Allow Yourself to be Detached from Reality

For the most part, I agree with Habraken. I do believe that today’s architect isn’t the royal monument builder of the past. I believe there is a huge gap between architectural education and reality. Most of us will design the ordinary and not the extraordinary. Where I do not agree is that the division of design control doesn’t necessarily dilute the role of the architect.

It seems as if Habraken is asking us to play our part—to fall in line. To become an outnumbered, sidelined team player. Habraken’s defense for this dilution is that we are still in control and aware of local context, and that that should be our primary contribution. As I understand it, that is just one of many factors we should be aware and in control of over a project. The architect shouldn’t be a cog in the machine, but rather its operator. The architect is the person with the most holistic mindset about a project—we know something about everything. In the increasingly specialized professional environment, this is incredibly valuable in working across disciplines.

In addition to our holistic approach, we are likely the only representative of design on the team. We talk a lot about capital “D” Design and lower case “d” design, and I agree that not every project needs to belong fully to the former. My argument is if we don’t push as hard as we can for capital “D” Design in every project we do, we’ll never move forward as a field. Besides the architect, no one on the typical project team cares about or understands design. In the modern dilution of architect, that means anything above the bare minimum gets cut. If the architect doesn’t step up, demand miles, and allow that to be whittled away to inches, we never move forward at all.

Allow yourself to be a little detached from reality; your team will ground the project for you. Allow yourself some control; you understand the total process and are the only representative of Design. It is better to end in compromise than a non-space.