Welcome back to what is starting as a busy and hopefully prosperous new year for our industry. We continue to see great interest in planning reform and the role of design, we anticipate a future with mandatory CPD for architects in South Australia, and the Institute is now well settled in our new home in Leigh Street and rolling out another full year of events and engagement.

For me the year is starting to fill again and I’m slowly letting go of my beachside break. As I ease myself back in, I’ve read a number of interesting articles which have caused me to consider the very core of what we as architects do, and for whom we do it.

One article by Barbara Bryson contemplated our future as architects and the potential for extinction or irrelevance as we allow ourselves to be increasingly less engaged with the whole process of delivering architecture. It challenged us that we encourage and foster this increasing introspection through archi-speak which does not connect or resonate with those who are actually our clients and end users, and that we broadly lack the research or data to demonstrate to them why we offer value. It proposed that our risk aversion in practice sees us abdicating more and more responsibility, and I personally add to this that if we observe our counterparts in the construction industry we will see that risk is in fact power, and they are increasingly willing to adopt design responsibility and control.

This article highlights to me the singular question that I have heard asked my entire career – what is the value of good design? And how do we as a profession communicate that simply and convincingly to everybody else?

The other articles I read included many discussions about hostile architecture which in a curious way aligned in my mind with thinking about the value of design and the benefit to our client.

 Hostile architecture is architecture which through deliberate design techniques discourages or prevents use in ways which are not desired. Benches with arm rests or angles so that homeless cannot use them to sleep, alcoves with spikes on the ground for the same reason, sitting areas which are uncovered or uncomfortable to prevent long term occupation and window ledges which are significantly angled so as to be unable to alight. 

The really interesting thing to me, is that these design solutions show simply and empirically that design can achieve immediate, tangible impact. They are solutions with completely quantifiable outcomes where our ‘good design’ has prevented a homeless person respite and fully achieved our client goal of a nice clean and empty alcove.

And I know that you all feel a little uncomfortable about calling that good design.

This debate highlights where we sit between society, community and client. Good architecture of course is inclusive, supportive and contextual and not just for one client. This debate highlights the inexorable disconnect between the public and private realm and the challenges to design positive outcomes for different stakeholders with perceived competing interests.

I think that hostile architecture actually provides us a very powerful conversation piece. We can demonstrate the power of design to achieve outcomes, but then have a conversation about the value of the outcomes we seek to achieve.

We can demonstrate in a tangible way that design can indeed completely prevent people gathering to eat their lunch and therefore leave their wrappers….but we can then have a conversation about whether “good design” may actually support people, and provide a bin instead of spikes.

Since we seem to find it so hard to elucidate “good design” maybe it would be easier to start the discussion with “bad design” and then find the better answers.

Perhaps we could start, drive and finish the conversation and then deliver the solution. We could accept full responsibility for it from start to finish, tell the whole story and tell it in plain English.

Mario Dreosti
SA Chapter President