Attended the RIBA “Smart Practice’ conference today (taking advantage of the fact that it was held at NTU). Keynote speaker was Patrick Schumacher from Zaha Hadid’s office, who asserted that the practice couldn’t afford to operate the way it does without its links into academia. It strikes me this is the case with 2hD also – even for similar reasons: just as a very large practice may wish to engage with PhD students to undertake exploratory work with innovative technology (that can then be wheeled out in response to a competition opportunity), so might a very small one find it useful to collaborate with a School of Architecture in order to involve students in research into specific social or cultural contexts etc. One shouldn’t/doesn’t go into teaching for the attraction of the income – it’ an opportunity to gather information (at the same time as disseminating it).
I’m struck also by the observation that it’s not the strongest or most intelligent that survive – it’s the most adaptable (another advantage of being a very small practice – providing its members are constantly alert to business opportunities). The most useful insight, however, was the observation made during a panel discussing ‘seeking new opportunities abroad’ that the key is to identify partner-practices where one is working, with a sound understanding of local rules and expectations, local culture and protocols etc. The strategy needs to be the same if one is seeking ‘international commercialisation’ (in the name of business expansion) as for when larger practices want to engage in community-oriented design: the key is to collaborate with local practitioners – preferably even undertaking the project in their name (in an international context where fees are relatively low, it may be more appropriate in terms of income to use one’s own more highly respected name). If the practice is operating through a branch office, of course, it is able to charge only the local going rates.
The lesson is that habits of collaboration with partners may be regarded as a business-like (ie viable) alternative to growth in terms of practice numbers. The criteria for selecting a partner must be not their design skills or style, but their familiarity with local expectations, methods of working, and the whole context for project delivery. In the end, the most important aspect of both winning a commission and delivering it successfully is the product of an ability to ask the right questions in order really to understand the clients (including customs, culture and memories) and their brief – this is actually more important than being able to deliver (the usual, expected solutions) in accordance with a project managers’ expectations.
Included in this collaboration must be a whole set of behaviours, it was observed by Elizabeth Kavanagh – the ‘big sister’ for Stride Treglown (to whom I promised to write in conjunction with Research Project 1 – based in their Bristol office): “enabling rather than directing, asking not telling, open and inclusive not autocratic, taking responsibility not blaming”: all this is discussed in the ‘Behaviours for Collaboration’ (Bh4Coll) twitter, which therefore merits exploration. This kind of behaviour should therefore be taught in architecture schools, being even more important than knowledge and skills – associated with a focus upon relationships rather than the task (a new BS11000 is being developed in relation to teamworking standards).