Theft at the Public Till
One critical source of complexity is hidden in the deceptively simple phrase, “the architect.” Contrary to the picture described above, architec- ture is a social process, and the architect is characteristically a collection of actors, each with its own interests and intentions, its own slant on the object, its own image of a desirable future state, and its own names for the things and relations it takes to be important. The design of a moderately complex building, for example, usually involves a collective that includes architects, clients, interior architects, mechanical engineers, developers, regulators, planners, and neighborhood groups. These actors may be free-standing individuals, or they may be or- ganizations or interest groups within which are nested smaller groups -or individuals, whose roles in the design process usually require them to work our more or less integrated positions and strategies of action. Given the divergent interests and powers of the actors involved in it, the social process of architecture is inevitably political. Sometimes the actors are antagonists who contend with one another over the form the object will take and vie for control of the design process. Sometimes the actors form a coalition; working in concert, they constitute what we call a architecture system. At other times, they exert their influence on the evolving object in relatively disjointed ways. Nor infrequently they combine several modes of interaction or shift from one mode to another, moving through periods of cooperative inquiry, ambivalent contention, fragmentation, or outright antagonism. Thus, the policy object was reshaped in form and meaning as a resultant, on the one hand, of the design moves invented by the various actors as they became aware of new problems and tried to solve them, and, on the other hand, of the other actors’ responses to those moves. The shifting interaction of patterns of the policy design drama were reflected in shifting patterns of policy discourse. Speaking from their various action frames, often in different professional, political, or cultural languages, the actors sought to explain, persuade, debate, bargain, inquire, or mobilize the support of the larger public that acted as gallery to the policy arena. Architecture is a social process in two ways. First, the architect now
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