolution...for some, any way.
We need to:
1. Better architecture education by eliminating irrelevant courses with more entrepreneur/business, code, zoning, construction oriented courses. Good design = good business, technical proficiency , understanding of factors that dictate architecture etc.
2. Enough of this " we just design", contractor is responsible for means and methods, verify in field, comply with all codes, blah blah blah. Lets own the profession, which is a master builder, lets make architecture great again.
3. We need to educate our future graduates to be better at people skills, at business and at caring about the built environment.
4. Less software, more real life experience. I laugh at all the job postings about experienced architects and project managers who are also required to know revit, photoshop, adobe suites, autodesk, blah blah. How in the world can someone be experienced project manager while he labors over the numerous stupid software that we are required to know?
5. Respect for schooling and professionalism. Architects are one of the lowest paid professions, for a reason. We are scammed in our education, scammed while interning for firms, and scammed by the construction trades who reap all the profits.
Time to make this profession what it was under Brunelleschi.
until it may be too late...
What do you consider irrelevant?
just a small note from an academic. have you taken a look at an architecture school curriculum? not many history/theory courses are required, and the ones that are serve a valuable purpose - i think - in teaching broadly-important skills like reading and writing, thinking critically, having a historical and multicultural perspective...
"make X great again" needs to be stricken from the language. Sure, folks, let's let an ego-maniacal MORON dictate common parlance.
Fucking hell.
just because I said make architecture great again does not mean I support or not support Trump. Frankly I could care less, good president or bad president, this country is the greatest in the face of the planet anyway, especially for the Architecture profession. Look around what's being built around you, and see if you find that anywhere else on the planet.
the profession has indeed moved on. I don't agree that the step away from beauty has been a bad thing. We were taught to be distant and superior from the people we serve, now we all aim for higher things, and recognize that architecture is about more than what buildings look like.
The idea of a master builder as architect is strange. I guess it is intended to mean someone who can sling bricks and weld or something similarly manly, but if you talk with any project manager in charge of anything substantial you realize a true master builder is a bureaucrat, an organizer, someone who is very good at bringing people and materials together while dealing with unexpected problems, the occasional politics, and speaking to all kinds of groups and individuals without losing site of the big picture. If that is the image of what we should learn in school, then yes absolutely lets have more of that. But laying bricks and stuff? That is just for fun, not really about being a master builder at all.
Somehow I can't see our profession being about just design, nor about beauty either. We don't just do design. some of us build, some of us are community leaders, some of us build with robots. The profession is diverse. I see opportunity in that for our profession. It is definitely not a worrying trend that architects are looking in so many directions.
How we are paid is indeed a problem. That is about business though, not about beauty or technology.
This trope that professors don't know how to build is also really strange. Im in Japan where every professor has a phd and a license as a basic requirement to teach. Most of the profs also have practices to various degrees. I used to think this was not normal for north america, but I am finding it is not that strange anywhere in the world anymore. Our professors are doing more than ever and building more than ever, our practices are engaging more than ever. This is a good thing. Our profession may indeed face a smaller number of graduates, but it is too much to say that the reason for that is some kind of straying from any sort of path. My guess its just a reflection of opportunity and calculations about costs and salaries. That is a serious problem perhaps, and true of a lot of other professions as well.
My intuition is that what we need to do is rethink architecture education and practice to become more inclusive not less, and to abandon the idea that we are somehow really just artisans of some sort...
that is my point though, SAC. America is not so different than Japan. It used to be I think. Certainly when I was a student. We were taught by opera singers architects and artists. That diversity was awesome and I have nothing bad to say about it. But I notice that a lot of schools in the USA today are run and taught by practicing architects who are dealing with all of the above without losing sight of the fact that architecture is also a practice.
Even if this was not the case the idea that professors are out of touch is spurious. It is part of the anti-intellectual bullshit that continues to confound north america for absolutely no good reason other than fear as far as I can tell. That whole ivory tower isolation thing is not really true, and less so now than ever.
Inclusive means simply that we should learn more teach more look at more act more be more. Economics, art, social justice, resilience, business, law, technology, communication, etc. It is easy to make a longer list. We should, as a profession, be involved in all of that stuff just as a normal definition of our work. Seems to me that is what is happening anyway, so why not acknowledge it, own it, get woke. And work from there.
The problems our profession needs to respond to are well beyond aesthetic anyway. They are also well beyond legal issues, the code, whatever. Since we are good at synthesis as a result of our training I don't see any reason why we don't expand our scope instead of shrinking it out of fear of losing what we already have managed to place a protective circle around.
You mean limit it to code checks and bureaucracy? I think that describes a project manager more than an architect.
Interesting that you think we should burn it all down and start anew. Could be one way.
Maybe we need a rebranding;-)
We need to be less like Tarkin. We keep too tight a grip on "Architect" and more and more of what that means is lost.
Not fully applicable, but I think it's worth looking at, for example, the Swiss model of education and practice.
Duo D. ...You have expressed much of what I have had to say in defense of myself, [in the profession],
whether in Firms or to family and friends. Your perspective in life is obviously shaped by the walk you walk but can be frequently misunderstood. You, however, have eloquently expressed yourself in your books and essays and so I appreciate the initiated opinions to spur the discourse.
When will our profession counter the 'Trump' Developers' to enable the inner-city resurrection needed
to sustain life? We have become solely enabling to the rich, nuvo-riche' and country-club set.
Put LEED into practice everywhere not just as a badge-of-recognition as to..."LOOK what I just did!"
I gotta Go...
THANKS: I think this will be see as the biggest change time in architecture since the advent of the CAD time: with bigger changes: uncharted....
I'm wearing Prada eyeglasses and blue suede wingtips. So, defenestrate me already.
Vado R...you're certainly a hit in any 'glass towered' conference room I've sat in!
I believe D.D.'s message has much to do about the trend & practice of education than specific definition of ARCHITECT. In the 1960,s, [putting the Vietnam war aside, if you can], a college education was eclectic where specialization into a finite curriculum did not occur until a profession. Your 'life's journey'...work, job experiences had more definition. When AI crept-in...it was marketed as 'just a tool' and not as a threat, yet, [ca.1980] Principal Architect's prohibited us from being schooled into this new techno-tool. Time was better spent by keeping the status quo in the studio...it's worked forever...why the change now. They waited for the tech schools' to produce CAD operators. Once experienced from pencil draftsman, to job captain, project managers & designers led many of us further from this media which quickly, became a mandate and not just another way to produce CD's. Sisyphus, now uphill against an unmovable rock. If you were not of the generation grown through video-game culture you had to practice creative re-invention of self to, at least, parallel within the profession and the new norm as member of a much smaller, 'core group' in firms'. Hello to the Consultant's Class!
I'm struck by the younger professionals' reaction to any criticism of their prized technology when this display of confused thinking adds more definition to their lack of historical knowledge and a [disrespect] through blatant misunderstanding of life and their own profession.
Where does this 'shoulder-chip' come from?
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