Stemming the rot
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Sabu Francis
Jul 27, 2007, 1:25:31 PM7/27/07
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Warning: Long email!
The general feedback on my last email rant was that as an individual, ( a person called "I", the one we all look in the mirror) cannot and therefore does not do anything. Maybe our hands are tied as individuals, but if each of us contributed something positive then a collective, focused action could be started. I am listing out what I have gleaned from my personal experiences. I have tried a few of these with varying degrees of success. And a few others, I wish I had the opportunity to try. I hope others would also contribute to this thread and we can have something to work on. If I happen to use words such as "I did this..." please don't get diverted. One can easily subsitute "You also must have done this ..." wherever they occur. And I am sure there are quite some people who have done much more.
Early Education
Let us all go back to what India was good at. The Gurukul method of teaching was and is very apt for us. Those of us who have kids of our own should make it a point to tell teachers; even at the school levels, to connect various subjects holistically, rather than keep them separated. All those attitudes stick to the child later on when they are clamouring for a good career. Today, the entire world is looking at the capability of "synthesis" that India was good at. But we ourselves are forgetting it.
The need for synthesis is evident everywhere if we look carefully. The "Web 2.0" version of the Internet is based centrally on joining erstwhile disparate components so that they make sense. The concept of "tagging" that is popular on the web nowadays; is basically an Indian invention long time back even before the Internet came into existence. It was presaged by the Indian librarian, S. Ranganathan (I had started the article on Wikipedia about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._R._Ranganathan a few years back. It is currently maintained by the Tamil Work Group at Wikipedia) who invented the "colon classification". It is sad that foreigners hold Ranganathan in high esteem, but many of us don't even know about this gentleman http://scout.wisc.edu/Projects/PastProjects/toolkit/enduser/archive/1998/euc-9803.html (Was Ranganathan a Yahoo!?) I had written another article in a popular magazine explaining historically why the last century has seen a movement from analytical ("divide and conquer") approach to a synthesis based approach in problem solving. See here: http://www.sabufrancis.com/articles/zero.html (Waiting at Zero)
Unfortunately, trying to grapple with multiple aspects of a problem holistically requires some mental callisthenics ... so the child must be trained as early as possible.
Attitudes towards success
John Lennon had written "Life is what happens to you when you are busy making another plan". I feel that most often the biography of any successful person may not sufficiently highlight the issues the person had to handle prior to becoming successful. People always find what they are searching for at the last place where we look... of course they will ... why should they continue looking once they have found it? But that does not mean prior to the finding, the person hadn't looked at multiple places. Unfortunately parents and adolescents are caught so much in the turmoil artificially created by their peer group (yes, even the parent's peer group). They hurriedly pre-conclude that some xyz course is very good and push the adolescent towards that professional career.
We hear of student counselling, but maybe what is more needed is parent counselling and giving them the faith that it is okay for the child to search in multiple places before narrowing down to a specific one. I would say, that of all courses, Architecture is one course which is meant for a generalist thinker and therefore really suited to the needs of a a student who is fresh out of junior college. My advices is that our counsellors MUST refer to that generalist quality of our subject. It is really an advantage for the student which not many other professional courses can offer.
We need to know (more than just know, actually) the life a doctor leads when we design a hospital. We need to get into the shoes of the station master when we design a railway station. And so on and so forth. In short; an architect (if properly trained) ought to be a holistic thinker holding many points of view at once in his/her brain. A fresh student's imagination can be sparked off in many directions when doing a course in architecture. We have the cultural setting to do it right, and so this is something that colleges and parents can easily get into.
Paradoxically; the task is also tough and if there are unrealistic expectations from the parent/society/the student herself then the growth of the student-architect becomes even tougher. When the going gets tough, they say, that the tough gets going. But sometimes in those situations the "tough" takes recourse to untested rules-of-the-thumbs, neologisms, fake philosophies, etc. Which is where it all starts going wrong.
