Introduction
The lack of futures thought in architecture pushed AIA (American Institute of Architects) to undertake an ambitious project called Vision 2000 (V.2000) during 1987-88. This program was created "to assess, and ultimately shape, the future of the built environment, and to serve as a catalyst for the development of effective, productive, and successful 21st Century architectural professionals"
The result was a sophisticated survey of how architects and other experts perceive the future of architecture. V.2000 defined the socio, economic, cultural, technological and professional trends most likely to shape the future of architecture organized in 5 documents. As a result, Vision 2000 brought insight and understanding to a discipline that until then did not have much to say about the future of itself, let alone the future of the American Society.
V.2000 delivers a set of social, professional, technological, economic, environmental and political trends. This creates an excellent plane of observation from which the forecasting of the future of architecture is possible.
Following is summary of what I consider to be the most important findings/issues presented by V.2000. The reader should be warned that I have done some editing and added some other information based on research conducted.
General Trends
27 trends affecting the discipline were outlined in V.2000, 14 of which were selected and studied because of their significance to architecture. Following are these 14 trends (hierarchically ranked according to their impacts on the discipline/adaptation from
V.2000/3, p.8-10)
1. urbanization of suburbia
2. renovation of built America
3. changing demographic composition (and power structure?) of America
4. Information revolution
5. America's competitiveness in global economy
6. Automation and material revolution
7. Energy challenge
8. Deterioration of the environment and response
9. Economic polarization of America
10. Increasing social diversity (growing client sophistication and new building types)
11. Concern for the indoor environment
12. Changing nature and liability of the profession
13. A national resolve: to attack the social problems
14. Demand for accountability and efficiency in government
According to V.2000 the combined impacts of these trends will significantly change American life and cause deep changes in the way architecture is practiced and thought. The impacts in the architectural field may be the following: (V.2000/2, p.19)
1) rise in competition: a wide range of professional and para-professional will arise armed with new technologies and new services
2) main task will continue to be architectural design and practice
3) restoration will be increasingly important part of practice as the Built Environment ages
4) As technology (bldg., info, materials, etc.) continues to advance, architects will have more competition and will have to perform better and add more services to attract clients.
5) Firms will tend to become more and more specialized
6) Professional services will broaden to:
-pre-design: programming, feasibility analysis, site analysis, planning and master plan design, environmental impact analysis
-post-design: post-occupancy evaluation, facility management
7) increasing complexity of design and building process will imply more pressure and opportunities to the profession in terms of becoming leaders of project management
8) As information grows and becomes more complex and unmanageable, architects will become increasingly valuable because of their problem solving and creative capacities.
9) The use of computers, knowledge-based and expert systems will change the profession and will be one of the most important capabilities to acquire. For "whoever controls or manages the flow of information between and among the members of the building team will lead the team." (V.2000/2, p.20-21)
10) Public relation skills will be increasingly more important (competition)
11) Raising need of cultural awareness of the community where architectural intervention will take place (city, town, corporation, institution, family, individual)
Future Professional Roles
The top 10 roles, functions and services that architects need to address in order to respond to 21st. Century Agenda. (V.2000/2, p.30)
Essential Conventional Roles, Functions and Services
1. Community design and planning
2. Public education and awareness
3. Public policy involvement and coordination
4. Project management and coordination
5. Architectural design
6. Continuing professional education
7. Programming and feasibility analysis
8. Research and development
9. Site selection, planning and analysis
10. Environmental impact analysis
Essential Innovative Roles, Functions and Services
1. Service/assistance to the community
2. Public leadership and advisory role
3. Support of, and participation in, building research and development
4. Support of, and participation in, material research and development
5. Advocacy of progressive design-related legislation
6. Promotion of public education/awareness, regarding design issues
7. Development of computer software and expert systems
8. Promotion of unified codes and standards
9. Development of computer modeling and visualization capabilities
10. Restoration and preservation
Future Critical Skills, Field of Knowledge & professional
The participants in the V.2000 conference believed that the following skills, field of knowledge,
and professional capacity are/will be in critical shortage in the 21st. Century (V.2000/2, p.32):
- community service through personal involvement, leadership, public design review, and
Pro-bono services
- research and development relating to architectural design
- stronger partnership between education and practice
- Improved design skills
- the ability to generate public support for architectural consensus
- support for professional development
- an understanding of diverse legal issues
- recognizing the need for specialization in selected areas of practice
- the ability to integrate new technology
- the capacity to develop and use unified codes and standards
- improved inter-professional relationships
Others areas that are already in shortage today are
- business management skills
- leadership I the political arena
- capacity to offer broader services within firm
- project management
These areas of knowledge and skills in shortage point at what needs attention in education today and in the future (Schools of Architecture, Continuing Education Programs for the professional, etc.).
Future role of Architectural Research & Education
- architects should not only learn how to use new technology but also develop it.
- Architects should play a active role in architecture's R & D (i.e. building, manufacturing of product for construction, computer software, etc.)
- Architects will face the task to develop a whole new series of building types required by the rapidly evolving society. Research in the area will be important.
- More interaction between schools, offices and AIA will be required. The information revolution increases the need for the flow of information and knowledge between people and organizations
- There will be an strengthening in the partnership between practitioner and the education community
- Schools have a critical role to perform because they prepare the professionals of the future. Education has the key role to generate and keep change within the profession, to enable profession acquire and develop the skill necessary for the 21st. Century.
Others Trends That Will Affect Architecture
(based on Bermudez's (prof. U of U) Research, 1989)
- increasing competition, demand for innovation and pressure from a user/service driven market will be a must. Immediate user feedback (Gadiner & Rothwell 1985). There will be a tendency towards small offices (Jeffrey & Hunt 1985)
- close and highly interactive - direct relationship between design, production, engineering, research and marketing (JIT and JAT) (Evans, 1985)
- Rapid movement towards information - driven design industries with high capacity of adaptation and change (Bruce, 1985). Increasing impact and use of information technology in design
- "the enterprising architect of the future will be multilingual, computer literate and offer a consumer package including market research, finding sites and funding and after sales care." (AJ 29, June 1988, p.9)
- an important segment of the architect population will be increasingly working for a more elitist world (AJ 25, May 1988, p.89)
- increasing multi-disciplinary, multi-professional cooperative efforts (with landscape architects, engineers and consultants, developers, MBAs, government officials, community leaders, environmentalists, etc.)
- increasing importance of rehabilitation and remodeling work
- decentralization of the architectural office
- increasing importance of information networks
- increasing use of new energy efficient technologies (38)
- increasing competitiveness in the market for work. Pressure for designers to examine and improve current working practice and introduce automation and state of the art technologies to improve productivity, quality control, and effectiveness (38)
- increasing importance of environmental impact in new building developments
- increasing importance of one-on-one user-designer interaction (V.2000/3)
- increasing technological orientation of construction industry. Automation and robotics in building components and manufacturing process. Trend to extend robotization to working sites (40)
- increasing demand for more and more service, skills in finance, management, marketing, public relations, development, etc. Trend to Design agency with an enabling role (consumer driven tasks) (AJ 25, May 88)
- increasing professional attention and focus towards future oriented activity (i.e. planning, master plan, feasibility studies, alternative proposals, etc.)
- changing society will change nature of the built environment
- demographic changes will change market.
- Environmental conditions will affect where, how and with what building are constructed.
- Technology changes will affect how and where people work (including architects)
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