sn 6123 - relational spaces of innovation in architecture...
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UK Data Archive
Study Number 6123
Relational Spaces of Innovation in Architecture Firms, 2007
USER GUIDE
British Academy Award SG-43996 Relational spaces of innovation in architecture firms
Architects interview schedule
Tell me a little about your career to date and role here And a bit about the firm – is it a partnership/public company? What kind of projects you get involved in – in a practice group? What’s the role of this office – a lot of designers or implementers? Innovation and architecture So your work, what makes you a successful architect? And what does innovation mean here in this market? And is this about adapting what others have done and drawing inspiration? How often are things radically new? Challenging the norm is key? So as an architect, is being innovative finding the most efficient or most aesthetically pleasing solution? Which takes priority usually?
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British Academy Award SG-43996 Relational spaces of innovation in architecture firms Inspiration and conversation with colleagues What form does inspiration come in? Picture, text, drawings? Being in x city important for this? Firm have major KM facilities and intranet to facilitate? What role for the computer – takes a lot out of hands of architects? Do you help out colleagues, in the team or call someone another office with this kind of thing? And what benefit do you take from those conversations, interactions? Is working with other offices about resources – they do part of the job? Which offices do you work with most? How often does this occur, in what context? International people present here? Bring inputs into dealing with culture? Do you travel to other offices, local collaborators, meet regularly?
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British Academy Award SG-43996 Relational spaces of innovation in architecture firms Mobility networks and experience Do you travel to look at buildings, get inspiration? And how important are conferences for getting to meet other architects, see their work? Is MIPIM important? Local milieu and networks Is this always with architects or also engineers other professionals? And what about the firms you work alongside – construction firms, designers etc? Do you brainstorm, learn from them? All come here, meet up somewhere? Important to be located close together? Do professional associations here in provide a valuable forum? What events, do you attend? What benefits? What about ideas coming out of universities? Do you maintain and contacts in unis?
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British Academy Award SG-43996 Relational spaces of innovation in architecture firms The media and competitions & universities How important is the media as a source of ideas? Which magazines do you think identify key trends? And are they powerful influences? What key trends have you picked up and found influential recently? So are competitions influential on thinking – the winners? What about management fads like open plan working? The guru’s of this world – influence everyone else? The professional field Who are you competing with? Your reputation – important to be known locally, in Europe, worldwide?
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British Academy Award SG-43996 Relational spaces of innovation in architecture firms And do the clients expect you to have such a global outlook in your designing? And how much do they bring ideas to the table, influence innovation? Do you find ideas from certain places get reproduced worldwide? US/UK hegemonic? Working on overseas projects Where is most of your work done … here or in other countries too? Can you describe a project you’ve worked on outside of the UK? Or a project where you’ve drawn on ideas from outside the UK? Who made up the team – all here or elsewhere? Why this firm chosen? Adapting designs to local context How do you have to adapt and respond to local context – more sympathetic to local?
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British Academy Award SG-43996 Relational spaces of innovation in architecture firms
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Are some designs more placeless and less in need of changing than others? Certain types of building need more local adaptation? Is it the interior and less the exterior that gives it local meaning? What role for the site visit – what you trying to get out – landscape or culture? And do local contractors help because of their knowledge? Regular meetings occur – travel? What does it facilitate? How much does regulation – local planners, constraints on building types – influence your work? Has there been a general coming together in cities of regulation about building types? Conclusion
British Academy Award SG-43996 Relational spaces of innovation in architecture firms
Professional Associations (PA) interview schedule
Tell me a bit about the professional association – its aims/role And how important to architecture do you think PAs are? And tell me about your role here The PA And as a PA, what can you do to help architects be successful/innovative? What events do you organise - training/ get togethers etc? Do you connect with engineers, other professions to help this? And do your publications have a role in keep architects up to date? And what’s the criteria for what goes into those publications? Do you basically champion what you see as the most important trends etc? Geographies of innovative architecture And universities – do you have lots of links there that are important to what you do?
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British Academy Award SG-43996 Relational spaces of innovation in architecture firms Do architects generally find maintaining uni links important? Is there a US/UK hegemony? World leaders in architecture? Seen as modern and globally powerful? Does this create conflict today – US stretching mussels? And are clients buying this? What relationship do you have with overseas bodies that do the same elsewhere? Do you collaborate, organise events with them? What about the International union of architects? So you’d encourage architects to look globally for ideas and to promote their work? And so is it easy to transfer ideas across space? How do you change things? What considerations? Are some designs more placeless and less in need of changing than others?
