The American Institute of Architects' Outreach Campaign Is Doomed to Failure

Architects are always in a precarious position. Unlike doctors and lawyers, their services are never required. (There are only a few exceptions.) If you need design services, its just as easy to hire a contractor or engineer to slap something together. Architects are an additional expense, and they have a reputation for being difficult and impractical. (Case in point: President George Washington had to fire Pierre LEnfant, the brilliant planner of the nations capital, for insubordination.)

In the past, architects overcame this challenge by demonstrating the superiority of their skills and knowledge. Their buildings were simply better. Now, however, few people believe that. The reputation of architects is at its lowest point ever. They are perceived as being problem-causers, not problem-solvers. They are purveyors of the ugly and dysfunctional, of the emotionally detached and culturally disconnected.

As I previously noted, the profession is collapsing from within as more and more insiders have been admitting the failure of contemporary architecture. The latest obituary is an essay in Architectural Review by mainstream critic Peter Buchanan, who writes, Future architects will look back at our times astounded byour confusions, gullibility and inability to exercise critical judgement [M]uch contemporary architecture is sh*t.

Likewise, Alastair Gordon, contributing editor for architecture and design attheWall Street Journalsmagazine,comments in the Miami Herald, Its hard to find much in the way of inspiration or direction from mainstream architecture these days. Indeed, the profession seems largely on the defensive, lurching towards a nervous breakdown.

With the reputation of architects in free-fall, the American Institute of Architects, the main trade organization for the profession, recently launched a three-year public relations campaign called I Look Up. According to Robert Ivy, the organizations CEO, the chief message of the campaign is Architecture has a beneficial effect to change our lives for the better. Observe its not Architects are changing our lives for the better. Is that too hard of a sell?

More broadly, Ivy said the campaign aims to Reach not just clients but a woman whos going to serve on a school board, the person who may run for public office, the developer who is right now in graduate school, and also people who pass through public spaces (i.e., everyone else).

The centerpiece of the campaign is the AIAs first ever TV spot. Ninety seconds long, it has all the trappings of a Generic Brand Video: the hipster with funky hair, contemplative scenes of nature, time-lapse photography, urgent strings and echoing piano, pretentious blather in a sonorous voice: The world is counting on us to look ahead. What the commercial does not show is a single client or a person using a building. It suggests that architects build for no one but themselves. The video is all too accurate.

As the name of the campaign suggests, the AIA believes that by encouraging people to look at buildings, they will somehow see the value of architects today. But the AIA is oblivious to the fact that the more that ordinary people consciously observe new buildings, the more they will see the bad in them. People will ask themselves, Why does that school look like an office park? Why does that courthouse look like a prison? Why is that concert hall an alien spacecraft? Why does that brand-new house look like its been damaged by a hurricane? Whats with all the boring glass box commercial buildings? Why cant I find the entrance to the building? Why is the Freedom Tower so uninspiring?

The AIAs cluelessness is further evident from the website for I Look Up. It features a video paean to the John Hancock Tower in Boston, which was designed by the world-famous architect I.M. Pei. Its hard to see how the building, completed in 1976, can be lovable since it is nothing but mirrored glass panels on a sharply angled slab. The tower is a Modernist 60-storey skyscraper slammed next to the human-scale Copley Square and historic Romanesque Trinity Church by Henry Hobson Richardson. The tower does not engage with its surroundings in any meaningful way, and it has no relation to Bostons history or urban fabric. It is a faceless, uncivil design that is as friendly as a state trooper staring at you in reflective aviator sunglasses. The former dean of MITs school of architecture called the building a monster.

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The American Institute of Architects' Outreach Campaign Is Doomed to Failure