The piquant situation in India is that architects are given licenses when they are very young. The cultural set-up of our youngsters (dependent on our parents, peer pressures, seeking quick-gratification etc.) is not really the framework to produce original, mature architectural thoughts that stand the test of time. I believe the capability to design architecture can only mature with age. We need to hold many streams of thoughts together in our mind in order to produce a worthy piece of work.... provided we agree that we need to carry out a process of architecture before the product is realized. The fact that most masters in architects are quite old when they got recognized is an empirical evidence of this. My belief (and hope) is that information technology speeds up the process a bit. But even then it may just be a bit probably. So if earlier masters were in their sixties when they produced their work, tomorrow's architects may be able to do it when they are in their fifties.
In most countries, the architects get their licenses at a much later age ... maybe even as late as their thirties. Most of them have seen other occupations too, so they get trained to weave many experiences together. In our country, our need to produce professionals quickly results in a lot of immaturity coming out of colleges. That is when good teaching can help.
Teaching
There is a lot that can be done here if there is a will in the field of education. I've taught on and off ... for over 11 years, and I have tried to empathize with what students face. As pointed in my earlier email; not having much to go by in terms of an encouraging environment, many students clutch at arbitrary methods to establish identities for themselves and their groups. There was a discussion somewhere on the Net where students were shouting that this college or that one was great. I thought that it may be better to introduce a reverse rating system which gives points to colleges for things that they have got wrong. This is what I propose:
I feel, a college would be bad if
a) the environment was not conducive for interaction with students, not just within a class, but also between juniors and seniors
b) the teachers were not well read or well prepared
c) extra curricular activities has gone to seed for some reason or the other
d) students are too "marks" focussed
e) students are stuck only inside an "architecture" college and is not interacting with non-architecture departments
f) students are not encouraged to argue
g) students themselves don't argue using logically correct argumentation methods
h) students go around asking which "thesis" topic they should select
i) students fake their training
j) there is no real time management; both among the students nor among the staff
k) the staff has not been attending any quality-improvement-programs (QIP) or teachers' workshops
I propose that if a college has managed to overcome all those points, it is a good college else it can be given negative marks for each point it satisfies. The above rating system could be vetted by alumni of colleges and then publicly announced so that the management gets their act together. Fortunately, there are some systems that are slowly coming into place. NIASA (National Institute of Advanced Studies in Architecture) at Pune holds QIPs for architecture teachers regularly. There is a band of dedicated teachers who are contributing to their efforts and we must allow such systems to take root.
Getting the thinking right
Despite the rant of my earlier email, I believe we can easily move from a "product" based thinking to a "process" based thinking. One pre-requisite is to recognize and correct fallacious thinking before it effects our work. When I was at IIT, I was fortunate to get my thinking knocked about by my colleagues (many of them non-architects) and that friction got a lot chaff out. Today, that kind of debate is possible with an even wider audience. Students can easily form "long-distance" quality peer groups by discussing with people all over the world instead of just those they know in their colleges. To help in those discussions, there are many resources that can help a student. Here are some of my favourites:
1. Students should learn to know themselves, at least their learning style; so that they can be more efficient at their learning: http://lifehacker.com/software/self-improvement/discover-your-learning-style-281076.php
I also find http://lifehacker.com quite useful for many other areas of life.
2. Fallacious thinking is one major reason for wasted time, pointless arguments. The following link explores it in detail:
http://www.healthbolt.net/2007/02/14/26-reasons-what-you-think-is-right-is-wrong/
3. As a professional, we need to indulge in critical thinking and avoid logical flaws. Here is a good starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
4. A good way to improve one's thinking is to ask good questions. And the best way is to learn from the master questioner, Socrates, himself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_questioning
and learn the Socrates Method. Many universities in the west, actually teach this method to their students.
Apart from the above, my advice to students is to cross-pollinate thoughts and ideas. Instead of restricting oneself to one's own peer group in one's college ... see how students in other streams go about their work. It would refreshing to learn that many things can and actually gets done, contrary to what others expect. Here is a link that explains how one can "Get things done" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTD
Practice
I believe as architects, we can showcase our subject in many ways: It is up to us to tell the world that being an architect brings in a lot of advantages. There is no shame in being a generalist... in fact, the disadvantages of specialists are nowadays all too well known and that is why many recognized institutions (E.g. John Hopkins, Harvard) don't really go by specific "qualifications". You will find biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and why, even architects, sitting together in conferences focusing on humanity's problems. Reflecting that trend, many important architects and engineers (Frank Gehry, HOK, Ove Arup etc.) have got significant IT divisions.
