How do most architects describe themselves or communicate their brand to other people? Almost universally, practice profiles and “about us” sections are likely to include the same lofty statements. But what do these statements truly mean?
We are award-winning. I mean, what architecture studio isn’t these days? These obscure “awards” sound more like marketing vessels for manufacturers like the “award for best mastic joint”. Are such awards about the architecture or the products used? It always brings to mind the expression whether people are laughing with you or at you. Conversely, why should architects care at all about more “prestigious” awards when they are only getting accolades from their peers in this insular echo chamber? Why are architects so obsessed with being validated by other architects?
We are design-led. What does “design-led” mean? Architecture is both a service and a product. Had it not been for the service aspect which is design, the discipline would be described as construction. If there is no design, it cannot be called architecture. To describe an architect’s practice as design-led is tautological. Worse still, it reduces design to the stuff of trite Hollywood films or How I Met Your Mother where it is an epiphany or a grand gesture rather than a process.
Our architecture is not about buildings but about people. Every other architect harps on about putting people first. How? I’m asking seriously. How do you put people first when you work on speculative schemes, and every step in the design process is decided by someone else from planners to estate agents? How do people first manifest in the same layouts open-plan kitchens and the same brick-slip facades? Unless you mean photoshopping smiling people in CGIs. Even then, using stock images, you have really not read the room by not selecting the right people or the right clothes these people wear in such spaces because… waterproofing.
Sustainability is our USP. Claiming that sustainability underpins our work as a USP is something to proudly brandish and boast about in 2005, not 2023. Nowadays, sustainability has become an integral topic rightly enshrined in legislation. Being environmentally conscious should be a given, so do not expect medals for doing the right thing.
We unlock a site’s potential. Again, with a feasibility and brief outlined by clients, planning restrictions and industry guidance like the BCO, how do we unlock potential or how do we imagine? Is the open-plan kitchen born out of imagination or the brick-slip façade out of innovation?
Our ethos is.. This is the most egregious sin in the profession. It’s all about the sanctimony and the virtue signalling by adopting fashionable causes to appear morally superior, nay, to display contempt so gratuitously to people we judge to be sinners. People with genuine moral convictions should practise them as human beings, not flaunt them so flippantly on their websites. How about spending less time posthumously loading your buildings with nebulous hot topics like post-it notes and more time creating better spaces?
We give the most for least, or something along these lines. This feels like a meeting out of W1A without the pearls of wisdom from the inimitable Siobhan Sharp. Again, no accolades for doing your job so perhaps stop boasting about it. This is basically tantamount to stating that what sets us apart from other architects is that we design buildings. What sets us apart from other doctors is we treat patients. We are good structural engineers because our buildings don’t collapse.
Some of these statements might make some sense if they are genuine and spoken from the heart; however, those architects who are true to their word but who use such platitudes are inadvertently writing themselves off by borrowing PR speak rather than expressing their own words, not to mention that these platitudes have other architects as their recipients.
Not only do most architects paradoxically describe themselves and their work in boastful terms when they are producing lacklustre spaces, they are also unaware that their somewhat pompous tone is nothing more than the same litany of anodyne cliches and generic PR-speak that mean nothing at all and make no contribution to the real conversation. The oft-repeated statements do not hold up to scrutiny and rather than conceal what a dry, irrelevant profession architecture has become, they exude it by virtue of being so regurgitated and cheesy.
But this open secret would seldom be admitted by most architects. Either because of genuine belief or because of pragmatic willingness to conform, most architects wax lyrical about a profession that is creative, so creative in fact it only exists in websites. I often hear about design and innovation yet I don’t see much evidence of it in the insipid, dystopian built environment around me. I feel like Alice Ayres in the film Closer who asks: “Where is this love? I can't see it, I can't touch it. I can't feel it. I can hear it. I can hear some words, but I can't do anything with your easy words”
And therein lies a significant part of the problem: Easy words.