First Prize: "Research, Invention, and Collaboration"
Second Prize: "Expert Generalist"
Honorable Mentions:
"Not Just A Day at the Office: The Architecture Principal in 2020"
"Taco Bell: A Teaching Firm Treasure"
"The Price of Relevance"
"Cultural Consulting in the 21st Century 'Experience Economy'"

 First Prize:
"Research, Invention, and Collaboration"
Erik Kath | New York, NY

Let me tell you about our firm.

We are primarily concerned with the continuous advancement of the field of architecture and, inherently, the enhanced quality of the built environment. As lofty as it sounds, we want to improve the world. We do this through research, invention, and collaboration.

Before I begin, I should tell you why we started this practice in the first place. You see, we were not satisfied with the status quo. We asked ourselves why we continued to see costs escalate in making buildings at a rate exceeding the cost of living. We were constantly forced to make design decisions on the basis of cost that result in less choice, less customization, more standardization, and less quality. We were faced with numerous quality issues at the end of the construction process, solved only by reams of paper and countless hours of time. Compounding our frustration was the drive of our industry professional organizations to limit our involvement with the means and methods of construction (1).

We understood that we had reached a critical point where, unless we acted, our profession would face extinction. We knew we had to do three things: stay at the cutting edge of research and in turn share newfound knowledge with the entire architectural community, remain open to the possibility of new paradigms and allow invention to be a catalyst for its own necessity, and to utilize IT enabling software to collaborate seamlessly with our clients and the other fields involved in the design, fabrication, and assembly processes.

Our practice operates much differently than the conventional architecture firm. We have eradicated construction documentation as it was previously known. We use virtual simulation software to link the entire manufacturing process in a continuous flow - from design to prototyping, to fabrication, and even to disassembly. The capacity in one field is immediately applied to another (2). Since the development of the CATIA platform in 1981, many competitors have emerged with their own unique versions of simulation software (3). Our firm teamed with one of these companies to invent an architectural adaptation of the program, which we’ve named OPR8. It allows us to simulate all the design processes - from the pre-project phase through detailed design, analysis, assembly, and maintenance.

Of course, persuading other fields to implement our software was a key challenge. In particular, general contractors were hesitant to embark on this venture, creating tension with the construction industry as well as our own professional organizations. It took a few years to prove to contractors and specialists that our software would streamline the processes of fabrication and assembly and reduce the amount of time spent in preparing cost estimates and scheduling.

Part CATIA and part Autodesk Revit, OPR8 enables our collaborators in the various fields - structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, data - to input their respective systems into our model and test them. We can simulate loading conditions, interior air quality, and emergency egress situations. Additionally, we can assess our building in its site - scientifically as well as visually - as it responds to external forces such as wind, rain, light, solar heat gain, and pollution.

Our firm is fundamentally research-based. One of the many challenges we faced - especially in the early stages of our practice - was convincing our clients to fund the necessary research to ultimately give them a better product. We were able to receive research grants from the federal government, though modest at first, to aid us in this endeavor. Not only was it less complicated to receive grants as time went on, but it was also easier to persuade clients to sponsor our investigative methods.

More than half of our employees are directly involved with universities, both locally and around the world, in various fields of study. This allows us to conduct research that isn’t directly related to a current project, but nonetheless is aimed at the expansion of the collective knowledge of architecture, especially in regard to software analysis, materials science, and process engineering. This relationship with schools also helps to eliminate the boundaries once associated between academia and practice (though not necessarily between theory and praxis per se).

I’m sure you can imagine the myriad of tensions that resulted in the desire to share our discoveries and our inventions with the rest of our professional community. Internally, we had many conflicting opinions in the early stages of our practice; we did not have the philosophical support from our professional organizations; and we certainly didn’t have the promise of reciprocity from other firms. However, we’ve managed to make some progress. To imagine that any one closed group could solve the complex problems we face today is folly (4). We must overcome our territorial attitudes and take advantage of our collective potential. We need to learn a lesson from science and do what it’s been doing all along: distribute problem solving (5).

At our practice, we challenge the norm of every existing building type. We attempt to think beyond current paradigms. We have reached a point where our software moves as fast as we think - something that 2-dimensional computer drafting never did. This gives us the time and freedom to envision a new kind of building, both in the architectural and programmatic sense.

We are a singular entity concerned with multiple responsibilities that can shift, transfer, and evolve. "Design teams" can act as temporary "research and development teams." It is this concept that ultimately allows invention to occur. I’ll try to give you a concrete example. One of our projects, a medical school in Singapore, was essentially a 2-client venture. The government of Singapore was providing the capital; Duke University was providing the staff. In the early stages of the project, we found difficulty in mitigating between the government’s energy policies and the university’s strict regulations. Singapore needed a naturally ventilated building whereas Duke needed maximum control of the interior air quality. We worked with a curtainwall company and textile manufacturer to devise a mechanically operable façade, allowing sections of the glass to shift and be replaced with breathable fabric. With our HVAC consultants, we selected equipment that could be digitally connected with the curtain wall. We collaborated with a software company to create a computer program that linked both the façade and the HVAC with a scheduling system based on the interior needs of the user. Simply put, when a certain area of the building has to be fully closed to outside air, a click of a mouse can tell air handlers where to send what kind of conditioned air and order other areas of the building to breathe naturally. The clients’ conflicting standards led to inventions by means of research, made possible by collaboration.

This new building-impregnated software has since been implemented in other projects around the world, leading to an array of "smart systems" that operate and maintain buildings. A modified version responds to the exterior environment - wind and solar conditions, etc. - and has significantly reduced operating costs and energy consumption. Yet another adaptation has led to a new kind of airport security system, in which the software is linked to various sensors within the entire entry façade, allowing the terminal to respond to different kinds of security threats. The successful implementation of this kind of software in buildings requires a fundamental relationship between architecture and information networks, in both a physical and virtual sense. Architects have become the chief coordinators of this relationship.

The desire to be more directly involved with the means and methods of construction has been the most significant challenge our practice has faced, mainly in regard to liability issues. We began to overcome this challenge by literally transforming the way in which buildings are made. With the development of our OPR8 software and as new fabrication techniques emerged, seeing a project through the entire assembly process not only made sense, it became prerequisite. I am not suggesting that we are a design-build practice. There are many reasons why it is more efficient to have general contractors carry out most of the skilled labor required in assembly. Rather, I’m referring to instantaneous communication with the help of new digital tools that enables design to occur through construction. Integrating computer-aided design with computer-aided fabrication and construction fundamentally redefines the relationship between designing and producing (6).

We serve an array of client types, from individuals to corporations to government entities. Beyond the traditional means of revenue vis-à-vis project fees, we sustain ourselves by publishing our research and by patenting our inventions, though we do not hesitate to share the knowledge that we gain from every project. We are also careful to be within the guidelines and contracts we set up with our clients.