I have always maintained that the Internet is the eighth continent and the "space" there also needs to be designed. So there is no shame to be a "web" designer. I believe that if architects shy away from it, the same problem that happened in real-estate will happen in "web space". In the real estate industry, it was considered unenviable to work with ruthless builders ... architects would rather spend time designing cute "award winning" (!) farm houses and institutions. This created a vacuum in the real estate industry, and all kind of untrained and/or unethical people came to design those buildings. Anyway, that particular problem is another article (or an entire website??) by itself.
Today there are innumerable web designers who are doing a bad job. Trained architects can surely make a difference there. The moment professionals add real value to people be it on web space or in dirty "builders' space", it will be noticed ... and it will bring in respectability. And I believe a whole chain of events would follow from that point, like correcting the perception of anxious parents, etc.
In short, the scope of architecture is really wide today than ever before. Many practising architects don't realize that they are putting blinkers on their head by looking only at the bricks 'n mortar variety of architecture. With a wider scope, many of the unethical practices currently in vogue may reduce. Architects need not succumb to illiterate builder's whims and get sucked into the problems created by inane building regulation rules.
Countering bad employee/employment practices
The Internet has not only improved the scope of what is meant by architecture, but it is also providing a good method for people to interact and work. Prior to the Internet, an architects office is never sure whether a fresh recruit has come in because of "geographical reasons" (E.g. "Mom-in-law does not allow me to travel a lot" kind of excuses) instead of the need to contribute to the work done by the office. Today, an architect can recruit from almost anywhere in the world.
Time-management techniques adopted by call centers can be easily done by architects too: For e.g. If I employee some people from Boston over the Internet, then I can have my office working 24 hours a day. Of course, this would necessitate installation of some special software, good Internet bandwidth etc... Fortunately, all that is available in most cities of India. I was fortunate to get into software development and theories of representation in architecture, and my system of practice is very close to finalization ( http://tad.sabufrancis.com) Over the next few years there will be a huge change in the practice of architecture which should knock off many bad employee/employment practices.
Currently, employees often gets straitjacketed into bad practices because travel distance does not allow them to explore other opportunities. Similarly employers gets waylaid by employees because they don't have a wider choice of potential employees to pick from: Employers therefore simply try to do their best with what is available. Sometimes that is not sufficient, especially when the employees themselves are distracted with jobs of their own surreptitiously done on the side. With Internet based working, there will be many more people in the "job market" thus promoting healthy competition both among the employers as well as among the employees. I predict some really good changes in architecture happening in the near future due to this.
Competition
Competition can be healthy not just for employers and employees. It also improves the work produced by architects themselves; be it within the practice of architecture or in the development of theoretical bodies of work in the field. One of the advantages of the free market economy is to bring out the best in the market. (If it is truly free) But to organize any competition on an even playing ground is difficult. Hitherto the Internet, the market competition was sometimes twisted and turned around by those with vested interests. We have all heard of architectural competitions that are rigged. (Though to be fair, each competition and its methods must be examined on a case-to-case basis. Generalizations are not right) But rigging happens in all kinds of situations and not just in architectural competitions.
The reasons for cornering markets and driving out those who can produce quality was best explained by the 2001 Nobel prize winner in economics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Akerlof in his paper "The Market for Lemons" where he proved that in a market where there is information asymmetry between the buyer and the seller (which means the buyer does not have the same information about the market as the seller) then the market tends to drive out those who produce good quality services/goods/theories. In such markets, the system is loaded against those who produce good quality.
This happens in all kinds of markets from the "used-cars market" to the "market" where architects are "selling" their services to clients... or even in architectural research, where researchers want to develop new theories. The point to be noted is that MOST markets show some asymmetry. (That is why Akerlof got a Nobel in economics: Because it explained a lot of situations) Akerlof was not merely mouthing some vague intuition on information asymmetry. He carefully explained it and proved it mathematically. The maths is all explained here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons and it is really very simple to understand. A very elegant piece of work. The original paper was also available on the net till a couple of years back, and if you are lucky you may still find it.
