—Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society

Integration and synthesis are the core skills of a designer. Taking disparate bits of information, making trade-offs, synthesizing them into a cohesive realization: their training uniquely prepares architects for this kind of problem solving. Architectural design can be thought of as the ability to make connections—among a client’s needs and budget, a site, a palette of materials, code requirements—and to shape those connections into a tangible piece of the built environment. But no design can be realized without the ability to first communicate it to others, because building is a collaborative art.

A good design means there has been successful communication between the owner and designer. And a project that is delivered on time and budget represents successful communication between the design team and the contractor. From the client’s point of view, such successful communication forms the kernel of a successful project, even more so, one might argue, than an award-winning design, an efficient document creation phase, or a profitable year for the contractor.

Much has been written about the apparent disconnection between how architects are trained and the work they actually do. The Carnegie Foundation report Building Communities: A New Future for Architecture Education and Practice (Mitgang 1994) describes an educational setting in which students are trained in a studio system that rewards individual creative expression, then find themselves working in a profession that best succeeds when individual goals are subsumed to those of the team and the client. In recent years the profession has renounced as archaic the “lone creator” myth of architecture portrayed in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. But architects still think of themselves as visionaries, the one generalist in the entire design and construction process who is able to conceptualize the whole. Indeed, many architects are attracted to the field precisely because of the opportunities it offers for integrative problem solving.

An architect’s skill in coordinating the work of specialists required to design any modern building adds value to those projects. Her ability to communicate the clients’ requirements successfully to those who will design and build it is critical. The architect’s ability to satisfy a client’s needs is therefore directly tied to the ability to communicate effectively.

Buildings designed by architects today are rarely products of standard construction practices. As building technology advances, systems become more specialized and complex. No architect can be completely up to date about every aspect of design. Instead, the highly technical tasks of designing complex building systems falls to outside consultants.

Such fragmentation of the design process is relatively new. Until the first decade of the twentieth century, not even structural engineers were consulted in the design of typical buildings. Today a dozen or more specialists are routinely consulted, from acoustical engineers to permit expediters. As Robert Gutman noted in Architectural Practice: A Critical View (1988), even during periods when the demand for architectural services is increasing, the proportion of the total project that the architect actually designs is steadily decreasing. As the percentage of the project that the architect is qualified to design diminishes, however, the job of managing and coordinating the ever-growing number of specialists grows larger.

Every architect has handled a drawing set from an older building. How few drawings were needed back then—and the contract was a few pages at most! The older the building, it seems, the less documentation was needed to produce it. Over time, the amount of information required for building projects has steadily increased. The number of players involved in the process has also increased, and consequently the task of coordination has increased exponentially. Indeed, the American Institute of Architects, in its September 1996 “Redefinition of the Profession,” sets out a vision of the architect of the future, who will increasingly be called upon to manage complex, interwoven professional relationships and to assume a central role as the facilitator and integrator of the knowledge and disciplines needed.

Virtual teaming is a buzzword very much in vogue throughout industry, but it is nothing new in the design field. Teams of specialists that are assembled to create one project and then disbanded have been the norm for some time. Architects have long known that such project teams require an intense coordination of efforts. What is new is that such virtual teams can now be free from the constraints of physical co-location or even organizational affiliation. The Internet becomes both the source of new-found managerial complexity and the means of controlling it. It is certain that the function of coordination is more important than ever, but will that role continue to be the architect’s, or will a new kind of professional—the project information manager—be needed?