When I started designing a door handle in my last practice, I was told not to bother. The firm had a standard door handle design that they used in all their projects. I soon discovered it was not just door handles that were standardized. Standards included elements such as materials and junctions between them, lighting concepts, entire layouts of bathrooms; everything from micro to macro had been standardized. It became apparent that my job was to mechanically arrange the standard details into a new arrangement, as if picking elements from a prefabricated home catalogue.
Exnovation, the opposite of innovation, emerges at the end of an innovation life-cycle when processes and designs which have been tried and tested to work, at least once, become standardized. Architectural practices risk losing their creative ‘je ne sais quoi’ when they start to become inward-looking production lines. Inspiration comes from without, not within. Admitting and accepting this is liberation from ego and freedom from regurgitated ‘in-house style’.
Offices are, by their very nature, designed to promote order and routine, which are perhaps inhospitable environments for innovation. Sometimes an original idea can float around an architectural practice for years because realizing the idea would cost time and money. Can we afford to be as innovative as we’d like? If we sacrifice our creativity for efficiency, are we grasping the shadow instead of the substance? Innovation is also about taking risks and perhaps the towering costs and long life spans of buildings counter that inner daring. Far more buildings fall victim to the fear of risk, rather than a risk that failed.
On the other hand, Will Alsop, who made his name with controversial, high-risk and innovative architecture (rather than an interest in the financial realities of running a business), faced increasing rejection for commissions due to fears that his proposals would be too objectionable to planners and too high risk to build. His playful and, in his words, 'what the fuck is that' architectural style was highly imaginative, yet unfortunately he was forced to sell his practice in 2006 to a corporate conglomerate, due to what he called increasing risk aversion. Risk aversion was no doubt largely a product of the crumbling economic state of the time. Nevertheless, Alsop’s willingness to challenge the status quo and to design without boundaries should be commended. Such unrestricted design thinking is uncommon in architectural practices today.
This leads to the question of whether the protected title and profession of the architect has become too restrictive over time. "Many, many, many years ago creative people used to do more than just one thing" New York designer Dror Benshetrit said in an interview on Dezeen in 2015. "Education fragmented the arts into a lot of different specialized professions. And I see that changing back. I think it used to be more common in the past."
Historically, art, design and construction was carried out by the local artisan, who was typically skilled in many trades. The first recorded Roman architect, Vitruvius, would today be described as not just an architect but as an engineer, landscape architect, surveyor, quantity surveyor, artist, philosopher, historian, lawyer, sculptor, astronomer and craftsman—quite the business card indeed!
It wasn’t until the 18th century that the role of architect started to separate out from other trades
The pattern of polymath-as-architect continued onwards through history, with the likes of Da Vinci, Palladio, Michelangelo and Wren, whose careers would today bridge entire university prospectuses and more. It wasn’t until the 18th century that the role of architect started to separate out from other trades.
During the 20th Century, modernist pioneers began to take the stage, with architects such as Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Niemeyer, Lloyd Wright and Kahn, who begin to shift the perception of what it means to be an architect. The ego of the Architect begins to expand and cross fertilization with other disciplines declines due to the huge, stylish, glass and steel boxes that architecture begins to build around itself.
Prompted by a 1958 RIBA conference on architectural education, architectural schools in the UK began to follow a protracted and elitist three-part model, with astronomical fees to boot. The sheer expense of going through the architectural education system would arguably play a key role in the beginning of creative restriction—the fees are not to be taken lightly, and thus, appeasing the system is often prioritized over authentic problem solving.
Today, however, interdisciplinary design studios are beginning to emerge once more.
Fine artist Olafur Eliasson and his studio have just completed their first building, Fjordenhus, located in Denmark. This is not the first time a non-architect has designed a building in recent history.
Designer Thomas Heatherwick, as well, now has multiple buildings under his belt including big commissions such as the Google HQ in London. Heatherwick was put on the project after designs by architecture firm Allford Hall Monaghan Morris were allegedly considered too dull.
Clients are beginning to seek out designers for architectural commissions instead of trained architects
"Whether something is a Christmas card or a masterplan for a site that's eight miles long" he says, "we've found it's exactly the same process that you're going through. The passion is solving problems...the rigor is the same."
Clients are beginning to seek out designers for architectural commissions instead of trained architects. The lack of architectural baggage and freedom of creativity allows for refreshing design solutions.
To counter this shift, several architectural practices are bringing in a range of in-house experts from outside the architectural profession. For example, Bjarke Ingels Group now has in-house designers, urbanists, landscape professionals, interior and product designers, researchers and inventors, prompting fruitful overlap between fields.
Architecture can be created by non-architects. Similarly, architects can and should spread their wings into other design disciplines. There is a designer fluidity emerging which deconstructs snobbery surrounding specialism and dogmatic design typologies.
For example, Dror Benshetrit has started to pick up large-scale architectural commissions. "The access to knowledge is changing, and access to specialists" he says. "And maybe the different kind of relationship to ego creates a new type of working relationship, which I think will create all kinds of new scenarios. It creates different discussions and different results."
