The story continues...What is Architecture?

In terms of redefining what we do it is worth understanding what is meant by the name ‘Architecture’, and by extension establishing the term architecture when viewed from different contexts. Most people will probably share something of a view of architecture as given by the simplistic definition in the Collins Gem English dictionary, architecture is 'style in which a building is designed and built; designing and construction of buildings.'

In reality it is far more than style and construction, in terms of the built environment such as a town or city, the Architecture is described as everything that is built that defines the character of the place. Taking the architecture of New York for example, it is The Grid, Skyscrapers and Central Park. Elements that themselves have nothing to do with the style of the buildings. In many cities much of the built form may not have been designed and supervised by Architects, the built result is the Architecture.

In design terms of process: Architecture is about making interventions into the living fabric of the city, responding to physical context and negotiating the bureaucratic minefield that is the social and political context, convincing clients, local authorities and the public of the need to change and setting out an appropriate course of action to make it happen.

In production terms, it is considered differently. For some it is about the process of making buildings, in this context the expertise of architects becomes marginalized and sometimes it does feel like being relegated to giving advice on surface treatments, landscape architecture deals with everything that is outside of the building, engineering disciplines assume that they have priority over building elements such as structural, mechanical, electrical systems, there are specialisms such as façade engineering and so on, although without the architecture there is no engineering, and in crude terms all the engineering disciplines need the architectural ‘backgrounds’ to be complete before they start their work, and the process of practicing Architecture becomes dominated by issues associated with coordination, and managing the process.

Procurement processes can significantly influence the amount of control that the Architect has over the process. In many cases the concept design and production are divorced from one another, creating a disconnection between what is intended and what is built.

For some it is a question of scale, on large urban projects all disciplines fall under the umbrella of Architecture, it is architecture that sets the program for the development, and in this context urban design, master planning, landscape form part of the Architecture, and depending on the bias of the project, take London’s Olympic Park for example, the project was led by Landscape Architects, in this context it is not only the process, but Architecture forms the framework allows all the elements to interact with each other to create a unified whole.

The full story is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble published by Xlibris - Do We Need ARCHITECTS?