Infrastructure and the Future
The next point is, let’s say, the prosaic. As Dean Taylor said on the previous panel, infrastructure is trendy but it’s really very boring. It requires a lot of diligence and lot of effort, so get some expertise. If you’re interested in data centers, great; get some expertise in data centers and maybe instead of studying data centers while really building single family homes, you end up working in a data center as an architect. You become known for that. So get expertise. And get into the prosaic business of the mix, which can be messy, dirty, and boring, but it can also be really profitable. I think many architects aren’t willing to do this. And then, finally, it is worthwhile to pursue the visionary. Architects have a capacity to envision alternate worlds, to envision other than our own, and there’s something really useful about that. We might at least inspire people to change… But get involved in politics, get involved in the prosaic. You probably can’t do all three, but maybe one of those is worthwhile for a specific purpose. Tom Keane I love this notion of architects as envisioning other worlds. It’s as though they are science fiction writers. Clare Lyster Yes, architects fashion the big idea. Architects are very good at proposing the big idea because they can synthesize multiple perspectives into a singular vision. That’s one role for the architect. I think the second one is in exposing or documenting or mapping—in drawing or communicating some of these new infrastructural systems. That croissant you ate this morning when you got up… If you mapped all the ingredients and where and how it was produced… I think that architects can communicate the flows of a lot of contemporary products and systems. That communicative role not only exposes them to the general public but also uses them as a way to find opportunities.
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