Internet is one last hope for mankind to remove asymmetrical information. No longer can some influential architects sit on a conference chair and consider who may or may not participate in the event. A lot of research work is nowadays being shifted on to web-based systems to even out the balance. You have a much wider audience to explain to and get reviewed by. Sometime back, I was made to go through arbitrary hurdles for a conference in India so I simply dropped out. It didn't matter. My paper is now getting published in Europe.
It is extremely difficult; if not impossible, to be manipulated by personalities.The evidence is already there: Wikipedia; possibly the largest encyclopedia was developed cooperatively mostly by anonymous submissions. Recently I heard that articles from recognized encyclopaedias are being corrected due to submissions on Wikipedia. A few attempts to corrupt Wikipedia were successfully laid to rest. The open source movement in software design is another example of how quality improves dramatically when both the buyer (user of software) and seller (developer of the software) have access to the same information.
There used to be many "name droppers" and inventors of neologisms and fake philosophies in architecture. With time, I believe most will be weeded out when a similar movement such as that which is sweeping across software design will get into architecture. Here is one site http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/ which is attempting to open source architecture. I have started another one here: http://www.teamtad.com (Over 200 users are already using it. Currently the site is being updated for the next version. My other site http://tad.sabufrancis.com explains the theories and intentions)
I have worked closely with and for the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (http://www.ijme.in) and now they are moving onto a web-based peer reviewing system. I am hoping to use the system I'm developing for them, in a peer reviewed journal in architecture too which can also discuss ethics, along with other topics. I hope people reading this will join me in that effort. Another effort; on climatology, has been started using the wikidot system at http://climaticdesign.wikidot.com If anyone wants to participate, please send me or any of the existing participants there an email to get invited.
Architects and others
This is a redundant statement, but I need to say it: Architects and theoreticians in our field can contribute much to society. One thing is sure, we cannot expect others to respect us and actively seek our assistance if we don't lead by examples. If we don't get the working in our own "house" right; nobody will come to us to set their houses in order. At Navi Mumbai, the local centre of IIA has held events -- not necessarily all directly dealing in architecture but architects and students would surely learn from them. We've had a movie director, a financial expert, a doctor, and even architects talking at these events; trying to relate to the context of architecture. There is even more to say on how we can interact with others, but I think I've said enough for an email. I hope others will add to this and there will be a collective action.
Regards
Sabu Francis
The general feedback on my last email rant was that as an individual, ( a person called "I", the one we all look in the mirror) cannot and therefore does not do anything. Maybe our hands are tied as individuals, but if each of us contributed something positive then a collective, focused action could be started. I am listing out what I have gleaned from my personal experiences. I have tried a few of these with varying degrees of success. And a few others, I wish I had the opportunity to try. I hope others would also contribute to this thread and we can have something to work on. If I happen to use words such as "I did this..." please don't get diverted. One can easily subsitute "You also must have done this ..." wherever they occur. And I am sure there are quite some people who have done much more.
Early Education
Let us all go back to what India was good at. The Gurukul method of teaching was and is very apt for us. Those of us who have kids of our own should make it a point to tell teachers; even at the school levels, to connect various subjects holistically, rather than keep them separated. All those attitudes stick to the child later on when they are clamouring for a good career. Today, the entire world is looking at the capability of "synthesis" that India was good at. But we ourselves are forgetting it.
The need for synthesis is evident everywhere if we look carefully. The "Web 2.0" version of the Internet is based centrally on joining erstwhile disparate components so that they make sense. The concept of "tagging" that is popular on the web nowadays; is basically an Indian invention long time back even before the Internet came into existence. It was presaged by the Indian librarian, S. Ranganathan (I had started the article on Wikipedia about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._R._Ranganathan a few years back. It is currently maintained by the Tamil Work Group at Wikipedia) who invented the "colon classification". It is sad that foreigners hold Ranganathan in high esteem, but many of us don't even know about this gentleman http://scout.wisc.edu/Projects/PastProjects/toolkit/enduser/archive/1998/euc-9803.html (Was Ranganathan a Yahoo!?) I had written another article in a popular magazine explaining historically why the last century has seen a movement from analytical ("divide and conquer") approach to a synthesis based approach in problem solving. See here: http://www.sabufrancis.com/articles/zero.html (Waiting at Zero)
Unfortunately, trying to grapple with multiple aspects of a problem holistically requires some mental callisthenics ... so the child must be trained as early as possible.