In addition to fees and publishing, we gain revenue by being, in a limited sense, a developer of real estate. When feasible, our firm acquires land with the aid of grants to create various public and private uses. Frequently, it is a joint venture with larger developers and can generate profits for our firm. More importantly, these undertakings provide a stage for experiments such as sustainable and/or affordable housing. We realized long ago that developers shaped the urban and suburban landscape in a more fundamental and systematic way than architects. Rather than be a mere hand in development, we wanted to be developers ourselves. Since we are concerned with the enhanced quality of the built environment, we have no choice but to be directly involved with the choices regarding the way land is used. We engage the political entities that are responsible for making the various decisions that affect zoning; we do this in a socially conscious way with the greater good of the public as top priority.

We are an architectural practice of the 21st century. We push the field of architecture forward by means of research. We improve quality through invention. We streamline the design and construction process by collaborating with our clients and with the myriad of other industries. We are involved in the development of land. We engage the political scene. We are multifaceted problem-solvers. We are orchestrators of the complex and chaotic endeavor that is architecture. We are master builders.

This architectural practice does not yet exist, but soon will. Numerous firms have already undertaken in some of the aspects I’ve mentioned. In 2002, Frank O. Gehry developed Gehry Technologies LLC, a Gehry Partners spin-off company. Its mission is to take the CATIA platform to the wider AEC community, a move which promises to revolutionize how buildings, such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, are made (7). Firms such as Office for Metropolitan Architecture make research an integral part of their practice, especially in the realm of urbanism and cultural analysis. Archi-Tectonics, led by Winka Dubbeldam, uses 3D software to "facilitate the fabrication of construction elements in a technologically advanced manner (8)." Kennedy and Violich Architecture Ltd have made considerable advances in materials research, specifically in luminous materials and electro-conductive plywood. ShoP Architects PC offer a broad range of design services, from branding and marketing to real-estate development consultation (9).

Universities must emphasize the importance of research; many of them - Columbia University, The University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to name a few - already have. Schools must also eliminate the misconception that architecture is an individualistic profession and teach the value of collaboration; again, many already have. Our professional organizations, the AIA for example, must reexamine our role in the construction process and reconsider our responsibilities to see projects through assembly - and the liabilities that will ensue.

The technology is here; the capability for change is at hand. We need only the resolve to see it through. We risk irrelevance if we continue to refuse change (10). Rather, architects can become the agents of change. As the opportunities and demands of architectural practice evolve, we can once again be master builders.

NOTES

1. Kieran, Stephan and Timberlake, James. "Refabricating Architecture: How Manufacturing Technologies Are Poised to Transform Building Construction." McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2004. p. 135
2. Mau, Bruce. "Massive Change." Phaidon Press Limited, 2004. p. 193
3. CATIA developed by Dassault Systemes of France
4. Mau, p. 91
5. Mau, p. 95
6. McCullough, Malcom and Mitchell, William J. "Digital Design Media." Wiley, 1994.
7. Mau, p. 195
8. Archi-Tectonics. http://www.archi-tectonics.com
9. Hawthorne, Christopher. "SHoP Talk". Metropolis Magazine, May 2001.
10. Kieran & Timberlake, p. 111

Conditions of the 21st century have delivered Architecture to an unprecedented opportunity- the opportunity to radically alter the general health of our global environment through our daily architectural actions. This paradigm shift, which is already in action, will be a critical change of mental perspective from one of living by convenience to one of living harmoniously and sustainably with our natural ecological systems. It is not simply a matter of running out of petroleum, we will have to fundamentally change the way we conceptualize our relationship to the Earth. One of the most direct ways to make this impact is through our methods of practice and methods of building. These methods, which have remained virtually unchanged for many years, cannot fulfill this new impulse to save the earth. Architects will step forward to accept the challenge to lead our clients, consultants, collaborators and the construction industry toward this refined way of thinking.

Green building and sustainability are not new concepts, yet for some reason we have avoided some of the very basic concepts that could reduce waste, save resources and allow building to perform in a way that many are not aware can be accomplished. Green building has become more than a facet of good public relations or a new marketing strategy for corporations. It is now becoming, and will evolve to be, the next massive economic and humanitarian boom for the world. Much like the internet boom of the nineties which brought about new ways of interacting with others and a new platform of commerce, the shift to a more ecologically sensitive living strategy will be based on the incentive to innovate rather than the motive to profit. The market will judge our success by the ability of products and systems to outperform their predecessors both in terms of the waste produced and energy expended to manufacture a product and the functional impact on the environment. This revolution needs leadership, and architecture is poised to take the reigns.

As the leader of development and promotion of the technical aspects of green building, architects will position themselves as the indispensable professional through their skills as designers and tact as coordinators. Architects will give form to concepts and building components that would otherwise remain as singular developments with little overall positive environmental gain. Green building cannot change the world by simply using low-flow toilets. It is the holistic systematic building approach that will provide for sophisticated and ecologically appropriate solutions. Because sustainable building technology changes so rapidly, many times the most subtle changes can have a tremendous impact. It is imperative for the architect to work in a collaborative environment in an effort to establish the sustainable challenges and the most clever site specific solutions.

Not only will the architect not act alone, the architect cannot be a specialist in all that encompasses Green building. Instead, the architect will be an expert at the fundamentals of sustainability and general design. These fundamentals will inform his decision making and strategies to organize the most appropriate team for a particular project. The architect will build relationships with experts who specialize in areas that are technologically in flux. They will provide the research and practical experience to fulfill the technical challenge of optimizing individual systems to be certain that all opportunities have been fully explored. The consultant is intellectually and operationally invested in the total success of the project. They no longer practice under the umbrella of the architect, but as a full team member, equally liable for the design of the entire building system, in which each component is intricately reliant on many other components to maximize functionality. As this relationship develops, the team will produce long range strategies and innovations by building upon individual successes of research and practice.

In the relationship with consultants, the architect will be in control of the design data. Presently, many times the architect uses output from consultants to inform his design which leads to a lag between inspiration and design that ultimately puts the project at risk. It is most advantageous for the architect to employ an environmental architect on staff who can perform daylighting studies, environmental analysis, and computational fluid dynamic modeling all in an effort to put the means to the data in the hand of the designer. Naturally, the expert consultants will take part in this exercise, and in some cases lead the effort, but the tasks will be performed within the architect’s office. In tandem, these processes and empirical data from actual projects will lead to a more plug-n-play type energy code, where there are flexible minimum or maximum guidelines that allow the design team to make a case for data outside the traditional range. Architects will optimize the assembly materials, systems and components to bring about a working building that will not only be beautiful, but will enhance personal lives and contribute to a more sustainable society. The charge toward a more sustainable society will bring about a change in the research and manufacturing sector of the economy. In contrast to traditional modes of standardized production, Green building components will necessarily become more unique due to their site specific functionality. Because of the necessity of site specific building systems a new means to produce the materials and systems will be developed. Small flexible manufacturing centers will replace current modes of site-built construction whereby a team of specialized craftsmen and technicians can now develop and assemble building components in the factory rather than the traditional system of a contractor manually assembling a building on site with individual construction elements.