The architect of 2018, is very different to the architect of 1958, when the three-part RIBA model was established, yet the educational system has not evolved. The profession is transforming, and our educational structures should address and support that. The separation of design education into specialisms happening today appear ill-aligned with contemporary practice. Many great problems require an interdisciplinary and experimental approach in order to be solved. Collaboration with new modes of thinking and innovating across disciplines will create dynamic dialogues and bring us into a new era of architecture and design.
14 Comments
"Clients are beginning to seek out designers for architectural commissions instead of trained architects"
Because architects have substituted politics and theory for design. People tend not to give two shits about the crap we're taught. And innovation, used to be necessity was the mother of invention, now it's what you have to do in school. Yet most people aren't interested in innovative cuisine, music, art, literature, or architecture, they want something that pleases them. As the 19th century German architect Schinkel said, “Delight first, instruct second.”
I'm going to be more pointed. Fundamentally I think your core argument is correct. The current model of architectural education does need to change to reflect the current demands of the profession. My issue lies is that all of the reasons you give undercut your own arguments. I'll break it down in three steps based on my experience:
1. Outlandish design does not necessarily equate to Innovation in design. In many circumstances outlandish design (sadly your selection of Will Alsop is not a good model, although his designs are quite interesting) is not feasible or does not align with the client's needs. If this is your only metric you constrain real innovation out of the profession.
2. The fragmentation of the arts is a double edged sword. Dror laments the master architect or master artist. We all do. Sadly innovation typically occurs within the specialization....so the ability to move back and forth between specialization and generalization is a skill that becomes necessary for innovation within architecture and even more so, the ability to frame and sell the innovation as necessary to solve a problem.
3. The division between "designers" and "architects" is a relatively new one and is based on liability. The architect has to maintain the liability of a project to meet the health safety and welfare of inhabitants. The designer only needs to sell themselves as knowledgable enough to solve problems and not run afoul of professional organizations in selling their capabilitiies beyond their credential and liability.
Agreed. The thesis of this piece has merit, the examples don't resonate with me.
The idea that individual door handles should be "designed" by an architect when thousands of expertly designed handles are already available is not only painfully naive (Imagine the overruns if every component was custom designed... budgets be damned!), it suggests the opposite of "liberation from ego."
Conformity and economies of scale overwhelm innovation...until innovation becomes conformity..
Thank you!
The profession needs both sides: the design wing that thinks big picture, progressive etc and the architecture wing that knows details, materials, ecosystems, etc. But the media and profession have done a terrible job at balancing both. Meanwhile local small projects go to the architects while big ones go to the designers (or either to no designers at all) would be better if both sides were involved in all projects. The public should be better informed about design in general
There is no innovation without research - and the architectural profession is notorious for its historical lack of research rigor. Form-making is not "innovative" unless it is conceived and constructed through new feats of technology or material - a flashy render or proposal is a mere pipe dream. Ideas can only carry so much 'innovation' before the realities of bringing it to life take over the baton of innovation.
So, trained "licensed" architects with a lifetime of student loan payments are just supposed to "joyfully" accept a supporting role, ie., the back-seat, or the "technical" back-drafting room to some hot-shot architectural renderer whose only claim to fame is sketchup and photoshop following some minor "associates-defgree" training in an art college, perhaps after "sleeping" with "the money"...
This maybe what the architecture profession has "come to" now but it..is brutally unfair!
And is why so many bright young people eschew architecture because they heard from the boomer and Gen-X generation that Architecture is a complete waste of a talented mind!
That's, uh, quite a bit of conjecture you got there.
sorry for your loss, it gets better, believe me, I'm an architect.
Let's not forget all the hard-earned lessons of indigenous architecture - such as building to suit climate with locally-sourced sustainable materials - that have been eradicated in favor of "innovation".
Innovation as a concept should inextricably be defined by the challenges of the times. Growing cities vertically was a challenge during the industrial revolution, and the Eifffel Tower was one of the first (innovative) structures to respond to the call. Currently our challenges are mainly climate change exacerbated by human reproduction and activity, unrelenting privatization of public space and coming to terms with technologies that are impacting our lives faster than we can process. Architecture truly innovates when it engages and successfully proposes new solutions to these challenges, not in proposing wild forms and sculptures. The High Line, for example, was innovative: It engaged a derelict structure and re-purposed it for public use. Unfortunately the public's embracing of this monument to tough and innovation let to "developers" creating vertical gated suburbs around it. A similar event happened in Wynwood, Miami, where an organic relationship between true artists and exhibitors along a main artery led to public interest and subsequently, unfortunate overtaking by real estate interests.
In the US, architectural schools and universities are currently failing at managing students' expectations. We are thought to think innovatively about concepts and relationships with the social contexts, and we are taught little or nothing about realities of innovation in practice. Half of most people's careers have to be spent on "core" courses, due only to the failures of the public educational system in all levels up to high school graduation. This allows less time to focus on refining concepts and the deeper examination of innovation. In professional life, we are shocked with the contradictory requirements of jurisdictions, and we are appalled to learn what a disproportionate much of studying for licensing exams involve becoming dexterous at avoiding lawsuits. In addition, subjecting the stringent requirements of accessibility for people with disabilities is long overdue, and probably would never happen due to the cancerous grip of populist political correctness in all fields of society.
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