Architects in the development process : emerging professional roles

Abstract

A conservative estimate based on 1975 building construction figures, including residential, office,commercial and factory construction, ascribed two thirds of all building to real estate developers. Yet in their traditional roles as private practitioners, architects have to a great extent been pushed aside or left out of development projects. An inflationary economy has welcomed competition from related businesses such as the "package dealers" who can give guarantees of project cost and delivery time. When involved in development projects, architects have often exercised limited design control, largely due to their late arrival or exclusion from major portions of the decision making process. Recently, many architects have begun to see that to change this pattern, they must broaden the scope of their knowledge, and that by assuming an entrepreneurial role in development projects, they can begin to achieve greater decision making capability and design control within the development process. This thesis first looks at why new roles are emerging within the architectural profession relating to development work, and then looks at new ways in which architects are working with developers. The traditional way of working, utilizing a standard owner-architect agreement, is compared with recent variations to it, which include providing partial architectural services, taking an equity position in a project, participating in a design/build arrangement, and assuming direct responsibility as developer. Three case studies are presented, representing three of these different architect-developer arrangements, which focus on the issues of design control and design process as a function of the professional relationship which the architect assumed in each project. A number of factors were found to contribute to the architect's control over the design and the design process, some or all of which may be applied to, or are intrinsic to, each of the various ways of working. The research concludes with a discussion of the implications for future practice, a description of some of the new roles for architects which have emerged as a result of new ways of working with developers, and addresses the role of education in training architects for development work.