The flexible manufacturing center will be structured with the capability to retool its environment for a wide variety of building tasks. Adaptability will be a great benefit to individual projects as well as contribute to the task of sustainability as a whole. This will provide an environment whereby materials can be closely monitored to maintain that they are in fact sustainable materials and they are handled and assembled accordingly. Individual projects will see increased levels of accuracy and craftsmanship due to the controlled environment thereby producing an end product of the highest construction quality. Throughout this process, embodied energy and construction waste is monitored and reduced, streamlining the process, schedule, and cost.

The flexible manufacturing center will be an open and collaborative environment where members from the design team and the construction team work together to solve problems and bring about optimized solutions. These centers will be spread throughout cities and for the most part will respond to regional demands. Much like today’s construction subcontractor, the flexible manufacturer will be responsible for a specific portion of a building. Unlike today’s subcontractor, the flexible manufacturer will be responsible for more comprehensive building systems. Rather than providing only the wall framing, the flexible manufacturer will provide the complete wall assembly. In this manner, the wall assembly is not relying on the overlap of many separate trades and quality can be uniform and controlled.

These unique systems will maintain their economic viability because of their localized specificity that is achieved by the flexible manufacturing center’s proximity to the building site. Some materials will become more primitive yet deployed around new technologies. For instance, the planted roof will obviously be composed of natural elements but implemented with high-tech natural fibers systems that keep the growth medium in place and provide a moisture barrier to the roof sheathing below. Other materials will be "smart" and customized to respond to particular stimuli - whether that’s heat, cold, wet, or force. Glazing will alter itself to respond to light (reducing the necessity for shading, although that still may remain as an aesthetic concern), wall assemblies will respond to temperature as the day progresses and force as winds are high or storms present. In this manner, buildings can be literally open and transparent at times, and more opaque and controlled at others depending on environmental factors.

Once these components have been fabricated, they will be delivered to the site for assembly. Here, the contractor will be the primary coordinator between separate flexible manufacturing centers, scheduling the components and staging their assembly into the overall building system. In collaboration, the architect and design team will insure that the building components are sited properly and handled to their technical specifications. As well, the design team will provide technical guidance and final testing and monitoring of systems. As these systems are unique and sophisticated, they will require constant monitoring during the assembly phase to insure they are working at their optimum level. After the building is in place, its occupants can enjoy the fresh air, natural light, and the knowledge they their building is contributing to the global discourse.

The architectural profession of the mid and late 21st century will be much like it is now. Much of the responsibility and tasks will remain the same; there will simply be more refined means to fulfill those responsibilities. Technology will collapse the gap between architects, consultants and contractors, weaving them together into a distributed intelligent network. And as the term "sustainable" fades from our vocabulary, Green building will become the standard and no longer be seen as radical, or more importantly sold for an initial premium that puts it out of reach of many economic scales. As well, sustainable and manufactured buildings will not have the standardized stigma of the early twentieth century. They will be sophisticated ecological machines. Green building will save the profession from marginalization, design will become a cultural phenomenon, and with any luck we can gradually reverse our current detrimental environmental course.

Snooze? She didn’t really know what a snooze bar was. The closest she came to indulging herself in the morning was surveying the Wall Street Journal and the local paper during breakfast. She reserved design magazines and other light reading for the day’s end.

She sometimes felt like a dinosaur as she flipped through the newsprint, probably the only person in her building who still received a paper. It was a pleasant beginning because, out of necessity, much of each working day was spent attached in front of a computer.

Her firm used an advanced version of Revit, an all-inclusive 3-D modeling and construction drawing software package. The software enabled users to work seamlessly between two- and three- dimensional representations on all projects and to embed layers of spec data at different scales in the model. For instance, a user could set the viewer at 1/8-inch scale and be able to see a big-picture view of the project with very few notes. However, by toggling to 1-inch scale, construction details became visible. The files were available to all consultants or contractors via a networked connection and could be revised in real-time, making it possible to resolve problems as they are being discussed.

The sketches on top of the model were saved on a date-stamped layer, so design decisions could be traced, within the drawing, back to inception. Although the file size was ponderous, the software permitted layers to be hidden, enabling it to run smoothly. Equally important was that the software had vastly improved relations with consultants and contractors.

The work day began immediately after breakfast, and she collected her keys from the small table near the door, a table that displayed a framed photograph of the interior of Tadao Ando’s Church of Light in Osaka, Japan. The photo was a constant reminder of the architect who had, while she was still in high school, inspired her to passionately pursue a career in architecture.

Soft spoken, eloquent and modest, the man told of the experiential beauty of buildings he had visited, and how they had touched him. He displayed some examples of his work-well detailed, solid, and responsive to their surroundings. He spoke of his passion for what architecture could be and of the realities of budgets, clients, municipal regulations, and designs unrealized.

But to her, his recollections of life were most impressive--of childhood experiences in a neighborhood not unlike her own, of how he became the first from his family to attend college and the first African American to attend the state university where he received his degree.

"His entire life was a story of triumph over adversity," she later recalled, "and, of all the things this remarkably capable man could have done, he chose architecture."

He became her mentor. She worked for him part time, spending as much time with him as possible. He told her of his frustrations and speculated about what he would do if he had another 50 years in the profession. "He encouraged me to believe that the profession was poised to transform more now than at any time he could remember," she said. "This was the beginning of my mission. His vision has remained a beacon for me ever since."

Her daily commute always included a visit to one of the sites of the three projects the firm had under construction. She visited each at least once per week.

Because of the advanced software, interactions with the contractors on site were efficient and productive. Instead of a roll of drawings, monitors on site were connected to a network and the full building model. Details were just a toggle away. One monitor at each site had an interactive function, so the contractor could sketch in the model, using a stylus and electronic touch pad, and have it viewed by the architect or any other consultants remotely. In addition, the architects could sketch recommendations and clarifications during field visits, leading to constant evolution of the construction documents.

On this day, she had chosen to visit a project in which the firm was a financial stakeholder. "This kind of investment transforms the owner-architect relationship," she explained. "Sharing in a project’s risk and potential reward gives us instant credibility. It is one of the core values of our firm."

"Our founding partner worked for SHoP Architects, one of the first firms to explore a similar business model. He was convinced that architects had become marginalized, having reduced their role from master builder to glorified consultant in an effort to minimize risk and liability. He believed the continuation of this reduced role would ultimately result in the death of the profession."

