Request Info | Back to Home Page
PROVOCATIONS
April 1997
"Five Dynamic Forces Changing the Face
of the Architectural Profession"
by Barry B. LePatner, Esq
reprinted from The LePatner Report, Spring 1997. Used with permission of the author.
The next three years leading to the 21st century will be unlike the preceding seven years of this decade.
The years of unwinding the worst recession for architects since the Great Depression
have given way to a new era characterized by five dynamic forces:
- the global economy
- the technological/brainpower transition
- the universal appeal of quality design
- the aging of our global population, and
- the telecommunications revolution.
These forces favor the large, multi-disciplined architectural firms that are uniquely
positioned to take advantage of the new transformations that are shaping the business
world and those who service their corporate and institutional needs.
The Global Economy
During the 1980s the large U.S. architectural firms all designed projects in countries
abroad. However, in recent years, major shifts in the way the corporate world has
committed itself to a global market has accelerated the need for architects to accept
international assignments as a regular fact of life.
International corporations no longer are tied inextricably to their national
governmental policies. Global trade and the ability to do business in many countries in
order to develop worldwide products and services has transformed the way in which
successful architectural firms will adapt to the changing design and construction
imperatives of their clients.
The trend to move away from world trade regulation will also be of huge benefit to
architects. The increasing ease of exporting American design and technical expertise
abroad will open up countless new areas for the predominance of the U.S. design product to
become a staple of countless new international markets as the 21st Century dawns.
Technological/Brainpower Transition
Today, as economist Lester Thurow notes in his new book The Future of Capitalism,
"Shifts in technology, transportation, and communications are creating a world where
anything can be made anywhere on the face of the earth and sold everywhere else on the
face of the earth." The costs of these advances have decreased dramatically and will
continue to do so in the years ahead.
Those firms which have an abundance of advanced design skills, a grasp of the cultural
nuances of the countries in which they design projects, and the latest technological tools
to speed communications with clients will hold the dominant sources for strategic
advantage over competitors with less of these tools and talents.
The firms that truly succeed in this next century will be those who move quickly to
garner the most talented brainpower and lock these employees into long term contracts so
that they do not move over to competitors.
All large firms will be able to purchase the latest computer equipment and software
tools. It will be the minds and talents of the independent decision-makers of the
successful firms that will determine which organizations stay ahead of those who fall
behind.
Vision and the ability to adapt to changing conditions will be the hallmark of the
astute leaders of tomorrow's international architectural firm.
The Universal Appeal of Quality Design
Quality-designed buildings and products, whether built for the U.S. market or built
thousands of miles away, have taken on the characteristic of a universal aesthetic. The
lessons learned from the wildly successful designs of the Ford Taurus, the Gillette Sensor
razor blade and the Apple Macintosh are but a few of the products that have been designed
for appeal to customers in every part of the world.
One need only look at the success of the design of I.M. Pei's glass pyramid at the
Louvre in Paris, the eventual success of the Disney design construct in Japan and Europe,
and the selection of U.S. architects for major governmental and private projects in Hong
Kong, Malaysia, Berlin and Australia, to name but a few, to recognize the appeal that the
American design ethos has across the international spectrum.
The Aging of Our Global Population
Our national and global population is soon to experience a massive change in
generational impact as it continues to grow and get older. In the U.S. today, those over
sixty-five total 13% of the population. By the year 2025, the number of elderly will reach
20%.
As the baby boom generation ages, our society will, for the first time, have a large
segment of the elderly who will be economically well-to-do, active, living in residential
settings that have yet to be built. They will be demanding more services of their
government, demanding expensive social services and utilizing health care facilities that
will be undergoing drastic design changes to meet their special needs.
The large architectural firms who can recognize these revolutionary changes early,
adapt them to the new ideas their talented designers produce, and market them everywhere
across the globe, will be the major success stories of the early years of the 21st
Century.
The Telecommunications Revolution
The "Digital Revolution" is here. Rich Karlguard, writing in the December 2,
1996 issue of Forbes Magazine's ASAP, identifies the trademarks of the computer
advances we are currently experiencing:
- Whatever computation can replace, it will. Soon computer chips will be so powerful and
so cheap...Maytag...will use a cheap fuzzy logic chip, not cement, to keep your washing
machine perfectly still during the spin cycle.
- What information can replace, it will. Instead of driving to the local Barnes &
Noble or Borders bookstores, you can hop on the Internet and call up www.amazon.com which
carries more books than the local store. Information trumps real estate
- What can be done, will be done. The ideas and logic of today will be replaced by the new physics of tomorrowlimited only by the imagination of those bold thinkers of today who are rethinking everything about them.
Imagination will spur the development of newer and faster ways of communicating ideas,
designs, ways of constructing those designs and the mechanism for constructing them faster
and cheaper.
The smart architectural firms will hire these most imaginative thinkers and develop the internal systems for delivering these ideas to their global clients for projects in developed and underdeveloped countries alike.
Bill Gates, the genius behind Microsoft, says that "to make intelligent bets on the future, you have to understand what will be going on in the next ten years. Most people overestimate what is going to happen in the next two or three years and underestimate what is going to happen in the next decade."
Grasping the enormity of new thinking that will be the concomitant of the five dynamic
changes described above may be difficult.
Adapting the large architectural firm to act in a positive way that strengthens the
firm and works in a complementary fashion along with these changes is the true challenge.
Certainly, one must look long and hard at the strengths and weaknesses of today's firm and compare them with the talents and abilities needed to meet the new economic realities described above.
Barry B. LePatner is principal of Barry B.
LePatner & Associates, a New York based law practice offering business, marketing,
and legal advice and strategies for design professionals and corporate and real estate
owners. His publications include Le Patner's Quotes
on the Business of Life and his firm's quarterly newsletter, The LePatner Report,
available in print and on the Web.
PROVOCATIONS is an online journal of architecture and
ideas.
Editor: Susan Bilenker, info@design-site.net.
Publisher: Susan Bilenker Communications for DesignSite™
.
Opinions expressed by authors published in Provocations are those of the authors and not
necessarily those of Provocations, DesignSite, or Susan Bilenker Communications.
last update: 1/8/04