We’ve taught generations of architects to speak out as artists, but we haven’t taught them how to listen.

This is a line from a recent New York Times op-ed that has been making the rounds online today called: How to Rebuild Architecture. 

The premise of the article is that architects have marginalized themselves by being pompous elitists who increasingly serve only the rich and don’t respond to public opinion about architecture.

For too long, our profession has flatly dismissed the general public’s take on our work, even as we talk about making that work more relevant with worthy ideas like sustainability, smart growth and “resilience planning.”

The author’s recommendation is that architects need to get better at listening to their clients and listening to the public. 

Reconnecting architecture with its users — rediscovering the radical middle, where we meet, listen and truly collaborate with the public, speak a common language and still advance the art of architecture — is long overdue. It’s also one of the great design challenges of our time.

What’s interesting about this viewpoint is that it’s precisely the sort of thing that entrepreneurs and business people are trained to do today. The mantra is that you should never build your product or service in isolation. Get out of the building. Talk to customers. Get feedback. Adjust. And iterate.

But architects don’t like to do this. Why is that?

The answer, at least partially, comes down to taste. As the author correctly pointed out, the kinds of buildings that architects like are often not the same ones that the general public likes.

I don’t have any hard data to support this claim, but I suspect that most people out there – particularly those with money – would prefer their home to look like something that Robert Stern designed as opposed to a glass box designed by Philip Johnson.

And yet the latter is what architects and architecture students make pilgrimages to. I certainly did when I was in architecture school. 

In fact, I think you’d have a difficult time getting into any architecture school right now with a portfolio of work as traditional as the work of Robert Stern. It’s simply not part of the architectural discourse at this stage.

So to many architects, it can be difficult – even painful – to listen to what the public wants. Architects are not trained in terms of market size and profit maximization. It’s about passion. It’s a labor of love. And when you’ve already fallen in love, it can be hard to change your mind.

Image: Flickr

Right now, I’m sitting on the sun deck at my friend’s cottage and looking out at the Georgian Bay. So this is going to be a short post. The New York Times just published a stunning photo series of hidden rooftop pools and gardens in New York. All of the photos were taken from a helicopter. If you’re as fascinated by cities as I am, I think you’ll really like them.

The New York Times published an interesting and popular article last Friday called The Post-Post-Apocalyptic Detroit. It of course talks all about the efforts of billionaire Dan Gilbert, but it also talks about the initiatives of many small and local entrepreneurs who are doing their part to help revive the city – while at the same time making a profit.

One thing that I found interesting about the article is the extent to which the private sector has taken over the responsibilities of the public sector. With only 35,000 of the city’s 88,000 streetlights actually working, the city simply doesn’t have the money to pay its bills. When I visited the city last fall, I was told that the city couldn’t even afford batteries for its parking meters. 

So the private sector has stepped up. 

In downtown, Dan Gilbert pays for his own security force to patrol the area 24 hours a day both on the ground and through 300 surveillance cameras. And in the Jefferson East corridor, John Stroh III – of the Stroh Brewery Company – is paying for 3,500 hours of private security in order to help transform the area into a walkable retail strip.

It’s a model that relies on the funding and vision of rich people to catalyze change. And it strikes me as a quintessentially American way of going about it. In Canada, I’m not so sure it would be approached in quite the same way, which I think is both good and bad. I think in Canada there would be more government involvement.

If the rich people are there and willing to step up (like they are right now in Detroit), then I would assume the capital would be deployed more efficiently and that change would happen more quickly. But if the rich people aren’t willing to step up, then nothing happens and the place declines.

That might be an oversimplification, but I think there are differences.

To end, I’m going to leave you with this Bloomberg video about Steve Case’s (former AOL founder) “Rise of the Rest” road trip to Detroit. If you can’t see the video below, click here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RUG0H4VThM?rel=0]