The man became a pioneer in re-thinking the architect’s role, particularly as it applied to the massive middle-class, a group relatively isolated and unaffected by the profession. He engineered a change in which architects, as co-developers, encouraged their partners to abandon conventional approaches in such areas as housing and to develop better designs which would benefit that disconnected middle class.

Re-designing the business model resulted in the man’s commitment to keeping the firm abreast of significant developments in design and construction technology, discovering and using the most effective and efficient tools available. This included taking broad steps toward using mass-produced, pre-fabricated construction elements in most of their projects.

These innovations in practice did not always result in sexy, sleek buildings, but it led to improved results in relations with clients, regulators, builders, and overall building performance. She was one of the first employees of the man’s new firm and had embraced the founder’s mission as her own.

But the quest was not without problems. "One of my biggest frustrations has been that architects spend so much time talking to each other and so little sharing ideas with professionals from other fields," she recalled.

As a result, she had been the leader in creating design-oriented workshops, site visits, lectures, and symposiums geared toward developers, realtors, and other entities outside the design and construction community, including business organizations, environmental and human rights groups and government. Topics included design innovations, sustainability, material and technology advancements and their concomitant long-term economic benefits. After all, she reasoned, a developer or any other responsible business person, wouldn’t adopt a new idea without careful consideration of the bottom line.

Arriving at her office, she entered what had once been an abandoned warehouse. It had been transformed into a lively collaborative housing a variety of firms including landscape designers, design-build architects, independent artists and a model-making shop. The firms didn’t necessarily work together on every project, but sharing the open space was conducive to sharing ideas, which in turn led to productive collaborations. This was true particularly for larger competition projects.

The first item on her agenda was a meeting with recently hired employees about their required LEED certification. The firm paid for all test-related activities, and the employees were expected to complete certification within their first six months of employment. "LEED is not only a useful tool for sustainable building," she explained, "but it also can be used by us as a marketing tool, recognized by clients. It demonstrates our conviction that architects must advocate a responsible environmental approach to building." She occasionally expressed surprise at how long it was taking for an environmental design approach to become main-stream, even during the continuing energy crisis that originated in the early part of the 21st Century. For her firm, it was the way architecture had to be, and any client who thought otherwise would not be a client of theirs.

She frequently credited her social and environmental conviction to a favorite college professor. "She taught me that architecture could benefit a poor and un-represented population without sacrificing beauty and inspiration," she said. "She taught me about Sam Mockbee and the innovative design laboratory of the Rural Studio. She also introduced me to the One-Percent Solution, the first effort to provide a formal mechanism to support and encourage pro-bono service." The concept was innovative at the end of the 20th Century, but it has continued to grow through the years. During the past year, more than two million hours were pledged. However, the total was still significantly short of the goal of full professional participation. Her firm signed on in its first year of existence, and has completed numerous pro-bono projects since.

Because of her passion in this area, she usually was the principal on pro-bono projects in the office. In the afternoon, she was scheduled to review recent design development work for a women’s shelter.

The review would not include red-lines. She, the project manager and the staff, using the same interface used earlier on site, would sketch changes directly into the file. The staff knew to come prepared for these reviews. If coordination questions arose, she called the consulting engineers, and the team worked out problems, real-time, in the shared model. The process was demonstrably more efficient than tackling issues piecemeal. The advanced software greatly facilitated this process.

After the meeting, she returned calls and emails and reviewed the quarterly financial statements of the firm’s development division.

Next on the agenda was a review of the most recent city council meeting, the organization most intimately involved with her newest endeavor to help affect positive change in the community.

Five years earlier, she had hired a young intern in his mid-20’s. The man also was running for the school board. He had recently become a father, and the idea of being involved in policy-making became tangible with this birth. "I was amazed at the energy of this young man, who showed so much passion in all of his endeavors at the office, on the board and beyond. It astounded me that someone so young took his role as a citizen so earnestly."

"Again, I was inspired. I had spent so many years focusing on being a catalyst for change within the profession. I realized it was time to expand my efforts."

She focused on city government and on becoming a voice for those who had none. Her efforts earned her the support of many in the community...and victory in a recent election to a seat on the city council. "My approach has been labeled naïve by some of the old guard, but I still believe the council can be a force in creating massive changes for the better in our city."

The final entry on her daily calendar was one of her favored moments, a tradition born of her apprenticeship with her mentor a quarter century earlier. Once each month, sometimes more, she visited a school, usually in a neighborhood much like hers, and shared her passion with them.

She told them the story of her life--the good, the bad, the triumph and the heartbreak-- and shared with them the visions of what she hoped would come to pass. She became an impassioned evangelist for the beauty of architecture at its apex.

"I just hope I can ignite a flame in a few of them like the one a passionate architect lit in me so many years ago..."

It’s Monday morning and I walk through my office, sipping my cup of ambition, the ceremonious ritual of starting a new week. I see earphones on a blonde head above the monitor, bobbing to the beats. His nimble fingers are pounding another hip rhythm on the keyboard. The steady clicking of AutoCAD commands, a beautiful and gentle sound perfected and tuned over time, but he’s almost gone. Next Monday morning that keyboard will be silent.

I always feel this way when they find their calling and move on. I know their stay with me is only temporary, but he is moving on to a bigger and better life, going to work for the firm that he knows by heart because he has been doing their drafting for two years. He will walk into that big shiny office downtown with his new jacket and tie and begin to manage the projects that he started here under my instruction.

Such is my mission: to provide a halfway house for young architectural graduates, a first step in the direction of learning and licensure, today commonly called a teaching firm. In my younger days, this was called a "sweatshop", a practice instituted by my parents’ generation of architects, which consisted mainly of minimum wage drafting work in a physically and emotionally unhealthy environment. Over time this "trial by fire" method has failed to meet the financial and organizational needs of the architectural community because it discourages interns and turns them away from pursuing architectural careers. Today many firms are looking overseas for the answer to their "talent shortage" caused by the recent exodus, but together the "kids" and I are looking to fill the void. Teaching firms, such as ours, are not a re-definition of architectural practice, but instead a support group to a broader, evolving practice. Here in the global economy, architects are no longer immune to the economic pressures of cost management and quality control. In order to compete economically, architecture firms must leverage technology to increase productivity by identifying and eliminating all non-value adding activities. Herein lies the greatest vice of our industry; the reason for our self-imposed decline in emerging talent. Training and mentorship, traditionally performed in an architectural practice, is defined by accounting and financial professionals as a "non-value adding activity". As this activity is non-value adding, the cost of it cannot be passed onto the client and the firm must sacrifice profit margins to continue hiring and training interns. The most cost efficient option for firms today has been to cut the expense of training and mentoring and use internet/satellite technology to outsource all intern-level work to foreign firms. As firm principals turn away from foreign drafting firms and award contracts to us, they are relieved of the social stigma that comes from outsourcing work. Deep down they all know that they have a responsibility to mentor, but mistakenly assume that there is another firm out there who has enough disposable cash to take care of it.