Attitudes towards success
John Lennon had written "Life is what happens to you when you are busy making another plan". I feel that most often the biography of any successful person may not sufficiently highlight the issues the person had to handle prior to becoming successful. People always find what they are searching for at the last place where we look... of course they will ... why should they continue looking once they have found it? But that does not mean prior to the finding, the person hadn't looked at multiple places. Unfortunately parents and adolescents are caught so much in the turmoil artificially created by their peer group (yes, even the parent's peer group). They hurriedly pre-conclude that some xyz course is very good and push the adolescent towards that professional career.
We hear of student counselling, but maybe what is more needed is parent counselling and giving them the faith that it is okay for the child to search in multiple places before narrowing down to a specific one. I would say, that of all courses, Architecture is one course which is meant for a generalist thinker and therefore really suited to the needs of a a student who is fresh out of junior college. My advices is that our counsellors MUST refer to that generalist quality of our subject. It is really an advantage for the student which not many other professional courses can offer.
We need to know (more than just know, actually) the life a doctor leads when we design a hospital. We need to get into the shoes of the station master when we design a railway station. And so on and so forth. In short; an architect (if properly trained) ought to be a holistic thinker holding many points of view at once in his/her brain. A fresh student's imagination can be sparked off in many directions when doing a course in architecture. We have the cultural setting to do it right, and so this is something that colleges and parents can easily get into.
Paradoxically; the task is also tough and if there are unrealistic expectations from the parent/society/the student herself then the growth of the student-architect becomes even tougher. When the going gets tough, they say, that the tough gets going. But sometimes in those situations the "tough" takes recourse to untested rules-of-the-thumbs, neologisms, fake philosophies, etc. Which is where it all starts going wrong.
The piquant situation in India is that architects are given licenses when they are very young. The cultural set-up of our youngsters (dependent on our parents, peer pressures, seeking quick-gratification etc.) is not really the framework to produce original, mature architectural thoughts that stand the test of time. I believe the capability to design architecture can only mature with age. We need to hold many streams of thoughts together in our mind in order to produce a worthy piece of work.... provided we agree that we need to carry out a process of architecture before the product is realized. The fact that most masters in architects are quite old when they got recognized is an empirical evidence of this. My belief (and hope) is that information technology speeds up the process a bit. But even then it may just be a bit probably. So if earlier masters were in their sixties when they produced their work, tomorrow's architects may be able to do it when they are in their fifties.
In most countries, the architects get their licenses at a much later age ... maybe even as late as their thirties. Most of them have seen other occupations too, so they get trained to weave many experiences together. In our country, our need to produce professionals quickly results in a lot of immaturity coming out of colleges. That is when good teaching can help.
Teaching
There is a lot that can be done here if there is a will in the field of education. I've taught on and off ... for over 11 years, and I have tried to empathize with what students face. As pointed in my earlier email; not having much to go by in terms of an encouraging environment, many students clutch at arbitrary methods to establish identities for themselves and their groups. There was a discussion somewhere on the Net where students were shouting that this college or that one was great. I thought that it may be better to introduce a reverse rating system which gives points to colleges for things that they have got wrong. This is what I propose:
I feel, a college would be bad if
a) the environment was not conducive for interaction with students, not just within a class, but also between juniors and seniors
b) the teachers were not well read or well prepared
c) extra curricular activities has gone to seed for some reason or the other
d) students are too "marks" focussed
e) students are stuck only inside an "architecture" college and is not interacting with non-architecture departments
f) students are not encouraged to argue
g) students themselves don't argue using logically correct argumentation methods
h) students go around asking which "thesis" topic they should select
i) students fake their training
j) there is no real time management; both among the students nor among the staff
k) the staff has not been attending any quality-improvement-programs (QIP) or teachers' workshops
I propose that if a college has managed to overcome all those points, it is a good college else it can be given negative marks for each point it satisfies. The above rating system could be vetted by alumni of colleges and then publicly announced so that the management gets their act together. Fortunately, there are some systems that are slowly coming into place. NIASA (National Institute of Advanced Studies in Architecture) at Pune holds QIPs for architecture teachers regularly. There is a band of dedicated teachers who are contributing to their efforts and we must allow such systems to take root.
