it's just another indication of how complex our profession is that you could view it from a perspective of architects as being a highly specialized branch of law. one of our primary responsibilities is the preparation of legal documents.
if anything, what i find most disappointing about this is that any other highly trained specialist in legal counsel would charge five times what we typically do.

whether you like it or not all architects are at least partially lawyer-like. your complaint that architects who give into client demands are lawyer-like is really a misreading of the role of professionalism. any good professional (whether architect, lawyer, doctor, financial advisor, even a good tailor or hairstylist) should always reserve the right to tell a client no or advise them otherwise...that, after all, is really what the client is paying for: the advice of an expert.

you are correct about professionals who fail to live up to this responsibility at "spineless" and i agree with you that it is rather dispicable. at it's core, this is really an issue about intergrity. but your reference to this trait as being lawyer-like is inaccurate and misleading.

puddles - you've aptly pointed out that 'lawyer' could be a metaphor for the best AND worst aspects of our profession. I love ambivalent meanings but my complaint is only about the barrel bottom mindless sort of lawyer comparison.

polemic = hyperbole. it's not 1:1, no kidding. the'lawyer' in lawyertecture is to signify the 1/2 of the meaning of 'lawyer' which is strictly pejorative. this would be those who sue for coffee burns and 'whiplash'. that's the sort of architect who get crap petrol stations built.

lawyertecture isn't just giving in to client demands, it's being the enabler for mindless client fiat.
perhaps a better metaphor is notary, nothing against notaries of course.

to the extent that the public sees architects as performing as performing a mystical repetetive task, even though it might be complex, all our claims to design intelligence are moot. if you don't have this problem, cheers.

i had a client who came to me with their own floorplan. they said, this is exactly what we want. their job is paying the closing costs on my new house and it was in the bahamas (CA! CA! CA!)-- so i said yes, sure, i'll draw up the documents. but let me draw you three schemes before we do the CDs.

they're now doing a variation on scheme #3.

which is not what they drew.

of course, some relevant distinctions:
1. i made the choice to "draw up their plan," not my employer
2. i have the confidence to tell a client that i can fulfill their visions in ways different in detail from theirs -- and the friendliness to not seem like a prick
3. i have some talent

i can understand your frustration, though, since i used to work for firms like that. sucks when you don't make the choice yourself.

TheNewOld, you remember Freshly right? He had an ongoing joke about his pre-law grad school aspirations. His plan was to open a Law / Architecture office - the name of this enterprise? LAW AND ORDER

this is a very interesting thread - I would ask the following question: "Why do you think client's might behave like this ?"

after many, many years in the profession, mostly doing commercial work, I have come to believe that our profession is the main culprit here.

a client who previously may have developed 1 million square feet of retail real estate or office real estate has reached a point where he probably knows as much about the intrinsic design of the building type as most architects. at this point, he's probably not looking for "art" -- he's looking for a good building that meets his budget and schedule. fuss abou this all you want ... it's his money and he's going to operate in his own best interests

so here we come, as his architect -- more often than not, we're bored with doing this sort of work and we start trying to make something more of the project -- we're trying to get to "art" because we're fed up with delivering "tried and true" solutions to this sort of problem -- we want to do something that will make us famous and get us in the magazine -- our client probably doesn't want either of those things to happen because he knows what it means to the process and to his budget.

clients act this way because they're not getting either what they want or what they need from their architects -- it's a defensive act, bourne of experience and frustration -- it's behavior that says "you don't serve me well" -- it's behavior that says "you're trying to solve problems I haven't asked you to solve in ways that don't necessarily improve my business or my life"

lawyers, accountants, doctors, etc. don't generally approach their clients' problems this way (Johnny Cochran / Gloria Allred being notable exceptions) ... they solve the problems their clients ask them to solve and get paid well for doing that ... and only that.

so you're saying architects should be more like 'lawyers, accountants, doctors, etc' ?

: if you're asking that question of me, no -- i'm not saying that. i'm saying that architects better start defining, selling and delivering value in ways that clients both understand and appreciate -- clients treat us like crap because we treat their legitimate needs and wants as secondary to our own

i would never want to be like a lawyer or an accountant -- but, I think they're successful because they define the success of their services in terms of their client's success (in that context, Johnny Coceran was wildly successful in the OJ case)

we tend to define success in terms of what other architects (e.g. design award juries) and publishers and our friends in the profession think. none of those people pay the bills