I started designing and building when I was a graduate student. In the late 1960s, the Yale School of Architecture had a “can-do” culture. This was due in part both to the ethos of the time—to challenge the status quo at all levels of society—and to a kind of arrogance as well.
My peers and I would spend weekends framing houses, learning about plumbing and electrical wiring, and explaining our designs to clients. (Eventually, this became the Yale Building Project, which continues as a first-year studio project to this day.) One of the houses I designed and we built was published on the cover of Progressive Architecture in July 1967. We completed several other design-build projects, including prefabricated and modular buildings in Vermont.
Merging how we think and how we make into a single enterprise is critical to the development of architecture. This philosophy continues in my practice today. Architect-led design-build (ALDB) provides clients with a single source of responsibility, thus freeing them from becoming judge and jury in conflicts between designers and builders. This also predicates the notion that design is driving the decision-making in contrast to conventional design-build delivery, which is contractor-led and functions more like build-design.
ALDB facilitates a clear channel of communication, avoiding siloed realms of expertise. We value and learn from all the players in our design-build program: our consultants, individual subcontractors, and tradespeople. We have total access and a transparent relationship with our clients. It is about making an architecture of substance.
But when I look at where the profession of architecture at large is going, I fear it is in the opposite direction. Rather than doing more and accepting more responsibility—albeit with added risk—architects seem to be reducing our involvement. We have given up access to the building site by avoiding supervision. Now we seem to be reducing—if not actually giving up—the production of construction documents. If this is to continue, then we will be left with control of only 30% to 40% of the process. What is next in this new paradigm? Will architects be reduced to making cartoons for others to interpret?
For those interested in reversing course, I offer several suggestions. First, architects must understand the relationship between risk and reward. The profession in the recent past has focused on risk avoidance. That is, because liability issues primarily arise during construction, avoiding any involvement in construction is safer.
But no risk means no reward—and no knowledge feedback or value proposition for those who commission our work.
For me, the means and methods of building have always been inseparable from the equally important conceptual thinking, which is at the heart of crafting architecture. Design has always been a seamless enterprise, starting with analysis of a client’s wants and needs and concluding with a finished, working building. Never did it occur to me that one might first design a building and then figure out how to build it—or for that matter, give it to someone else to build.
Theoretical and aesthetic claims can be best evaluated when they are embodied in real buildings, which make demands on architecture that paper and computer schemes do not. The deeper the architect’s engagement in the entire process—from the earliest phases of conceptualization to the final details of construction—the greater the chances for the realization of a design and the emergence of good architecture.
From a more prosaic perspective, architects attempt to bring into alignment the needs—those conceptual attributes—of a successful building: its context, or its fit into its place; its program, or use; its structure, or its sculptural material presence; and its social imperative, or its value to society as a whole. Complete overlap would in fact represent the perfect diagram, which is not achievable, of course. But the greater the degree of that overlap and the quality of its poetic expression in the building’s final form are, to a large extent, a measure of the project’s success.
What is the process by which we get as close as possible? We accept—and value—the messy evolution that occurs during the development of any initial premise. The design process is not linear but rather conceptually unpredictable. Architects entering the process should expect to find great holes in our understanding of how the building design will evolve. Rather than fighting to keep true to our first idea, we should anticipate the struggle that results when this idea is challenged.
Architects involved with construction enable the feedback loop—and the design process itself—to stretch over a longer period. The loop responds to the accumulating of information that qualifies and colors design and makes the result rich and relevant. It seeks feedback from the many forces at work, not the least of which relates to tectonics and construction.
Take responsibility. Don’t accept reasons why it can’t be done. Seek answers to how it can be done.
The views and conclusions from this author are not necessarily those of ARCHITECT magazine or of The American Institute of Architects.
Call for Submissions. We regularly publish opinion columns that we think would be of service to our readers. Have a timely, relevant, and unexplored perspective or experience to share with the design community? Email [email protected] with a one-paragraph pitch. Due to the volume of submissions we receive, we are unable to respond individually to every pitch.