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British Academy Award SG-43996 Relational spaces of innovation in architecture firms
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Does the way people use buildings in different places have an impact on their meaning? And how do you help architects deal with that? Training etc? Innovative architecture What marks out a successful architect – what skills needed? And what makes them innovative rather than just another architect? So as an architect, is being innovative finding the most efficient or most aesthetically pleasing solution? Which takes priority usually? Conclusions
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Spaces of innovation in
architecture firms
Project summary
A Research Project funded by the British
Academy
Project Leader: Dr. James Faulconbridge
Lancaster University, UK
May 2008
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Research questions
This project explores the practices of innovation in architectural firms
and the role of various technologies, social networks and media in
shaping building design. Recognising the often collaborative nature of
innovation, it aims to develop understanding of the way architects
work in teams but also draw on a range of different stimuli in the
innovation process. In doing this, the project also seeks to understand
the way architectural knowledges move across space and the
mechanisms for ‘localising’ building designs. A number of themes will
be covered in interviews:
� The behaviours and characteristics of the successful, innovative
architect.
� The social practices (teamwork, collaboration, inter-personal
networks of communication) involved in innovation and the
geographies of these practices. This part of the project aims to
tease out exactly how architects go about developing
innovative design ideas and the importance of intra- and extra-
firm relationships.
� The importance of professional discourses in informing innovation
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Methodology
The primary method of data collection for this project was in-depth interviews
with practitioners. There were two main stages to the data collection process.
1. Thirty six in-depth interviews with architects in London (9 interviews),
Paris (3), San Francisco (9), New York (9) and Tokyo (6).
•••• A rich dataset revealing the practices and relational spaces of
innovation was collected with interviewees (see table 1)
spanning the organizational hierarchy within firms, from director
level down to associate architect.
Table 1. Interviewees in firms.
Cities: L= London; NY = New York City; P = Paris; SF= San Francisco; T = Tokyo.
Interviewee City Interviewee City
Project Architect L Architect P
Managing
Partner
L Architect P
Associate Partner L Managing
Partner
P
Managing
Partner
L Architect SF
Project Architect L Managing
Partner
SF
Associate
Architect
L Architect SF
Architect L Principal SF
Partner L Architect SF
Associate
Architect
L Architect SF
Principal NY Partner SF
Architect NY Principal SF
Principal NY Principal SF
Partner NY Architect T
Architect NY Architect T
Architect NY Managing
Partner
T
Director NY Architect T
Director NY Principal T
Partner NY Architect T
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2. Nine interviews with representatives of professional associations
• Key individuals (see table 2) in the professional associations
representing architects in each of the cities studied were
interviewed.
Table 2. Interviewees representing professional associations.
Cities: L= London; NY = New York City; P = Paris; SF= San Francisco; T = Tokyo.
RIBA = Royal Institute of British Architects; AIA = American Institute of
Architects; JIA = Japanese Institute of Architects; AIJ = Architectural Institute of
Japan.
Interviewee City Association Interviewee City Associati
on
Director L RIBA Director SF AIA
Researcher L RIBA Publicity
Officer
SF AIA
Director NY AIA Board
Member
T JIA
National
Council
Member
P L’ordre des
Architectes
President T AIJ
Secretary
General
P International
Union of
Architects
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Executive Summary
A number of insights were gained from the interviews with architects in firms
that help advance knowledge and these are detailed more fully in the report
below. In particular the following themes emerged from interviews:
•••• Architects work in a state of hetronomy (c.f. Larson, 1993) and
clients, engineers and regulators all play an important role in
the innovation process and in the localization of designs.
•••• Innovation is also the result of teamwork within firms and
collaboration between experts (in the same but also spatially
dispersed offices) with different skill sets.
•••• The media is a significant influence on innovation as it provides
inspiration but also, because of the importance of good
publicity to an architect’s career, acts as a spur for architects to
innovate.
•••• The cities in which firms operate have a significant influence on
innovation, primarily because of the pools of talent they house.
•••• The role of the architecture profession varies between each city
and whilst this often historically defined continues to have an
impact on the work of global firms.
Interviews with representatives of professional associations were also
particularly insightful. Of especial significance were the insights gained into:
•••• The way architecture is (has always been in come ways) a
global profession.
•••• The way professional associations that have a national remit
increasingly operate internationally.
•••• The challenges and debates about international work, its ethics
but also its importance the business of architecture.
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Detailed findings
The project primarily aimed to engage in a number of academic debates
about the geographies of innovation in architecture firms but also
cultural/creative industries more broadly. With this in mind the project had
two main objectives:
To map and explore the multiple, scale transcending, networks and circuits of
social practice informing innovation in global architecture firms.
Two main insights were gained in relation to this objective.
1. For many architects the global nature of architecture as a profession
renders the search for inspiration and ideas innately global, thus
challenging the association of creative/cultural industries with
exclusively local geographies of innovation (e.g. Simmie, 2003).