Design architecture has followed suit closely behind the Information Technology industry, looking for cheap labor overseas to complete repetitive computer related tasks, usually consisting of design development drafting and construction documents. With the current NCARB requirements, an architectural intern must complete a minimum of 135, 8-hour days to satisfy IDP requirements for Construction Documents and 40, 8-hour days of Design Development. If there are no jobs available to address these requirements under a licensed American architect, then there will be no more replacements trained. Consequently, as a collective profession, we begin a vicious downward cycle that only a rational economic solution can break.

The question we have answered, as teaching firm, is how to break this perpetuous cycle and make the training of architectural interns a financially viable and sustainable business practice. Through our experience we have relied on the following business model:

- Use Geographic Location and Cost of Living Index to Competitively Place Our Firm and Establish Clientele. As a teaching firm we seek to form relationships with established architectural and development firms in high-growth, high inflation areas of the country that have severe talent shortages and a need for inexpensive, high-quality architectural services. We look to take surplus drafting work from Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Orange County, which will pay us anywhere from $24 to $50 for hourly drafting services. In these cities we could not survive on this billing rate, but here in San Antonio, Birmingham, and Tulsa, our rates exceed the cost of living index and provide us with financial stability.

- Build and Perfect Training Manuals, Exercises, and Resources. From our experience, we have developed an immersive system to rapidly train new interns. We have tabbed code books, graphic illustrations of details, checklists for sheets, and quality control procedures for every aspect of the project. We break tasks down into small, manageable parts that can be explained within twenty minutes, completed within a few hours and then verified for quality control and performance feedback. On their first day, employees are performing small billable tasks such as in-house redlines or interior elevations. By their first month they will be able to move between several tasks including noting and dimensioning and elevation drafting. By their six month mark, they will be able to challenge the validity of the system that trained them. As they learn, I gather continuous feedback from them to perfect the training process. For their Office IDP credit, they evaluate and re-write their training materials and then use these to mentor and train junior employees under them. The quicker that employees can be productively billable, the higher profit margin that we are able to realize as a firm. To us its not about charging the highest fees, it is about building a solid, continuously learning, and readily adaptable drafting "force" that can quickly divide and conquer projects. Our quickness and adaptability is our niche and as a result of this, we shorten our client’s deadlines and revision costs.

- Commitment to Innovation and Technology. Through training and "cheat sheets" we keep track of and implement all changes in AutoCAD and BIM technology platforms. Since we contract services for many different types of architecture firms, we are inundated with settings and styles. A crucial part of our training is to deeply understand the limits of the AutoCAD and AutoDesk platforms in order to match our client’s drafting styles, improve drawing transmission, and fix technical errors. Simply knowing how and what to draw is not the end of our training. Each person is encouraged to embrace the technology and become a CAD manager and developer and get involved with the creation of office menus, scripts, VB, Lisp, or other plugins. The intent is not to create professional drafters, but instead to create well-rounded individuals that can confidently solve problems as project managers and creatively streamline production processes.

- Tailor Experience Toward Completion of IDP. Everything we do paid and unpaid is geared towards obtaining IDP credit. As the firm principal, I organize optional Friday afternoon site visits to see local construction for Construction Observation credit. Sales representatives are invited to present various types of materials that are applicable to our projects and then we use the time for Materials Research credit. We also have a cooperative agreement with a small structural engineering firm and one intern at a time is "leased" to the engineering office for redlines and Engineering Coordination credit. We use our imaginations to stretch every minute we have into preparation for the license exams.

- Provide Superior Study Materials and Support for Concurrent ARE. A prerequisite for employment at our firm is a commitment to take the ARE exam, through either IDP preparation or taking the exams concurrently with IDP as the system is amended by NCARB. Our firm has purchased full sets of the most popular test preparation systems and employees can borrow them for free to study for exams. Exam fees are reimbursable and time is given off for testing. Within the office we host study groups, mock tests, and quiz sessions and every effort is made to encourage interns to take as many tests as possible. For us there is safety and strength in numbers and we are able to pull each other through the pain of studying to be able to take the tests.

- Job Placement. In order to prepare all interns for relocation to design or project management jobs, they are given the opportunity to prepare a portfolio of work completed. The hardest part of finding a job in an established architecture firm is proving that you have done and can do construction documents. Many firms that hire us agree to allow voided versions of their documents to be used by our employees in future interviews. By removing the logos/names/dates and other sensitive information and writing VOID over the drawing, employees are able to exhibit their accomplishments when they interview for management positions elsewhere. What we do here in our firm isn’t rocket science. No plumbing details or interior elevations ever are, especially of a Taco Bell. But to us, Taco Bell isn’t just a Friday lunch. It’s the 30 hours of construction documents that someone needed for IDP. What might be one firm’s trash work is a treasure to us because it means training and hours for licensure.

Why is "Taco Bell" training so important to us as a teaching firm? Much like a dancer practices repeatedly to the same music to become fluid in the steps, we train with Taco Bells. Each Taco Bell is similar in size and scope, yet different as it is placed into different parts of the urban fabric. Our client, a design architect who represents Taco Bell in large scale developments, has found it cost effective to contract the design development and construction documents of every new restaurant to us. "Taco Bell" training involves rapid cycle repetition and analysis of a well-defined building type. It only takes a couple "Bells" for an intern to become graceful at production. Once they master "the Bell" they move on to more complex repetitive exercises including production housing and apartments. As their confidence and problem solving skills mature, interns will progress to the construction of highly variable projects such as custom homes and themed shopping centers.

Even more important is the question we are often asked. Why does the "Taco Bell" cycle work? The answer is simple: it is fully self-sustaining. New interns come straight from design education to this firm to bridge the gap. Through regimental and guided training, we bring them quickly to billable status and then shortly thereafter to profit-producing status. When in "profit" status, they have reaped the full benefit of the teaching firm and they are ready to move on and find a management or design level job. Upon entering the market, they find that their market value is higher than that of their non-trained peers because their experience is quantitatively verified. Outside firms recognize and value the level of training from our teaching firm and actively recruit new talent from us as well as award contract work back to us. The more we contract, the more we train, and training moves interns forward in their careers. The resulting vacancies restart the cycle which will begin again for me next week.

Now on my last sip of coffee, I return to my desk. On my chair is the worn out box of General Structures cards. Those cards aren’t just a lucky charm for the person who passed their test yesterday. They are a part of everyday life here in this office, as is the blood, sweat, and tears from the transition process of school studio to professional office. In my e-mail I find a message from a firm looking to hire one of my employees and another to start work on a new Taco Bell. So the cycle continues. The kids will never get rich working for me, but then again, their hopes and dreams of practicing architecture are simply priceless.

