As I work toward notching another "built accomplishment" on the proverbial belt, I find myself pondering the likelihood of emerging from the experience buried in change order ink, frustrated client with "busted budgets", and an overwhelming sense of helplessness about my ability to affect change within a crippled industry - an industry where the design professional's role as "masterbuilder" continues to fade as quickly as an owner's costs continue to rise. According to construction lawyer Barry LePatner, however, we (designers) are simply one cog that helps spin the wheel in "an industry that consumes $1.23 trillion and wastes at least $120 billion each year."
Why is the construction industry fraught with such lackluster performers and skyrocketing costs that outpace inflation? With such lofty ambitions accompanied by unprecedented developments in materials and technology, why is it that productivity within the building industry falls so short; even continues to decline? 'Starchitecturally' designed icons living-on in isolation throughout the world aside - think South African Football Stadiums towering above their shantytown neighbours, an already crumbling Yankee Stadium standing antagonistically abreast one of the most disadvantaged boroughs, or the miami airport now 4 times its "fixed budget" - such a decayed and unresponsive infrastructure continues to retard development throughout our economy in more ways than are easily conceivable. This must be a cause for concern as well as demand for a better quality built environment.
By no means do I claim to have the answers, nor the ability to right this sinking ship alone. In fact, it has become clear to me that I am simply an ill-fated part of the problem - an "unsurprisingly inadequate education". MIT professor Kelly Burnham (1959) suggested that "the combination of genuine design ability and a sensitive understanding of the housing industry is rare, and almost nowhere is it being taught." Arguably, "there has been no improvement since" suggests LePatner. As my fellow colleagues and I might often found harassing our engineering colleagues for their mathematical and scientific approach to design, we are quick to ignore the failings and lack of understanding of our own "(in)complete" training. Art, architectural history, architectural theory, and the social sciences are equally fraught with a disengagement from the complementary understanding of the built environment. In reality, each discipline could benefit from one another immensely but this is rarely encouraged, and even less structured.
Resisting a lengthy critique of the debilitating effects of degree inflation, it is worth nothing, I think, that perhaps the most poorly encouraged piece of education is the hands on training and apprenticeship. Unfortunately in a continued and valiant attempt to distinguish ourselves as 'experts' in the field we have, for many reasons, withdrawn from our historical abilities - perhaps our right - to assist in the timely, responsive, on-time-on-budget delivery of the built environment. A fear of litigious recourse, an insecurity in knowledge, and what LePatner refers to as "asymmetric information" between builders, owners and designers, continues to ensure that the house of cards is stacked against us with our 'ace-up-the-sleeve' - first hand knowledge - nowhere to be found. Instead, our newfound professionalism remains a mere graphic facsimile of the built environment.
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