Panellists at AA Rountable 09 were: Simon Anderson (University of Western Australia), Libby Guj (Jones Coulter Young), Andrew Lilleyman (ARM Architecture), and Michael Rayner (Cox Rayner Architects). The roundtable was chaired by Andrew Mackenzie of City Lab.
Andrew Mackenzie: The subject of this discussion – the relationship between economics and architecture – is one that is often brushed aside as too lowly for serious discussion. Indeed, a couple of years ago I was on the plenary session of the National Conference and observed how interesting it was to see how different modes of procurement and different client relationships had a powerful impact on the work of several speakers. This thought was casually censured by Sean Godsell, who reminded me that people go to conferences to get away from clients.
Yet the reciprocity between economic conditions and the way in which architects engage with what could be called a “client ecology” would seem incredibly important. So I was very happy to be invited this evening to participate in the conversation with four architects who will doubtlessly come to this subject from different perspectives.
Simon Anderson: When I read the discussion’s theme of economics and architecture I immediately thought about “money” rather than economics as a discipline. I admit to being somewhat ambivalent about money, because on the one hand it’s vital to any practice, yet it’s also immensely irrelevant. We’ve all seen bad architecture made with lots of money.
Personally, I’m interested in how architects use and allocate resources, such as training and managing clients and all of the day-to-day stuff of running a practice. From this perspective I’m interested in what an architect can do with not much money. It’s also interesting to look to other disciplines, to see what they have done.
For instance, I’m struck by the legacy of Marcel Duchamp, who put a urinal in an art gallery in 1917. Now recognized as one of the most important pieces of modern art, it fundamentally and cataclysmically changed what art was. Before Duchamp, art was typically big gilt-framed oil paintings in rich people’s houses. After Duchamp art became less about craft and materials and more an intellectual activity. It’s interesting to consider this revolution in art in relation to architecture.
Andrew Lilleyman: In considering this issue of how practices use their resources, my specific interest lies in how design can add value to a project, particularly in the early stages of big government projects.
Projects like the Perth Arena are big machines for performance and are really designed for economic value. If they don’t perform properly as a design then they won’t perform economically.
With the regional projects that we have delivered there is almost a heightened sense of value, perhaps because the population’s smaller and more focused on individual buildings, but there is perceivably a greater community pride in those projects.
In either case we try to deliver additional value through design, even as we encounter criteria, ostensibly for delivering good design, but which are more or less a matter of ticking boxes. The question is whether we shoudl be aiming for good design, or exceptional design?
Libby Guj: One aspect of being a design practitioner in boom times that is of great concern to me is observing how often prosperous periods of development can produce places that could be anywhere in the world.
When travelling, most of us look for the spontaneity of new things, for serendipity, for the things that are of the place. However, I often return to places that have experienced boom times and discover that I have to check my atlas. In responding to times of economic growth the question is: Do we actually produce authenticity, in terms of place?
I think that boom times can actually cripple things as much as build them. A little high street can accommodate lots of innovators and wonderful small businesses that have come out of nowhere, creating the essence of that place. All of a sudden it gets popular and the rents rise and the small businesses are gone and the franchises move in.
Boom development can also disenfranchise people, such as young people who often don’t have a place anymore. It can be great at creating places for visitors; however, this is often at the expense of those who live and work in a particular location.
In considering these possible outcomes, it’s very important that young architects are not purely entrenched in the making of things, but are also engaged in a broader social context.
Michael Rayner: I think that good design and economics have always been inextricably linked and one doesn’t necessarily corrupt the other, as is sometimes assumed.
The three big fields of economic activity that relate to design are culture, tourism and commerce, and throughout the world they are still the strongest areas in which good design and economics come together. It is housing and retail, which are at the opposite ends of the spectrum, where economics often strangles good design.
Where I think the economic value of design should play a bigger role is in movement infrastructure. It is often regarded as just engineering – getting vehicles to move faster between places – by tunnels, bridges and flyers. However, it is through movement between places that people experience cities. If we worked at the quality of experience of movement I think it would result in a new kind of renown, and through that tourism and economic vitality would increase. I am partly talking about pedestrian and cycle networks but also how buses, rail and ferries travel.
While I respect faster commuting means, for example to provide more work time, I think there are benefits in having a “two-speed economy” created by design.
AM: Libby, you mentioned the importance of locality. Sitting here in Perth I’m interested to know your thoughts on how economic growth has impacted the city?
LG: Well, let’s face it, Perth is historically a gold-rush town, and we’re still a gold-rush town. One consequence of this is that projects tend to get pushed faster and faster, for economic reasons. This, in the end, can lead to repetition; just doing the same again and again. Personally I think we should take more time, and try to avoid the incredible pressure to rush delivery.
AL: I would agree with Libby that there can be a tendency for quantity over quality. But I also think big economic growth periods are important and they do generate good architectural outcomes on a broad level. As long as the policies and governance are there for certain projects the results can be really good.