Getting the thinking right
Despite the rant of my earlier email, I believe we can easily move from a "product" based thinking to a "process" based thinking. One pre-requisite is to recognize and correct fallacious thinking before it effects our work. When I was at IIT, I was fortunate to get my thinking knocked about by my colleagues (many of them non-architects) and that friction got a lot chaff out. Today, that kind of debate is possible with an even wider audience. Students can easily form "long-distance" quality peer groups by discussing with people all over the world instead of just those they know in their colleges. To help in those discussions, there are many resources that can help a student. Here are some of my favourites:
1. Students should learn to know themselves, at least their learning style; so that they can be more efficient at their learning: http://lifehacker.com/software/self-improvement/discover-your-learning-style-281076.php
I also find http://lifehacker.com quite useful for many other areas of life.
2. Fallacious thinking is one major reason for wasted time, pointless arguments. The following link explores it in detail:
http://www.healthbolt.net/2007/02/14/26-reasons-what-you-think-is-right-is-wrong/
3. As a professional, we need to indulge in critical thinking and avoid logical flaws. Here is a good starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
4. A good way to improve one's thinking is to ask good questions. And the best way is to learn from the master questioner, Socrates, himself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_questioning
and learn the Socrates Method. Many universities in the west, actually teach this method to their students.
Apart from the above, my advice to students is to cross-pollinate thoughts and ideas. Instead of restricting oneself to one's own peer group in one's college ... see how students in other streams go about their work. It would refreshing to learn that many things can and actually gets done, contrary to what others expect. Here is a link that explains how one can "Get things done" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTD
Practice
I believe as architects, we can showcase our subject in many ways: It is up to us to tell the world that being an architect brings in a lot of advantages. There is no shame in being a generalist... in fact, the disadvantages of specialists are nowadays all too well known and that is why many recognized institutions (E.g. John Hopkins, Harvard) don't really go by specific "qualifications". You will find biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and why, even architects, sitting together in conferences focusing on humanity's problems. Reflecting that trend, many important architects and engineers (Frank Gehry, HOK, Ove Arup etc.) have got significant IT divisions.
I have always maintained that the Internet is the eighth continent and the "space" there also needs to be designed. So there is no shame to be a "web" designer. I believe that if architects shy away from it, the same problem that happened in real-estate will happen in "web space". In the real estate industry, it was considered unenviable to work with ruthless builders ... architects would rather spend time designing cute "award winning" (!) farm houses and institutions. This created a vacuum in the real estate industry, and all kind of untrained and/or unethical people came to design those buildings. Anyway, that particular problem is another article (or an entire website??) by itself.
Today there are innumerable web designers who are doing a bad job. Trained architects can surely make a difference there. The moment professionals add real value to people be it on web space or in dirty "builders' space", it will be noticed ... and it will bring in respectability. And I believe a whole chain of events would follow from that point, like correcting the perception of anxious parents, etc.
In short, the scope of architecture is really wide today than ever before. Many practising architects don't realize that they are putting blinkers on their head by looking only at the bricks 'n mortar variety of architecture. With a wider scope, many of the unethical practices currently in vogue may reduce. Architects need not succumb to illiterate builder's whims and get sucked into the problems created by inane building regulation rules.
Countering bad employee/employment practices
The Internet has not only improved the scope of what is meant by architecture, but it is also providing a good method for people to interact and work. Prior to the Internet, an architects office is never sure whether a fresh recruit has come in because of "geographical reasons" (E.g. "Mom-in-law does not allow me to travel a lot" kind of excuses) instead of the need to contribute to the work done by the office. Today, an architect can recruit from almost anywhere in the world.
Time-management techniques adopted by call centers can be easily done by architects too: For e.g. If I employee some people from Boston over the Internet, then I can have my office working 24 hours a day. Of course, this would necessitate installation of some special software, good Internet bandwidth etc... Fortunately, all that is available in most cities of India. I was fortunate to get into software development and theories of representation in architecture, and my system of practice is very close to finalization ( http://tad.sabufrancis.com) Over the next few years there will be a huge change in the practice of architecture which should knock off many bad employee/employment practices.
