Specialization in Architectural Practice and Education

Stanford Anderson is a Professor of History and Architecture and the Head of the department of Architecture at MIT.

Practice

Unquestionably, architectural practice today requires more specialized knowledge and performance than in the past. These demands increase with the scale of projects and the range of challenging issues that are addressed. To choose to address sustainability issues, for example, requires more expertise than if those concerns are ignored. Does the general phenomenon of specialization, then, represent a trend, or perhaps even a rather rapid movement away from the architect generalist toward associations of technician/specialists that might not even include architects as we have know them?

The evidence does not all point in this direction. From individual practioners to some very large firms, it is not difficult to think of architects who still build coherent bodies of work. IN some of these cases, their generalist role may be driven by purely formal concerns; we may feel inclined to criticize them for not being sufficiently attentive to the complexity of the problem, and thus to the need for specialized knowledge. But there are examples of the generalist architect who does also succeed in addressing a remarkable range of specialist issues. One thinks of the almost lone figure of Glenn Murcutt, to the small offices of a Rick Joy or Brian McKay-Lyons, the research based office of Thomas Herzon, and on through the mid-sized offices of Renzo Piano or Michael Hopkins or Nicholas Grimshaw to the large office of Norman Foster. At these very different scales of operation, all of these architects reveal a capacity to embrace many issues and address them both through their own broad knowledge and by thoughtful collaboration.
I say "thoughtful collaboration" because in their choices of engineers, for example, neither do they pass off the technical work as the responsibility of someone else nor do they resist the creative input of the engineer. The engineers with whom they work have something of the "generalist sensibility" that allows for genuinely collaborative development.

I argue then, that neither the large office nor the large project precludes the possibility of highly creative work by generalist architects.
Piano and Foster (and several lesser known but creditable architects) have built major airports without being, or becoming, "airport architects." The small firm of one of our own graduates, Ben Wood (Wood and Zapata), built the major stadium for the Chicago Bears without being specialists as "sport architects."

The necessity of more and deeper knowledge, and the scale of projects, does not preclude good architecture or its realization by generalists architects.
But there is a form of specialization that is troubling, and that is the type already suggested in the last paragraph. Must you have done several (probably unimaginative) airports, or stadiums, or hospitals before receiving a chance to do one? I served two terms on the Design Advisory Board of Massport, at a time when they were choosing architects for new terminals at Logan Airport. As a bureaucracy, they were protected by selecting architects already known, in this case, as "airport architects." Even if the firm had done only mediocre work, they still were known for this type of work; you had not gone out on a limb with an architect new to the type. It did not have to be at the scale of a terminal; reworking the ticket counters in an existing terminal required prior experience of that kind!

My first exposure to the current debate about this type of worrisome specialization was this "health care architecture." More than a year ago, Tom Payette came to the Board of Directors of the Boston Society of Architects (the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects) to explain and urge resistance to the development of special credentials for architects who would design health care facilities. Payette's own firm has a significant position in this field, but he was resisting a cause advanced by his fellow/competing hospital architects. Tom is rightly concerned that developing and requiring special credentials for each building type is destructive of imaginative development of the field, negative in its inherent resistance to the entry of new generations of architects in the field, and contrary to the valued generalist nature of architectural practice. I cannot speak for the Boston Society of Architects, but the Board gave a very positive reception to Tom's concerns, and no one defended certification formalities for such forms of specialization.

That, then is a form of specialization to be criticized and resisted.
I have already acknowledged the necessity to work openly and creatively in collaborations that require multiple forms of specialization. I would go further to say that "generalist architects" may find it advantageous to themselves to achieve some specialist stature. To take my sustainability issue again: We are at a juncture where it takes considerable effort to know the current state of the science and engineering of sustainability, let alone to make some contribution to those fields. If an architect wishes to take special responsibility in this area (or others), he or she will be brought to a level of specialization - but that architect could still practice over the full range of building scales; in urban, rural, or wilderness environments; and with all building types. He or she can, and hopefully would, still have a particular signature within the broader cultural enterprise of architecture.

Education

Are the research degrees in schools of architecture and the pressure for research by professors of architecture either the cause or the result of specialization in the practice of architecture? Certainly there are reciprocities between the increasing emphasis on research in both architectural practice and education, but I would emphasize two matters in this respect.
The first professional degree should properly be slow in bringing students into a research mode. Students come to architecture, even to graduate studies in architecture, as neophytes. You cannot define a research program in a discipline until you know the current state of that field - and there is plenty for the new student to learn while becoming a contributor to the generalist field of architecture. As here at MIT, architecture students, in their brief 3+ years, may participate in a professor's research project, may take on a sub-inquiry in a workshop, may be exposed to the research of professors and advanced degree students. They will thus be exposed to research and more generally develop the capacities that may lead to a research contribution in a M.Arch thesis, in continuing graduate education, or eventually in practice. But the M.Arch. in itself is not a research degree.

Secondly, the research degrees should allow a student committed to the role of architect to adopt a special emphasis in generalist practice (as adduced with sustainability concerns above), or, alternatively, allow a student to become a specialist who, whether in practice or sustained research, can work creatively in the realization of superior architecture that does recognize the increased complexity of the built environment and its realization.