On the flipside, weaker economies can be much more competitive, which is good from the client’s perspective, but this competitiveness can also drive down fees, which reduces the time available to do the job properly. This in turn reduces the design outcome for everyone.
MR: That’s true, but remember that Melbourne built a lot of fantastic buildings in a not-so-good economic time. Now the legacy is paying off. Queensland did the same thing. We had a strong leadership with a cultural interest who realized that it would benefit the state, not in the short term for the next election, but in the long term.
Yet the money was extremely tight. Major projects such as GoMA, the State Library of Queensland and Kurilpa Bridge were done on a shoestring. We just had a very committed government that wanted design to come out of it, and the architects did a lot with comparatively little.
AM: Simon, notwithstanding Duchamp’s dematerializing of art, Clement Greenberg claimed that avant-garde art was connected to the bourgeoisie by an umbilical cord of gold. Arguably it still is. Do you think the connection between architecture and the traditional patron has changed in recent years?
SA: Well, I think patrons are becoming less interested in buildings generally. The Catholic Church built cathedrals for two thousand years and in the 1960s they had a Vatican Council and decided they were not going to build cathedrals anymore. They decided to spend money building hospitals in the Third World.
AM: There does seem to be an ongoing patronage for buildings that help brand a city. If one can think of the “patron” as millions of city dwellers, what impact has the age of the icon had on the average person’s understanding of architectural value?
AL: There are also words like “ageless” and “timeless,” which influence the aesthetic development of a project and have economic implications as much as the iconic does. But we don’t seek to do iconic buildings and we don’t seek to do ageless and timeless buildings either. We don’t necessarily feel they’re useful tools or a useful basis for design.
SA: Surely in Bilbao they just wanted to get themselves out of an economic circumstance. An icon was a way of doing it because, after all, Paris up the road has its icons, and they draw millions of tourists every year. To my mind, however, this is not really a question of architecture. It’s more a question of economics.
I certainly don’t think someone building a funny building or the community wanting to build a giant pineapple, to try and turn their city or town around, is actually a bad thing. In some terms it’s actually a really valuable thing for any community to do, to actually choose to do something.
AM: On a different note, we have seen recently a move within the profession towards conglomeration – of medium-sized practices coming together into new, larger entities. What are your thoughts on the micro-economy of running a practice and how that’s changing in Australia today?
MR: People are losing their individual markets and needing to amalgamate in order to have a diversity of appeal that can withstand different economic conditions. We’re also seeing international firms moving into Australia. Now, of course, Australian firms are also working internationally, so we’ve got no real reason to say they can’t. But it’s happening in Australia to markets that are much smaller than those overseas, so it’s having a very large impact.
Then there’s the rise of firms that are run as ruthless businesses. Some arguably stop work when the budget’s spent and seem willing to produce substandard work as a result. This is one consequence of how practices are evolving in today’s tighter economy.
But thankfully other practices are saying, “If we design well we’ll get more work and so we’ll continue to work with great authenticity in the hope that that will pay off.” I’m interested to see how that pans out over the next few years.
AM: Simon, working with students and preparing them for their world in practice, do you feel optimistic when you send them out the door of the university?
SA: Absolutely, but I’m a great optimist. If our students are clever and engaged and passionate about things and respect other people, then I’m very optimistic about the future; they’ll do great things.
MR: If I add to that, because it’s pertinent to my earlier remarks, it’s a lot easier to design when you understand the economic conditions behind a project. Unfortunately students don’t come out of university with much awareness at all of those conditions.
I don’t understand why there isn’t more fundamental understanding of finances and economics in the education system. What is wrong with teaching them about the different procurement processes with which they’re going to have to work?
SA: Yes, architecture is about lots of hard stuff and requires being very clever, being well trained and being committed to it. But there is an argument to say that a lot of the practical side of running a practice can be learned when a student leaves university.
As a closing remark I think that with this booming economy there are enormous opportunities, and we can decide to do this or that, or as Duchamp did, just go and play chess!
LG: I think it’s a really important part of our profession that we look to and understand stuff that is well beyond what we were trained for. Getting back to boom times and what architecture can deliver, I think we have a responsibility to recognize and allow enough space in our cities for things to happen that we didn’t plan and that we don’t know. As architects we need to understand that the life beyond what we do is actually the true life of our world.
AL: Generally with the projects I work on as a part of ARM, it comes down to delivering both economic outcomes and a good design result. However, we are dependent on good governance; this is extremely important. This means governance that can take on innovation and the idea of risk in a project, and support the architect to get a good outcome.
MR: I guess in summing up I believe that architects are entitled to practise in all sorts of ways. You can design at whatever scale you want … But if the subject is economics I think that is a different thing. I like to understand economics because I think that is a way that I can help other architects, as well as myself, get a firmer ground on which to do good design.
If there’s one simple thing that all architects should do, and I think we may all agree on this, it is to look beyond the brief for what other additional value you can deliver, within a wider context of what we might call architectural value.
The AA Roundtable series is presented in partnership with ISIS. AA Roundtable 09 was held in Perth on 7 March 2013.
