We Can Be Heroes (Just for One Day)

For the last decade or so I’ve had what a dear colleague of mine might describe as a “fancy job title”. I have variously been a technical, solutions and now enterprise architect. I have this despite holding no more prowess at building design than an early aptitude for putting Lego bricks together. It’s one of those terms (engineer is another) that has been appropriated by the information technology industry. However it does hold an element of truth. When asked by normal folk what I do I answer “I design computer systems”. But an architect in IT does a bit more than this. They make sure the technology they’re designing works with the existing estate. They try to have an eye to the future and what else might be coming. And most importantly of all an IT architect works with the wider business, “the client” to borrow from the building world, to make sure they have a clear brief and what is designed answers that. Sometimes our colleagues have a germ of an idea, but can’t quite envision it. Sometimes we’ve jumped straight to an off-the-shelf solution. The architect’s job is to patiently work with these stakeholders, to manage the ambiguity and direct this bright idea towards the right technology solution.

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So back to that fancy job title. Whilst the engineer in me admires Isambard Kingdom Brunel, it's usually the architects who leave the world a better place. So let us pay due respect to the “real” architects. For an actual designer of buildings, Edwin Lutyens has legacies that live on and one notable project that might have been (the original classical plans for Liverpool’s Roman Catholic Cathedral). His contemporary, Giles Gilbert Scott, didn't live to see his own plans in that city built (a 74 year building project being - thankfully - something most of us have no experience of). But as my architecture hero I choose Ian Nairn. Not really an architect at all, but a passionate architecture critic who railed against the subtopia of poor design. Ian Nairn celebrated buildings – both ancient and modern – that fit in and integrate with their wider surroundings. Ian advocated that most important thing for buildings (and it goes for IT architectures too) – they must work for the humans that use them.