The great challenge facing architects in the 21st century will be the reestablishment of a broad-based confidence in the cultural relevance of architecture. Today, most important design decisions about the built environment these days are made by developers or bureaucrats, often with no input at all from professional architects. Even where they would ostensibly exercise their most decided influence, contemporary architects in America find themselves shunted to the margins of our culture and its public life. Of the some 140 daily newspapers in America with circulations greater than 75,000, only 45 maintain a full-time architecture critic on staff. Americans evince little interest in the business of making the places where they live, work, and play. The watershed architectural and urban design decisions made in America during the last several decades tended to attract sustained, general attention only if they fell under one of a select handful of rubrics: dystopian housing project, Babelian pissing contest entry, symbolic postage stamp of "open" urban space, or decorated shed where contemporary art goes to die. Evidently, Americans do not look to architecture either to articulate or to advance their shared aspirations.

Up until the late 19th century, architects and architectural thinkers worked alongside scientists, artists, and statesmen as brokers of cultural meaning. Certainly architects were expected to know how to design sound buildings, but they were also expected to contribute to the expression and refinement of their culture's great myths and animating ideals. Architects transcended the categorization of mere craftsmen by engaging--not by debunking--their culture's essential attitudes toward beauty, love, death, and truth. It was to facilitate deep engagement with culture that Vitruvius advised architects who desired success to study rhetoric, philosophy, and music as well as stonecutting and woodworking. Historically, the most important practitioners and theoreticians of architecture have often emerged from professional backgrounds other than architecture. Anaximander was a philosopher, Suger an abbot, Alberti a humanist, Vauban a military tactician, and Hugo a novelist. Because architecture sought to address the most essential attitudes of the culture, it could justly claim relevance for any and all serious work undertaken within that culture.

History cannot teach contemporary architecture how best to remedy its cultural marginalization, because we are now living through architecture's first experience with the predicament of irrelevance. History can, however, highlight the strategies which previous practitioners and theorists used to integrate architecture and culture. Any profession, discipline, or practice can expect to enjoy cultural relevance only when its theorists and practitioners take as their central task the identification, articulation, and refinement of the best aspects of their culture. The aim in looking at history is therefore not to "recapture" something lost, but to reformulate certain of our predecessors' habits and attitudes into a grounded vision of future practice. Of these strategies, three will be paramount. (1) Eloquence: architects will reacquire fluency in the art of communication. (2) Wisdom: architects will cultivate a more fully integrated understanding of the world. (3) Public spirit: architects will align their professional ambitions to coincide with the shared aspirations of the culture at large.

Eloquence

No one understands what architects are saying these days. Contemporary architects tend to speak either "specifese" (the jargon of architectural specifications, codes, and products) or "archibabble" (pseudo-philosophical nonsense). These two dialects reflect the two-sided insularity of contemporary architectural practice.

Specifese undermines architects' ability to make use of the talents of those who participate in the construction of buildings. It exists because contemporary architects accept no gaps in the process by which an idea becomes a building. Architectural practice today is thought to be at its best when it minimizes the difference between the architect's idea and the end product. To this end, architectural practice employs a meticulous, systematic specification of detail in order to achieve a seamless transition from paper napkin to blueprint to bricks and mortar. In fact, such infinitesimal micro-management simply denies the reality of translation. Clients, contractors, and interns all interpret the documents they receive from the architect. In an attempt to preserve the integrity of the idea as they understand it, they use their native intelligence to interpolate appropriate assumptions, apply general rules to specific situations, and resolve contradictions. As a slogan, "one architect, one design, one building" isn't only hubristic, it's mendacious.

Future architects, instead of fighting a losing battle against the necessity of interpretation with ever more absurd levels of specificity, will inculcate in themselves and their successors the ability to inspire consultants, workmen, and interns to their best efforts. In the 21st century, the greatness of an architect will find its measure not in her facility with computers, the novelty of the images she produces, or the exactitude of the work she extracts from her subordinates, but in her success as a recruiter and leader of talented teams. Architects will focus on facilitating translation between team members because they expect a project to change, and to change radically, on its path from concept to concrete. In a word, they will expect their projects to improve as they pass from hand to hand. In school, architectural students will eschew the esoteric nuances of space, form, and CAD in favor of mastering the varied idioms of developers, contractors, regulators, and lenders. Temperamentally, therefore, successful 21st century architects will be closer to statesmen than lone heroes. Technically, they will be closer to linguists than to engineers. Architects will regain the authority to make and enforce real design decisions because they will have become the polyglot hubs of the design-build processes they manage.

Archibabble erodes architects' ability to speak intelligibly to those who use and appreciate architecture. It exists because architects still feel bound to link their work to the concerns of the culture, and they turn to the discipline of philosophy for a framework to help them do so. Contemporary philosophy, however, suffers from a marginalization even more radical than that of contemporary architecture. As a discipline, philosophy has been professionalized--it is practiced primarily by and for people who do nothing else--and so it has unfastened itself from the concerns of the culture at large. As with architects, no one understands what philosophers are saying these days. 21st century architects will therefore take their intellectual cues from their wisest predecessors and their best clients. When citing an authority, future practitioners will more likely reference a historically important architect (such as Étienne-Louis Boullée) or a visionary developer (such as Richard Baron) than the latest-big-thing cultural critic. In coming to depend on their own history and their closest allies as sources for inspiration, 21st century architects will return to the power of everyday speech. Not only will they understand the crucial role that architecture plays in our culture, they will make a practice of explaining that role to others in everyday language.

Wisdom

As a group, architects possess an astonishingly impoverished understanding of the world--an issue which has nothing to do with ignorance as such. This poverty expresses itself most intensely and tragically in the opinions of architecture students. In general, architecture students seem to suffer from more or less the same deficiencies in their factual knowledge of the world as other professional students. It's the discipline-specific pattern into which they arrange what they do know that is so disturbing--that and the fact that they credit their general outlook without caveat to their education. Contemporary architectural education evidently teaches a tripartite division of both the world and humanity.

Today's architecture students speak as though each worldly thing fell into one of three categories: site, tool, or product. Unsurprisingly, these three categories comprise a simplified conceptual topography of the design-build process. In learning these categories architecture students are simply learning to see the world as designers and builders. But the rhetoric employed by previous generations of architects suggests that there's a great deal more to architecture than sites, tools, and products. If the way architecture students are taught to handle these categories is any guide, then sites consist mainly in digital photographs and statistics, tools in software and modeling materials, and products in engineering constants and advertisements. On closer examination, each category can be seen as a conceptually reduced technical term for what was historically a profound idea. Site represents a reduction of place, tool a reduction of technique, and product a reduction of material.

