THE ARRAY OF INDIVIDUALS we consider a part of the design team on any given project includes elected and appointed officials, administration, regulatory agencies, stakeholders, community members, engineering and technical consultants, and in-house staff (Design team organization chart)
When we founded our practice, Steve and I resolved that we would know how to do anything that we asked anyone in our office to do—drawing, modeling, writing, invoicing-- whatever necessary. Technology, though, got a head of us. We were in our 40s by the time Auto Cad came around and then a decade later came Revit (Building Information Management, BIM). Like learning a new language, each upgrade in digital technology has, with age, become increasingly time-consuming to master. We still draw and make models, but the drafting has moved to the computer where we manage, but mostly second-hand and at arms-length. Senior associates are more current with building codes and construction details. They manage our projects while our management director runs the business—none of which we could do on our own. .
HOW WE MANAGE OUR PARTNERS in a community driven effort within the public sector is integral to the success of the outcome (Program of outreach)
HOW WE MANAGE OUR PERSONNEL their time commitments and workload is integral to the quality of our work (Project team staffing diagram)
OUR MANAGING DIRECTOR provides the data and the context with which we make decisions here in the office about resource allocation, human and otherwise (Our in-house office management software)
The 20th century gave us the “school of management”, the business school, whose mission was to create managers, the management class. A whole profession was invented called “management consulting” which grew from a multi-million-dollar industry in the 1930s to a multi-billion-dollar industry today. Managers now permeate the American corporation and the construction industry. Builders are “construction managers” who manage subcontractors who do not so much make anything as install manufactured products. Architects are now “consultants” and as consultants we get managed by “project managers” who keep us at arm’s-length and in second-hand relationship with those we serve.
THE CORPORATE FIRM had its origins at the turn of the last century at the height of the industrial revolution and has thrived to this day (McKim Mead and White, above; Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, below)
REPRODUCTION, REGULARIZATION AND REPLICATION of design components afforded efficiencies and economies of scale which in turn enabled the assembly line model of the architectural practice (Buildings by McKim, Mead and White)
A DIFFERENT FIRM TODAY Skidmore, Owings and Merrill -- now more diverse and complex in the variety of its work-- originally emulated the assembly line model first established by McKim, Mead and White only with a different set of design components. (Buildings by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill)
THE SHOPPING CENTER may be the shortest-lived building type thanks to the return to cities, the internet and the Covid-19 pandemic (Victor Gruen and the many shopping centers he mass produced)
Around the turn of the 20th century, architects McKim, Mead and White designed some of the most beloved buildings in America, such as the Boston Public Library, the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco and Penn Station in New York. They practiced as a “firm” and may have been the first of what we have come to know as a corporate practice. They were wildly successful in the quantity of commissions and volume of work they managed. The principals of the firm (as we would call them now) managed scores of draftsmen. To do so effectively, they adopted a standardized language of design based on ancient Roman and Italian Renaissance architecture, the so-called “classical language” of architecture. They reproduced and regularized a repertoire of ready-made components to maximize the efficiency of their operation. In the process, they diminished the models they copied and accelerated the demise of the language they had adopted.
OFFICE SPACE grew in quantity and quality in the post war years driven by the demands of modern corporate America and fulfilled by prolific firms like Gensler (Arthur Gensler and associate with one of their earliest office projects)
THE UBIQUITY OF CREATIVE OFFICE SPACE like anything excessively reproduced has inevitably undermined the novelty and the charm. (A partial portfolio of 21st century Gensler office renovations)
McKim, Mead and White practiced at the apex of the industrial era, the era of manufacturing and the modern corporation. Ford, General Electric and Bethlehem Steel were huge companies that employed thousands of people who completed simple, single, repetitive tasks on assembly lines. The products were made affordable and the companies profitable by way of the scale and standardization of the operations. Bigger was better. But the standardization of the products and the repetitive nature of the work were better for the company than the workers. Making something became drudgery.
ITS OK TO HAVE ONE IDEA in life but to replicate it indiscriminately no matter the circumstance seems less like craftmanship and more like mass production. (Bjarke Ingels and his buildings: residential, community center and school projects)
ITS EVEN OK that your idea is not your own, since it is in the execution of the idea, the effort to make it your own wherein the contribution resides. (Stepped and “pixelated” buildings from a half century ago: LeVele, Scampia, outskirts of Naples, Francesco di Salvo,1965-80; Habitat, Montreal, Moshe Safdie, 1967; Hyatt Regency Hotels, San Francisco and Cancun, Johnson Portman, 1960s and 70s)
EXTREME CYNICISM is required to pass off mass production as high art (Jeff Koons and the products his company manufactures)
ART AS A BUSINESS is what Koons’ most enthusiastic patron admires most about his art. (Eli Broad, his museum and some of the thousands of houses he mass-produced)
Peter Drucker, the patriarch of management consulting, was among the first to promote the idea that the long-term profitability of a corporation, which he identified as its sole purpose, depended on 1) cultivating its human resources, meaning its people and the quality of their lives at work; and 2) focusing on the one or two things it does best while outsourcing the rest. This proved a balancing act too difficult to maintain. We now have a litigious workforce more fulfilled by consumption than work and an almost entirely outsourced economy, a monocultural assembly line of finance and digital technology, personal services and performing arts. We make next to nothing ourselves other than money which is increasingly worth less because we make next to nothing.
PETER DRUCKER is among the most admired business educators in the world and primarily responsible for the elevation of management as a profession.
MANAGEMENT FOR MANAGEMENT’S SAKE is a degradation of the principles that Drucker espoused which he also apparently foresaw.
This may be the inevitable evolution of a global economy, but at what cost? In a culture that makes not very much smart people manage and instead of pride in craft we get pride in management, management for management’s sake, highly compensated managers manufacturing made-up work-- busy work masquerading as business. If the crafting of a building by drawing it is making something then among the array of managers, consultants and contractors who are employed in the assembling of a building, it is still the architect who makes something, the rest is management—management that would not—could not—exist without an architect even as the reverse is certainly not the case.
BUSY WORK often portrays itself as management and in the absence of something worthwhile to manage it is indeed little more than busy work.
We improve our work by managing our time and our relationships, but the work is the point. We are accountable for its outcome - not just the management of it. We welcome second opinions and third-party review but we are also confident in the competency of our practice. And if in our practice we are more engaged in maximum contribution (quality) and less invested in the scale and volume of work that will bring us maximum recognition or compensation (quantity), then bigger is not better nor given advances in technology necessary.
DRAWINGS are the vehicle with which we manage every aspect of a unique, not mass produced, building design from the layout of its rooms to the shaping of its exterior and the description of its construction (AUHSD Magnolia High School Cyber Security Classroom Building, Johnson Favaro, Anaheim, CA 2021).