It’s a bit like asking an athlete why train so hard to enter an event that you have no guarantee of winning, and in some cases no chance of finishing on the podium. As best summed up by Dr. Jaques Rogge in his speech at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games: ‘it is not about winning, it is about how you compete’.
Sometimes being an Architect feels a bit like competing at the highest level to secure last place. At other times it feels like it is a major achievement qualifying, and it is enough to be content with that. Having been that athlete competing at an amateur level, it is easy to draw comparisons between the motivations for entering a marathon say, or choosing to qualify as an architect, in one sense it is about self realization, the proving to that it is achievable, in another it is competing for a cause, Architecture is the latter.
As a profession we may be accused of fuelling our egos from time to time, being self satisfied, making grand gestures with bigger, better, taller buildings; making the rich even richer and so on. In reality the buildings are the legacy of an intense process of imagination, devotion and tenacity to get the project designed, agreed and delivered in time and on budget; and it is the Architects who are blamed when either of the last two are not met, even though the project is in the control of countless professionals whose sole job it is to control costs and program. Who ever heard of the quantity surveyor being blamed for cost overruns? Who ever heard of the project manager being blamed for late delivery, but in the case of the Millennium Dome and the often misquoted price tag of ‘seven hundred and fifty million pounds’ for a tent and it is the Architects’ practice name that is associated with it and the negative publicity that was generated by the media at the time. It is political and economic forces that dictate if, when or where development takes place, it is the architecture that attracts the attention, it is the lasting legacy of those decisions, and as Architects we become responsible for that legacy. Practices live or die on public opinion, the higher the profile of the project, the greater the risk taken by the Architect.
The truth is little was publicized at the time about the long term strategies for regenerating East London, I seem to remember briefly reading in the architectural press at the time (Building Design in 1997 I think) that the Dome would form part of an future Olympic bid following Birmingham and Manchester’s unsuccessful bids in the 1980’s and 1990’s respectively.
In 2012 and after five years of what seems to be continual negative publicity related to the cost of hosting an Olympic Games, and concerns about the legacy. London hosted the most successful games ever from a Team GB perspective, widely regard as a triumph from an international perspective. The opening ceremony, celebrated those human qualities that our people over generations have exhibited, imagination, tenacity perseverance, and it is widely recognized that the Games could not have been hosted without it.
So what did we do (as a profession)? Some members of the public may associate Architects’ names with the project: EDAW for the master plan of the Olympic park, others for the design of the venues, Populous for the design of the Olympic Stadium, Zaha Hadid: Aquatics Centre, Michael Hopkins: Velodrome, for example. Countless other nameless individuals as part of those teams, would have no doubt put in stupidly long hours, competing to win the project in the first place, then fighting to make the project the best that it can be against cost cutting, time constraints and the harsh reality of project delivery. So why do it? For some it is just a job, for some it is so they can say ‘I worked on that’ even if it was only coordinating the fit out of the toilets, for others it could be for the ‘experience’, whether it is about getting the big name on the CV or having the project in the portfolio.
In terms of the global view of Architecture in 2014 it seems that many feel that Architecture is a profession that is undervalued. It is difficult to secure work when you are in a practice and even more difficult to find work if you are not in practice. When in practice we have to compete for the work, and in many cases it feels like the only criteria is who can do it for the lowest fee. There are continual debates about the ethics of ‘buying work’ and devaluing the profession, there are other debates about the hijacking of the term architecture by IT professionals and the growing sense that people do not know what architects do.
The full story is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble published by Xlibris - Do We Need ARCHITECTS?
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