As ideas, place, technique, and material do not belong solely to the discipline of architecture. They are central to architecture, yet nevertheless remain open to input and interpretation from other disciplines, professions, and modes of knowing. Religion, science, and politics all claim place, technique, and material as foundational concepts. Systemically speaking, it is the fact that such fundamental concepts underlie multiple disciplines that constitutes the basis of a culture's richness. Today's architects avail themselves only meagerly of their culture's richness because they base their understanding of the world on such reductive concepts. In speaking and thinking about architecture, 21st century architects will prefer to ground their reasoning in the big ideas which comprise the heart of culture. Instead of jealously guarding their intellectual turf, they will eagerly cede complete control of their own discipline in exchange for a voice in the destiny of the culture at large. Architecture students will learn and debate the history of their vocation's cornerstone ideas, and how those ideas extend their branches throughout culture: how the concept of place relates architecture to jurisprudence, how technique relates architecture and science, how material relates architecture and religion. Hungry for wisdom, they will train as generalists.

Architecture students also speak as though there were only three kinds of persons: clients, competitors, and "those who do not understand." Proficiency in identifying clients and competitors ranks as a vital business competency, so it's only wise to encourage students to practice. It's that third category, encompassing the remainder of humanity, which poses a problem. In the minds of architecture students, even many of architecture's putative allies qualify as "those who do not understand." Contractors and developers head the list, but government regulators, architecture critics, and neighborhood activists also count. The category undermines architecture's relevance because it insists on the fatal identity between dissent, stupidity, and apathy: those who disagree evidently do not understand, and they don't understand because they don't care enough to listen. Today's architecture students drink deeply from a well of resentment, defensiveness, and knee-jerk hostility.

Beyond the platitude that the average person is far more complicated than his résumé might suggest, architecture results from intricately organized cooperative processes. Many persons, from a diversity of professional backgrounds and claiming a multitude of motivations, contribute to a building's metamorphosis from abstract notion to concrete object. Future architects will make the most of architecture's collaborative nature. Architects will formally and aggressively seek feedback from contractors, developers, and other allied fields, treating that feedback as the valuable source of potential insight that it is. Instead of habitually assuming a defensive posture, future architects will, like Socrates, assume their own ignorance. They will borrow ideas from other professions and from their own history; they will strategically disseminate their own hard won wisdom among other fields; and they will reject their own status as experts. Clients will hire architects not because architects already know the answers, but because architects have a knack for asking the right questions. Architects will harness the complexity of their work to cultivate the wisdom that sees patterns in apparent chaos. Architecture in the 21st century will possess relevance for culture because architects--who will see patterns so well and so wisely--will see it that way.

Public spirit

Most contemporary architects seem to aspire either to become a "starchitect" or to "change the world." Because the cult of celebrity poisons the public realm with its autistic inability to distinguish between the crucial and the trivial, the dream of becoming a starchitect cannot coexist in earnest with the dream of a vibrant, culturally relevant architecture. The cult of starchitecture wastes the potential of architecture in its puerile fantasy of fame and fortune. The dream of "changing the world" is more insidious because at first glance it appears altruistic. Wanting to change the world, however, is also a self-aggrandizing fantasy in that it arrogates to the would-be world-changer the status of savior, while denying the world the power to heal itself. All in all, today's architects dream only little dreams.

For the discipline of architecture, great dreams have always coincided with public spirit. Such dreams make of great architectural works the talismans of an epoch and of great architects the soothsayers of a whole people. The current movements in green design, affordable housing, and universal design point in the right direction, but they are insufficient in themselves. Beyond energy efficiency, social justice, and simple compassion, architecture must come to grips with the culture it participates, and it must express that culture's great myths and animating ideals. 21st century architectural practice will pursue its ambitious agenda by cultivating an intense curiosity about the public it serves. It will launch journals which survey everyday building users about their experience and opinions. It will publish beautifully composed, glossy photographs of people using buildings. It will invite, evaluate, and reflect upon narratives which grapple with the meaning of architecture from a human point of view. And it will worry incessantly at the ethical issues associated with public service (e.g., who counts as the public in a given situation, and how private interests interface with public goods). At bottom, the great question facing architects as they enter the 21st century is whether their dreams are adequate to their heritage, their responsibility, and their calling. For architecture in the 21st century, the price of cultural relevance, of a chance to live the great dream, is that little dreams be surrendered at the door.

The practice of architecture is as dependent on the economy as it is on architectural trends and styles. The changes that take place in the architectural practice of the 21st century will undoubtedly be influenced by what experts believe will be the next evolution of our economic model, the "experience economy". Under the 21st century "experience economy", the city will become an assemblage of temporary structures sited and designed with the goal of differentiation, constantly shifting and relocating in the clients' search for new, unique experiences. These structures will be more dependent on the cultural idiosyncrasies of the client than ever before, becoming obsolete the instant a lease expires or property changes hands. When this inevitably occurs, the structure is cleared away, its site undergoing another identity change to accommodate the next structure, the next client, and the next unique experience.

In the "experience economy", the architect is hired to provide the client with a place that allows a one-of-a-kind experience for their customers, employees, or residents. The unique experience itself will become as relevant a tool for increased profit as any other service, good, or commodity the client provides. In his book "The Experience Economy", B. Joseph Pine argues, "Experiences are as unique from service as services are from goods." He defines a unique experience by stating that "when (a person) buys an experience, he pays to spend time enjoying a series of memorable events..." In the experience economy, the role of the architect will broaden to include the design and construction of events as much as the design and construction of places.

The mission statement of the architectural practice in the 21st century experience economy is to become cultural consultants, hired to analyze the cultural uniqueness of a client, and create a place that facilitates the translation of this uniqueness into memorable events. James P. Cramer of Design Intelligence explains: "Each individuals experience in a building, space, or environment includes an emotional reaction. It's the experience that counts, not the building." In the world of cultural consulting, the program could be as varied as a church, a riot, or a first date. The site could be a freeway, forest, or castle.

This vast range of potential work requires the cultural consulting practice to embody an unprecedented adaptability and versatility. To this end, a successful cultural consulting practice will differ from a traditional architectural practice in three distinct ways. First, in order to have the ability to explore design solutions differing in scale and methodology, the practice will employ an interdisciplinary staff with a diversity of design backgrounds. Second, the practice will operate as a number of mobile project teams, able to be physically dispersed around the world while staying virtually connected. Third, the practice will embrace a flexible design methodology, constantly redefining its design process as it searches for the means to design and communicate experiences more effectively.

A successful cultural consulting practice must embody an attitude of interdisciplinary cooperation. This attitude must start within the practice by building a staff with a variety of design backgrounds. Because the ideal solution to a cultural consulting project might incorporate fashion, landscape, and graphic design, the practice must have the background and expertise to confidently design within the parameters of a variety of disciplines.

