Does the World Need Less Starchitects – and More Elite Coaches?

The profession of architecture has always thrown up names, people to be idolized, learnt from and copied. From Brunelleschi to Wren, Van der Rohe to Corbusier, Lloyd Wright to Venturi, Ando to Isozaki, and Zaha to Bjarke, the list could go on and on. More recently we have coined the term ‘starchitects’, a ubiquitous phrase that reflects our ongoing fascination with the ‘hero architect’, the great leader, the genius – that one person to which we ascribe an inspirational body of work.

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As practitioners, we follow these people, we aspire to join their teams and work alongside them, and indeed, each has contributed enormous amounts to the collective body of knowledge that makes up the architectural field. However, as is becoming abundantly clear, these are just people, talented and visionary as they may be; they make mistakes, both personal and professional. And in the current environment and time – they are almost always backed up by teams, from small to very, very large. Even the treatment of those teams has come into question recently, quite possibly because of this elevation of one name above all others.

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It may be that our hero worship, our veneration of the single personality over the collective workforce that goes into these projects and the profession, may be at the core of many problems. If we compare architectural practice to other fields of life, it doesn’t need to be that way. What’s more, we can look at new style of leadership, whereby the contribution of these luminary figures can still be recongnised, and incorporated into practice and canon, without denying the collaborative nature of the profession, without denying voice and advocacy to those at the coalface delivering concepts and projects, day after day, hour after hour, often late into the night.

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Let us look to the world of professional sport; on the surface it may seem detached, but it is highly competitive and cutthroat. It pits one professional against another and it’s big business, so maybe not so different after all. There is one big difference; in the world of sports, teams are led by coaches (or managers – another business term), but the playing, the competing, the ‘work’ if you like, is done by the team members, the players themselves. What differentiates that from the architectural model of business is that in sports, both player and manager are celebrities in their own right.

Take the recent example of my current fascination, the transformation of Tottenham Hotspur in the first quarter of this year’s English Premier League. Their manger, Ange Postecoglou, a highly successful coach (but never at this level), has transformed an underperforming team into league leaders in nine short games (and become the most successful first-time manager, within that period, in the league’s history). As a leader, the pundits have lauded his approach, the way he bonds with both players and fans (in the architectural world, staff, and clients), yet it is abundantly clear that the results on the field, by definition, had to be achieved by the team, the players – or in our case the staff. Names like James Maddison and Son Heung-Min have been widely credited for their massive contributions to the team’s success thus far. As have the less flashy positions such as their keeper Guglielmo Vicario or defenders Destiny Udogie and Cristian Romero or midfielders like Yves Bissouma – the list goes on. And that’s the difference; it’s not just Ange Postecolgou: the hero manager, it’s the team, those special players and contributors. The public know implicitly that success comes from efforts by both coach and team – it’s the fact that people attribute their winning form, not just to what we see on match day, but to everything that happens before, at training and off the field.

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Why can’t architecture offices be that way? There is no doubt that Postecoglou has proven himself a worthy and inspirational manager; that’s the bit we as architects do well. Gehry is inspirational, as is Foster, Koolhaus and so many others. However, so are their teams; the players, those practitioners who slave away serving the vision, actually delivering the goals and keeping the mistakes at bay. As mentioned, I do not believe it is the leaders themselves who are the issue, but the culture of architecture that has led to such a schism between leader and team. I, for one, strive to lead more like Postecolgou, a former elite player and no doubt still capable of doing many amazing things with a football, but these days he shares the limelight with his players. He empowers them to be the best they can be, and as a result produces some outstanding outcomes on the pitch. The modern elite sports coach (manager) is no stranger to us; they are figureheads and icons of the game, but so too are the players. They(managers) lead by inspiring their teams to get the results they know they are capable of – sometimes they even enable them to go beyond their capabilities, they develop young talent and foster ongoing excellence, and they are always looking to the future.

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It seems to me that if you want to lead an architectural company, the last thing you should aspire to be is a starchitect; that leaves you alone on the field of play, an isolated figure from both your community and your support network. Instead look to elite team sports – because that is what architecture at grand scale is – it is a team endeavor taken on by elite professionals. Leaders need to mentor and grow their teams, respect their players, develop future relationships and build resilient organizations, and finally, give some credit to the players!