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Why architects are uniquely positioned

To those outside the architecture industry, the value in having architects at the decision-making table may not be obvious. Dan Hill (Director, Melbourne School of Design) shares a similar sentiment within his book, Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary,
                 “What gives designers the right to approach such complex areas, usually the domain of political scientists and civil servants? Aren’t these essentially beyond the capacity and capability — if not remit —
of design?”

Hill claims that designers’ strengths lay in their ability to work across contexts, rapidly absorb content, and ask the unspoken “obvious” questions as the outsider, to reveal the underlying architecture of a problem.
                       Research by Dr Harriett Harriss (Professor, Pratt Institute) supports this notion of adaptability. Architecture’s Afterlife: The Multi-Sector Impact of an Architectural Qualification, an Erasmus+ funded research enquiry between 2019 and 2020, sought to better understand what an architectural education is good for if not a career in architecture — a question prompted by the Royal Institute of British Architects’ finding that only 66% of architecture graduates become practicing architects. The research idenitifed that, in addition to skills and competences, architecture graduates reveal a certain behaviour — mindset and modus operandi — that allows them to develop new professions or to work in completely unrelated sectors where they contribute their architectural skills.
                       A prime example of this is Helsinki Design Lab (HDL), the world’s first strategic design unit established within government, thanks to Sitra, The Finnish Innovation Fund. What is unique about this unit is that all core staff members were architects, introducing an architectural modus operandi to the public sector. Within one of HDL’s many publications, the team dissects how architecture could be considered a Third Culture of knowledge² — sitting between science and the humanities, blending the constraints of reality with the best of human intentions to create balanced and opportunistic outcomes.
                       In a nutshell, these cases demonstrate how architects are well positioned to move upstream through their agility, modus operandi and ability to probe the limits of our current reality whilst creating new ones — so why hasn’t this been seen at scale yet?

 2.
“Third Culture Kids” is a term coined by Ruth Hill Useem in the 1960’s.

“The third culture kid builds relationships to [multiple] cultures, while not having full ownership in any.”

David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken, ‘Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds’ (1999)


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