One example of a project that relied on a coalescence of design disciplines is the Blur Building, designed as a pavilion for the 2002 Swiss EXPO by the multidisciplinary firm Diller, Scofidio + Renfro. Similar to cultural consulting projects, the Blur Building had no other functional requirement than to create a series of memorable events. Elizabeth Diller describes the project as, "an exhibition pavilion with nothing on display, except for our cultural dependency on vision." Sited on a lake, observation platforms suspend over the water. A steel cable structure of fog nozzles sprays a constant mist, enveloping the building and rendering it a permanent, stationary cloud. Occupants are issued a multimedia coat that is programmed to react with light and sound effects when encountering other occupants. A truly multidisciplinary endeavor, the design of this project required a comfort level with at a variety of scales and materials including a massive steel armature, computerized fog nozzles, and interactive media coats.

However comfortable the designers were with the multidisciplinary nature of the project, it is impossible to have this variety of technical expertise in-house. Understanding the physics and meteorology necessary to turn their building into a cloud, and the computer science necessary to program the suits obviously required help from a variety of fields. Diller Scofidio + Renfro clearly has extended its attitude of interdisciplinary collaboration outside of the practice to encompass a wide range of expert technical consultants. Similarly, one of the largest obstacles the cultural consulting firm will face is building the diversity of resources necessary to execute such a wide range of work.

A successful cultural consulting practice must develop a network of trusted consultants. Early in the design process, researching sites will be a priority. Historians and cartographers will help identify uniqueness and particularities in potential sites. Event planners will help organize and provide concrete functional requirements, as well as locate sites for temporary events. For long-term events, brokers and developers will become more valuable than ever. In the experience economy, new sites and new buildings fulfill the need for new experiences and resulting market differentiation. Structures will become more temporary as clients learn to take advantage of the marketing influence of new experiences. Having a developer to help filter the vast number of sites constantly available in the experience economy will be vital for a successful project.

It is equally vital to have a network of consultants available to research a client's cultural uniqueness and determine an effective way to differentiate the events taking place in the proposed environment. A thorough understanding of a client's social customs can help the project team create memorable experiences for their client or the client's customers. B. Joseph Pine writes, "to enable clients to stage a compelling experience, we must concern ourselves with...especially the social environment of everything that happens within (and without) that building." One example of a business that has recently utilized this strategy of experiential market differentiation is Starbucks. When customers walk into a Starbucks, it is equally important that they have the opportunity to engage in a unique social experience as it is that they drink good coffee. In describing the importance of this experience, James Cramer quips, "Customers aren't just paying for a cup of coffee at Starbucks--they are satisfying the soul." To effectively research the experiences that will best impact a client's business, cultural consultants must establish a network of industry experts. In the case of a corporate client like Starbucks, contacts should include industry insiders, marketers, and experts in the field. For a smaller, more private client, the cultural consultant should compile a network of trusted friends and colleagues to better understand ways to personalize the social customs of an event. Regardless of the nature of the client, a successful cultural consultant must invest time in establishing a multidisciplinary network of trusted consultants.

The second characteristic of a successful cultural consulting practice is mobility. The project team will spend a large percentage of the duration of the project in the field. Early in the project, members of the mobile project team will research both potential sites and the client's cultural background. Later, as mockups are assembled and construction is underway, it will be necessary for the team to visit fabrication facilities and construction sites. Because of the radically varied nature of the design work in a cultural consulting firm, the project team must ensure that their design intent has been communicated effectively to fabricators and contractors. Design techniques will be largely untried and experimental in nature, suited for a one-of-a-kind event or situation. As a result, one-on-one meetings and on-site review of prototypes and mockups in the field is essential for the project's success.

However dispersed the cultural consulting practice, a majority of employees must be a part of every design development meeting in order to take full advantage of the interdisciplinary nature of the staff. Although dispersed physically, the office must be connected virtually. This virtual office will be dependent on 21st century video teleconferencing capabilities. One example of a technology that is enabling virtual office advances is known as third generation technology, or 3G. Initially developed as a comprehensive cell phone service, virtual office users have widely promoted this technology because of its unique ability to wirelessly download data, and thus support video teleconferencing around the world. In 2005 in Japan, approximately 40% of cell phone users subscribed to a 3G networks. As technology like 3G becomes more standard, the virtual office will become more feasible, providing the means to connect the mobile cultural consulting practice.

Finally, a successful cultural consulting practice must foster a flexible design methodology to readily incorporate new, experientially based design tools and processes as they are developed. Traditional 20th century architectural design tools have abstracted the experience of a place by emphasizing visual stimulation over other senses. Typically, models and drawings are drastically reduced in scale, resulting in the design of sculptural places best understood when viewed from an airplane. In contrast, the tools used during the cultural consulting design process must allow the project team to better approximate the real life experience of a place. Full-scale mockups will be a commonplace design tool, used to better understand how proposed interventions will change the experience of a place.

Another tool that will aid experientially based design is virtual reality technology. A projection based virtual reality system can enable any CAD 3D model to be viewed and navigated three dimensionally. When coupled with surround sound and 3D glasses, the project team will be able to create a faithful recreation of an experience. While projection-based VR systems have been traditionally cost-prohibitive, efforts are underway at a variety of research facilities to develop lower-cost, general-purpose systems. A team at Pennsylvania State University has developed a modular, user-friendly system through the integration of affordable and readily available hardware components, and a mixture of inexpensive software. In their article "The VR-Desktop: An Accessible Approach to Teaching and Research", team members write that, "Students are able to do their work within a familiar computing environment and applications workflow, and to augment that workflow with the VR experience, thus facilitating understanding of...the experiential ramifications of their proposed designs." In the 21st century, successful cultural consulting firms will embody a flexible design methodology, enabling them to adapt and fully take advantage of new experientially based design technologies and processes as they become available.

The mission statement for the architectural practice in the 21st century "experience economy" is to become cultural consultants, hired to design and facilitate memorable events. Working at a scale more intimate than that of the city, the building, or even the interior, cultural consulting allows the profession of architecture to touch people's lives more directly than ever before. In the 21st century, architectural design will grow to become an all-encompassing term, describing for the first time not only the design of places and objects, but the design of personal experiences as well.

REFERENCES

"3G." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 15 May 2006, 15:03 UTC. 17 May 2006, 13:17 .

Cramer, James P. "The 15 New Directions for 2006". Design Intelligence. February 10, 2006. Volume 12, Number 1.

Diller, Elizabeth and Ricardo Scofidio. Blur: The Making of Nothing. New York: Abrams, 2002.

Otto G.; Kalisperis L.N.; Gundrum J.; Muramoto K.; Burris G.; Masters R.; Slobounov E.; Heilman J.; Agarwala V. "The VR-Desktop: an Accessible Approach to VR Environments in Teaching and Research" International Journal of Architectural Computing, 1 June 2003, vol. 1, iss. 2, pp. 233-246(14)

Pine, B. Joseph. "Architecture in the Experience Economy". Design Intelligence. February 10, 2006. Volume 12, Number 1.

Pine, B. Joseph and James H. Gilmore. The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre and Every Business a Stage. New York: Harvard Business School Press, 1999.