Why curating can save the architect’s profession?

The hype around starchitects is cooling down, terms like ‘style’ and ‘leadership’ are under discussion in creative environments for decades and computer generated shapes in design and architecture are getting more and more common, all while their role and impact on our society is being questioned.

Inspired by books of Hans Ulrich Obrist and concepts of how to curate art we want to know if the approach ‘to curate’ can be applied to a holistic architectural design process. The focus would be on how to envision contemporary design methods rather than to preestimate new shapes, materials or even specific socio-cultural solutions.

Restructuring the process of design development by creating interfaces for public involvement, robot based production methods or AI building parts could enable collaborating design/prodiction teams to find unpredictable innovation.

The first step is made with implementation of software based BIM technology, but neither this software will build anything itself nor will it encourage involved parties to communicate about stored information in provided 3D database. Yet starting from this level of technology we can go further to develop integrated design/production methods that would be based on curated communication.

To curate design processes that would connect spheres of socio-cultural influx, fully digitalized production (Industry 4.0) and AI building parts we need to develop certain strategies, concepts and tools. This will reinvent the role of the architect as a curator.