2. Travel, conferences, magazines with global coverage and working in
global cities that are the crossroads of flows of mobile architects are
all strategies used by architects to incorporate themselves into
relational spaces of innovation. This corresponds with emerging work in
the mobilities paradigm (Urry, 2007) looking at the ‘fluid’ social spaces
of many professionals.
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To provide empirical exposition of these social practices; and examine the
processes of embedding ideas in local contexts.
Three insights of particular significance were gained from the project:
1. The global nature of architects’ professional lives and work can be
unpacked to reveal examples of travel, collaboration (with colleagues
in the same firm and peers in other firms), worldwide scrutiny of other
architects work and attendance at conferences. This mean it is
impossible to ‘locate’ the place where innovation occurs. Hence all
innovation is global to some extent, further challenging the idea that
innovation and learning is a process with local and global
components that have different qualities and can be disaggregated
(e.g. Bathelt et al., 2004).
2. On the ‘design side’, the embedding of innovative designs in the local
context occurs through multiple actor-networks. In particular, the
client (who is usually local to a project), local regulators, local sub-
contractors and local architects involved in a project provide
localizing influences on the design process. Applying these findings to
work from relational economic geography (e.g. Bathelt and Glϋckler,
2003) and the global production networks paradigm (Dicken et al.,
2001) brings in a cultural industries perspective to studies and develops
more sophisticated understanding of the embeddedness of firms
(Hess, 2004).
3. Those inhabiting the building and residents of the city in which a
building is built also localize designs through their consumptive and
interpretative practices. The identity of buildings is, therefore,
‘autonomous’ to some extent with even the most ‘placeless’ work of a
star-architect or apparently out of place skyscraper having a ‘local’
identity and meaning. This finding draws on and develops work that
uses ideas from cultural geography (Lees, 2006; Jacobs, 2001) and
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actor-network theory (Law, 2002) and applies it in the realm of global
firms, economic geography and the work of the global architect.
These findings have been/will be used to advance academic understanding
through the development of papers putting forward three major empirical
and theoretical advances:
1. Mobile ecologies of innovation
Existing work on the geographies of knowledge and innovation (e.g. Amin
and Cohendet, 1999; Bunnell and Coe, 2001; Malmberg et al., 2007; Bathelt et
al. 2004; Coe et al., 2004) can be advanced by consideration of the need to
move beyond discussions of local and global. Data collected as part of the
project reveals the need for a theoretical conceptualization of the forms of
mobility that influence innovation and learning, something that
fundamentally repositions the focus of analysis away from the role of face-to-
face contact and conversation and towards experience, engagement and
practice.
2. Localising designs – actor-networks putting buildings in their place
The idea that global firms operate as embedded organizational forms (e.g.
Coe and Wrigley, 2006; Dicken et al., 2001; Hess, 2004) is developed by this
research because of the insights gained into how architects work in a state of
heternomy. Detailed examination of the ‘design side’ and ‘consumption side’
actor-networks influencing the work of global architects reveals previously
ignored relationships that shape and localize the work of global firms. In
addition, the findings of this project also show that studies of cultural/creative
industries can better bring-in the consumer in discussions of the embedding of
work of global firms.
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3. Taking the professions seriously – geographical heterogeneity in work,
expertise and status
The comparative work completed as part of this project, in five cities in four
countries, reveals the need for greater recognition of the affect of
professional status on the work of architects, as well as other professionals.
There has been a burgeoning of work on professional service firms and their
globalization (Beaverstock, 1996; Beaverstock et al., 1999; Jones, 2005) yet the
affects of professional status, and the differences in professional status
between countries, has so far been underplayed. Data collected as part of
this project shows how in each country architects, their role in building
projects, expectations about the ‘value added’ they deliver, and ultimately
the success of global architectural firms, are all influenced by the professional
identity of the architect. By comparing the different countries studied, with
the contrast between Japan and the USA and UK being particularly stark, the
project has shown how understanding the history and status of professions
can better help us theorise the globalization of professional service firms.
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Conclusions
This report details the main academic findings of the research project. Other
findings relate to the challenge of organizing teams/studios to encourage
innovation within architecture firms and the use of ICT to create integrated
architectural firms and inter-office collaboration. Summaries of these findings
are currently being developed.
What is clear from the analysis to date is that innovative architecture only
emerges when practitioners are exposed to multiple influences, both within
the firm but more broadly within the now global profession of architecture.
This produces complex ecologies or milieus of innovation that are composed
of interactions, collaborations and experiences that occur in ‘spaces’ well-
beyond the office of a firm and even beyond the city a firm is based in.
Architecture is, then, a truly global profession.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to those who participated in the research and gave up their valuable
time to be interviewed. I am also grateful to Andrew Hewitson for his diligent
work in collecting interview data in Paris.
Thanks to the British Academy (grant SG-43996) for financial support that
allowed this research to be completed.
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