Why be an Architect?

Why be an Architect? 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 winning. 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 amateur level, it is easy to draw comparisons between the motivations for entering a half marathon say, or choosing to qualify as an architect, in one sense it is about self realisation, the proving to oneself 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 ‘monstrous’ egos from time to time, 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? or the project manager for late delivery, but everybody knows of Richard Rogers and the Millennium Dome and the often misquoted seven hundred and fifty million pounds for a tent.
The truth is little was publicised 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. Here we are in 2012 and after five years of negative publicity and London hosting the most successful games ever from a Team GB perspective, widely regarded 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 recognised that the Games could not have been hosted without it. So what did we do? some members of the public may associate Architects’ names with the  design of the buildings, Cook: Olympic Stadium, Hadid: Aquatics Centre, Hopkins: Velodrome. for example. Countless other nameless individuals worked 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. So why be an Architect? I cannot speak for the entire profession, but for me it is to make a difference, a positive contribution to the built environment in which we live.