Art Gensler's treatise of the firm (2021

Art Gensler's treatise on the firm (2021)

The recent death of Art Gensler (1935–2021) led me to look again at Art's Principles, his 2015 primer on architecture firm-building and architects’ careers. I was hired by Gensler late in 1997 and worked closely with him and his successors in an editorial capacity for the next 22 years—a good vantage point for seeing how his principles played out in practice. Gensler was no theoretician, and yet he evolved what might be called a “theory of the firm” that reflected his understanding of architecture as it unfolds in the real world of clients and markets. I’m writing an introduction to the collected drawings of Thomas Gordon Smith, the author of a treatise on architecture consciously modeled on those of his classical predecessors. This leads me to distill Art’s principles into a pocket treatise that also draws on my own observations.

1. Architecture is best understood in a total design sense Art preferred "design" to "architecture" in describing the openended nature of his firm. He saw every attempt to put the firm into professional, disciplinary, practice, or project buckets as misguided, given the fluidity of markets and the humanity that drives them. A design firm exists to deliver desired outcomes and support clients from strategy to strategy within close working relationships. Whatever is needed has to be found, whether it exists within the firm or is tapped through collaboration. This evolving totality is design as a professional activity, and architects are an integral part of it, but only one, and honor-bound to collaborate with the rest.

2. To be a business, architecture has to be run as one. This has two implications. First, it means situating the firm in the marketplace. Second, it means acknowledging that what you’re running is a design business, which requires a constant search for balance and synergy between designers and clients so that both are attracted. This dilemma isn’t unique to design firms. Higher education, for example, faces something like it. To be a business means to deal rigorously with the issues every business faces. How well they’re dealt with is the difference between a business that thrives, stagnates, or fails. How well design is dealt with means everything for its reputation, its influence, and its ability to attract talent and clients. To succeed, a design business has to navigate

these twin challenges. To do this well, its culture has to be steeped in awareness of them, framing actions and outcomes in light of this.

3. That culture benefits from broad ownership and transparency As Arie de Geus has argued, companies that endure are "living communities" that transcend successive generations of leaders and workers. Art made everyone an owner, directly or indirectly, in the design firm he founded. Since everyone was an owner, the firm shared financial details with them. It made ownership a financial advantage, with a substantial part of compensation long-term and tax-sheltered, topped off by firm contributions that reflected its performance and its leaders’ bullish or bearish sense of its prospects.

4. Relationships, not projects, are the heart of a design business This means, first, that constant engagement is sought both with individual clients and the larger collectivity to which they belong or identify, with which they share issues and experiences. The goal is to expand the relationship, not simply to land the next project. Second, it means that mutual trust is crucial, as a relationship brings such responsibilities as the need to advise against a project not in the client’s interest. Within the design firm’s own culture, it means that personal and collective integrity matters. To thrive, the culture delegates responsibility on the basis of trust and individual initiative, but the ruling context is the collaborative teams that include and serve the clients and their clients. It’s within ongoing collaboration that both of these relationships are forged, built, and evolved.

5. A design business is organized to absorb shocks, yet evolve Most of all, this means being disciplined about the core activities that keep ongoing operations humming, while scanning the horizon for new opportunities and threats. The danger of focusing on any set of relationships is myopia, banking on continuity and failing to anticipate disruption. Growth means changes in scale, each of which strains the core activities in their existing state, so part of the discipline needed is to ask regularly what the future demands. Some of this will come from clients, but the firm also has to look ahead and make its own decisions. It doesn’t have to be the first out of the gate, but should know its options and be ready to act and invest. One big advantage of a strong culture is that piloting new initiatives is much

easier against the background of humming, profitable ongoing operations. These are investments in the future.

6. A design business is organized to grow and sustain its growth It's agnostic about its offer and the markets that take it up, knowing that the scale of the take up involves time as well as space. Especially when assignments are singular and huge, it looks for points of entry and roles that don’t leave its teams hanging when the assignment ends. If, to break into a market, it takes risks, it weighs them in light of the potential opportunities, viewing any losses as learning curve investments. But it tracks those assumptions against reality. It learns as much from mistakes as from successes.

7. A design business needs a talent pipeline and a succession plan A thriving design business gives its co-owners the possibility of career longevity. This means not only giving them opportunities to contribute, but actively investing in their careers in mutually beneficial ways. Advancement reflects performance, with allowances made for life events and reversals beyond anyone’s reasonable control. Making strong performance possible is the goal of career investment, with an emphasis on the most-promising performers, but also with a conscious effort to raise all boats. Yet the standards of performance evolve. Career longevity doesn’t mean tenure; it means rewarding constant, meaningful contribution. Those who fail to deliver, despite career support, are let go, while outside talent is recruited. An effective succession plan simplifies the transition from one generation of leaders to another. Term limits, especially for upper- and midlevel leadership roles, make room for new blood.

8. A design business builds its future; it doesn't borrow against it Financial solidity requires the business to perform well, even when market conditions are adverse. It prepares for what it can anticipate and for the unforeseen as an operational and a cultural imperative. Yet in its dealings with its co-owners, humanity and integrity guides its actions, knowing that those who leave will reappear as industry colleagues and often as clients. Coming back after a productive stint away is culturally acceptable, even desirable.

Written (as "The Principles of Art Gensler") for Common Edge, 17 May 2021.