Currently, employees often gets straitjacketed into bad practices because travel distance does not allow them to explore other opportunities. Similarly employers gets waylaid by employees because they don't have a wider choice of potential employees to pick from: Employers therefore simply try to do their best with what is available. Sometimes that is not sufficient, especially when the employees themselves are distracted with jobs of their own surreptitiously done on the side. With Internet based working, there will be many more people in the "job market" thus promoting healthy competition both among the employers as well as among the employees. I predict some really good changes in architecture happening in the near future due to this.
Competition
Competition can be healthy not just for employers and employees. It also improves the work produced by architects themselves; be it within the practice of architecture or in the development of theoretical bodies of work in the field. One of the advantages of the free market economy is to bring out the best in the market. (If it is truly free) But to organize any competition on an even playing ground is difficult. Hitherto the Internet, the market competition was sometimes twisted and turned around by those with vested interests. We have all heard of architectural competitions that are rigged. (Though to be fair, each competition and its methods must be examined on a case-to-case basis. Generalizations are not right) But rigging happens in all kinds of situations and not just in architectural competitions.
The reasons for cornering markets and driving out those who can produce quality was best explained by the 2001 Nobel prize winner in economics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Akerlof in his paper "The Market for Lemons" where he proved that in a market where there is information asymmetry between the buyer and the seller (which means the buyer does not have the same information about the market as the seller) then the market tends to drive out those who produce good quality services/goods/theories. In such markets, the system is loaded against those who produce good quality.
This happens in all kinds of markets from the "used-cars market" to the "market" where architects are "selling" their services to clients... or even in architectural research, where researchers want to develop new theories. The point to be noted is that MOST markets show some asymmetry. (That is why Akerlof got a Nobel in economics: Because it explained a lot of situations) Akerlof was not merely mouthing some vague intuition on information asymmetry. He carefully explained it and proved it mathematically. The maths is all explained here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons and it is really very simple to understand. A very elegant piece of work. The original paper was also available on the net till a couple of years back, and if you are lucky you may still find it.
Internet is one last hope for mankind to remove asymmetrical information. No longer can some influential architects sit on a conference chair and consider who may or may not participate in the event. A lot of research work is nowadays being shifted on to web-based systems to even out the balance. You have a much wider audience to explain to and get reviewed by. Sometime back, I was made to go through arbitrary hurdles for a conference in India so I simply dropped out. It didn't matter. My paper is now getting published in Europe.
It is extremely difficult; if not impossible, to be manipulated by personalities.The evidence is already there: Wikipedia; possibly the largest encyclopedia was developed cooperatively mostly by anonymous submissions. Recently I heard that articles from recognized encyclopaedias are being corrected due to submissions on Wikipedia. A few attempts to corrupt Wikipedia were successfully laid to rest. The open source movement in software design is another example of how quality improves dramatically when both the buyer (user of software) and seller (developer of the software) have access to the same information.
There used to be many "name droppers" and inventors of neologisms and fake philosophies in architecture. With time, I believe most will be weeded out when a similar movement such as that which is sweeping across software design will get into architecture. Here is one site http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/ which is attempting to open source architecture. I have started another one here: http://www.teamtad.com (Over 200 users are already using it. Currently the site is being updated for the next version. My other site http://tad.sabufrancis.com explains the theories and intentions)
I have worked closely with and for the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (http://www.ijme.in) and now they are moving onto a web-based peer reviewing system. I am hoping to use the system I'm developing for them, in a peer reviewed journal in architecture too which can also discuss ethics, along with other topics. I hope people reading this will join me in that effort. Another effort; on climatology, has been started using the wikidot system at http://climaticdesign.wikidot.com If anyone wants to participate, please send me or any of the existing participants there an email to get invited.
Architects and others
This is a redundant statement, but I need to say it: Architects and theoreticians in our field can contribute much to society. One thing is sure, we cannot expect others to respect us and actively seek our assistance if we don't lead by examples. If we don't get the working in our own "house" right; nobody will come to us to set their houses in order. At Navi Mumbai, the local centre of IIA has held events -- not necessarily all directly dealing in architecture but architects and students would surely learn from them. We've had a movie director, a financial expert, a doctor, and even architects talking at these events; trying to relate to the context of architecture. There is even more to say on how we can interact with others, but I think I've said enough for an email. I hope others will add to this and there will be a collective action.
Regards
Sabu Francis
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