RELATIONS BETWEEN ARCHITECTURE AND MANAGEMENT

Architects are being swept along by forces they seem not to appreciate and fail to manage. The quality of people in the profession remains h igh, yet the qualities of their professional contributions are ever mo re open to question. One response is to add general management knowled ge onto the traditional core of what architects know so as to better o rganize business-as-usual. Managing to financially survive, while mark eting a variety of employee skills and keeping accounts on project cos ts is the fare of modern management. This is available in most United States MBA programs and can be readily used to top off a studio-based education. A different approach is presented herein. Instead of learni ng to manage what is known, it is here argued that which enables while unlearning that which disables. This requires something more robust t han what is found in modern management education and can be seen in th e innovative business operations of some firms in other industries. Co nsiderable potential exists to bring this into architecture. A means o utlined here comes under the title of virtual systems, as it developed from general systems theory. As an arena it is especially friendly to architectural aspirations and values. With it, innovative firms have demonstrated that the ultimate measure of success of the virtual manag er is as a manager of aesthetics phenomena. As such, a virtual manager does not in actuality exist, except for all practical purposes manage s situations that transform themselves their environments, and those w ho participate. Using this, innovative organizations have learned to m ake who they are and what they do more valuable.