schneiderism

In an article titled “Innovate or Perish: New Technologies and Architecture’s Future” for the Harvard Design Magazine author David Celento posits that architecture’s refusal to embrace technological innovations is ensuring irrelevancy to the audiences that have historically valued their services. More directly, architecture is on a path to extinction. He is absolutely right. Architecture struggles with a fixed, backward view and legacy thinking. Let’s just say that the world of “The Fountainhead” is alive and well inside the offices of many a prestigious architecture firm. At issue is the reality that a diversity of professions are claiming the traditional territory of the architect. Technology has efficiently removed architects from the value stream of the built environment (through their unanimous inaction and determined resolve to not evolve their industry, their practice), and empowered any number of competitors, including “furniture system designers, sustainability consultants, construction managers, and engineers.” Celento sites Martin Simpson of the rockstar engineering group Arup Associates as suggesting that architects may “eventually become unnecessary — except, perhaps, as exterior stylists.”

I can’t believe he just said that out loud. Ouch. From an engineer. Somebody get the architects a glass of water.

Honestly, David Celento has only voiced what everybody is already thinking, and what the industry as a whole is struggling with. This is a reality shared with a number of creative enterprises, and those facing this reality have nobody to blame but themselves, really. This storm has been brewing since the advent of desktop workstations in the 1980’s. Go to the business section of your local bookstore and count the books that offer a perspective on the phrase “innovate or die.” Why so many? Because the range of strategic risks facing contemporary business demands a strategy of innovation for survival and longevity. It demands business model reinvention, and architecture has not yet gotten the memo on this.

A parting shot:

“To increase its desirability and market share, architectures need to harness emerging technologies and tap more deeply into consumer desires, using both plurality and branding in product delivery methods. These efforts would be self-correcting — they provide an opportunity for architects to evaluate the success of their offspring quantitatively. Doing so would also encourage architects to move beyond “isms” geared toward revolutionizing aesthetic and social agendas every decade or so — a phenomenon that architects themselves can’t even keep up with — let alone the public at large, since architectural journals which feature these sorts of rapid-fire volleys (including this one) are rarely found nestled between The Economist and Vanity Fair at newsstands. Two decades of fanciful catalogs stuffed in mailboxes have done more to shape popular taste (and educate people about design) than the club of architectural priests that has elevated its game by preaching to the converted while leaving out the laypeople that architects ultimately need.”

David Celento

By the way, he’s an architect and this is classified as tough love.