Letter From Frank Anton

As you begin reading this new architectural magazine, maybe you're asking: Why a new magazine? Why now? And who's behind it?

Let me answer those good questions in reverse order. The publisher of ARCHITECT is Hanley Wood, for 25 years the leading media company serving the residential construction market. Hanley Wood publishes 20 magazines for housing professionals, including its flagship titles, BUILDER and REMODELING, as well as the only magazine serving architects whose practices focus on housing, residential architect. In other words, while you might not know Hanley Wood or read any of its other magazines, the company is not a newcomer.

The answer to question two—why now—is provided by the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, D.C. About two years ago, Brookings released a study on how demographic changes and market trends will affect the nation's built environment. In doing the study, Brookings wanted to quantify how many homes and office buildings and other structures must be built to accommodate future growth. The conclusion: the built environment will effectively double in size by 2030. In other words, a building boom of unprecedented proportions is underway, and you—the architect—should and must play a crucial and bigger role in influencing what gets built.

In answering the remaining question—why a new magazine—I find myself reminded of a line of lyrics from Bob Dylan's classic “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.” Dylan sings, “Your debutante just knows what you need, but I know what you want.” Most architects already receive a well-established, highly acclaimed magazine that month after month offers up a record of important projects that they need to see. ARCHITECT will offer up more of what you really want, and need. Yes, it will inspire you with beautiful photographs of groundbreaking buildings (you can't cover architecture without talking about buildings any more than you can cover baseball without covering the Yankees), but it will also inform you about how market conditions will affect your practice, how better client services and marketing can build your business (yes, your practice is a business), how technology will change your workplace and the products you specify, and how new management strategies will make your staff more successful in every way. In other words, ARCHITECT will be about architecture and buildings, but above all it will be—as its name implies—about you and your life's work.

My life's work is magazines. In fact, in my office there's a picture my daughter drew of me when she was in preschool, with this caption: “My Daddy makes magazines.” Making this new magazine a magazine you will want to read is my goal, as well as the goal of its editor in chief, Ned Cramer. We believe that if you read it, it will help you to become a better architect, which in turn will make good architecture more widespread and more valued, just as the nation embarks on its biggest building boom ever.