Architecture is a dying profession. Annihilated by the financial crisis of 2008, it has been staggering for the last decade and does not seem to be convalescing. In fact, I argue that the profession has been indisposed for much longer, but the throes of death have been incredibly slow. The architectural profession has failed to keep up with the socio-economic changes of the past 40 years: The economic scape has changed immensely since the 1980s with the abstraction of the economy and the reign of the tertiary sector, with services at the helm.
Yet the architectural profession has been largely recalcitrant to respond to these cataclysmic shifts. The profession, as it stands today, is an anachronism. It seems obstinately anchored in the 1970s, when the architect was the master of all the engineering trades and where architecture itself was a linear process towards a finished product. The completion of the project was the end and terminus, a fact that resonated well with a traditional secondary-sector economy predicated on manufacturing. Not only this, but also the seemingly resilient format of the profession has been eroded and gutted from inside with contractors and agents chipping away, gradually but steadily, the powers and responsibilities that were once the preserve of the architect.
The architecture profession has suffered from the new economic order but the discipline itself hasn’t: Architecture has become a precious service and an expensive commodity to be traded in a consumerist market: Star-architects’ drawings sell like art paintings. Architectural projects are celebrated and promoted in lifestyle magazines under the guise of fashion shoots and product placements. Architectural design sells real estate. In fact, architectural design sells. It caters to myriad users from developers to wealthy magnates to financial institutions. Architectural design is an essential medium to incubate the tertiary economy, yet the profession is detached, with no sway or leverage over the money it so abundantly generates. Architectural design is created by architects, but it is pushed by agents. Agents set trends, harness networks, liaise with and even dictate to clients as well as to architects what needs to be done. These agents have no design background in many instances yet their word on design is gospel.
Architects, on the other hand, are like disgruntled former aristocrats whose estates have been expropriated. They believe the antidote to all their woes is the re-establishment of the ancien regime, but this is out of their control. We cannot go back to the 1970s, so why are scores of architectural academic institutions churning out generations of deluded professionals who cannot accept reality and hang on to wishful thinking?
I don’t disagree that architects are underpaid and overworked; however, I take issue with why this is happening. Architects compare themselves to doctors and lawyers which is a flawed analogy. Doctors and lawyers are adequately compensated because they are indispensable: Doctors are indispensable because they save lives. Architects don’t. Lawyers are indispensable because they administer the canons of the social contract that binds society together. Architects don’t.
Architects can, however, compare themselves to the plethora of professionals that have sprung up since the 1980s, like PR professionals for example. Architects can even relate to fashion designers and professionals in the film and TV industries. Architecture is a galaxy of design elements and the construction site is but one iteration. Architecture spans buildings, films, music videos, advertising, and magazine photo shoots. What have architects done to get involved, nay, be integral to all these processes? Why are architects not invested in manufacturing ‘taste’? We rightly complain about the devolution of our power, but we refuse to re-invent ourselves.
Architecture is both a service and a product, yet many architects obsess over production and dismiss the notion that their profession is also a service. Whilst the modes of production have been, in line with the economy as a whole, somewhat abstracted and outsourced to contractors with the rise of the ‘Design and Build’ contracts for example, many architects further forsake design and desperately cling even harder to ‘production’ although it seems a lost cause and they are far removed from the decision making.
I am mainly talking here about the bulk of developments and speculative schemes. Of course, certain projects like one-off houses and high-profile cultural projects may still adhere to the old formula; however, as with retail commodities, when production is managed by the designer, it comes at a premium. Boutique firms specialising in the luxury end of the market fare well but they are a drop in the ocean.
This should by no means be misconstrued as a call to abandon rigour in design or to not view architecture as a craft of sculpting spaces. It is rather the opposite. Architects are sometimes told that scrupulousness in design is wasted and one should focus on the profitability of projects; however, architects renounce design rigour to try to attain business acumen and end up eventually with neither. ‘Don’t quit your day job’ is an adage that depicts this succinctly. Good design the linchpin of making money in property. Relentless and exacting design is what we should be feting.
The profession is dying, and reverting to glorified past, real or imagined, will not help the profession recuperate. We are a profession predicated on design and design permeates people’s lives. We bring value to property and substantially augment its value by adding our design to it. Society can survive without us, but does it want to? The profession has to reform and abandon its old ways. Other industries have resorted to specialisation and outsourcing. What has the architectural profession done? What is interesting is that the profession failed to take heed of the ascendant economic order of the last 40 years, but we are now arguably towards the tail end of it. The world is changing yet again, and a new order appears nascent. Will the architectural profession miss out this time like it did last time?