A Systems and Contingency Analysis Applied to Construction Projects of Exceptional Architectural Design

Chapter 2 - Goal and Value System

Summary / The Client Seeks Intangible Returns / The Impotence of Strategic Concepts / The Nature of the Client / Return to Index Page

Summary

The client seeks a number of intangible returns in a project of exceptional design. As a consequence of this, it becomes more difficult to define the project in quantitative terms, and the general level of uncertainty is increased. The design process will be largely vale driven and the value structure of the project organization will be strongly influenced by the client.

The lead designer will be chosen primarily on the basis of a design ability that is congruent with the value system of the client. The lead designer is responsible for interpreting the client's aspirations into a form that is understandable by others in the project organization. As a result of this, the lead designer will have a higher degree of influence over the project organization.

The more that the project is one of exceptional design, the more that relations between project groups will become organic. Generally, it will be an individual, or a group dominated by an individual, who will commission a project of exceptional design. This individual will also tend to be relatively new to the financial success that makes his patronage possible.

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Chapter 2 - Goal and Value System

This chapter will examine the goals and values of the project organization, how they are formed, and how they are transmitted within the project organization. The effects of the selection process, the degree of uncertainty, the interpretation of client aspirations, and effects on the organizational structure will also be examined.

The Client Seeks Intangible Returns

On a project of exceptional architectural design, the goals and intentions of the client, whether an organization or an individual, will be different from more standard types of projects. In the former, the client will be seeking an intangible aesthetic return from the project, as opposed to a primarily economic return. This phenomena can be observed through the nature of some architectural practices that are recognized for their design abilities. Clients who may build a number of projects will often tend to commission the more mundane projects to an average architectural firm, and award the construction contract on the basis of the lowest price, while awarding the design oriented projects to a recognized design architect. The construction contract would have a lesser tendency in these instances to be awarded on a lowest fixed price basis.

This was the case for the Johnson Wax factory [201] in the U.S.A. when they commissioned the American architect F. L. Wright in 1943 to design their research facilities, a building which was to become world famous together with the adjoining administration complex, also designed by Wright. This complex in the words of the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki [202], "...represents a pinnacle of qualitative maturity. Here is a space to which no civilization can lay claim." This desire on the part of the client has a number of important consequences.

The higher the aesthetic element in the project, the more difficult it will be to define the project in quantitative terms. Because the aesthetic element is intangible, it is not easily converted into a quantitative form. This contributes to the level of uncertainty of the project. This in turn will affect the building design, as well as items such as cost, time, and specific translations into programmatic elements. Uncertainty can result from numerous sources, and this will be examined in more detail in the chapter on technological systems. This could partially explain why the Sydney Opera House, in which the design was chosen on the (unusual) basis of very schematic concepts drawings, was estimated to cost A$7m in 1957, but by 1973 had exceeded A$102m in cost. [203]

Because the project is not as well defined in quantitative terms as a more typical project, more resources will need to be devoted to the design of the project to experiment with ideas and concepts in order to arrive at a "concretization" of the intangible elements. This perhaps can be explained by viewing the definition of the project in quantitative terms on the basis of certainty or uncertainty. The less the project is defined in quantitative terms, the more uncertain it is. As Galbraith [204] notes, the greater the amount of uncertainty, the greater the amount of information that must be processed. The principal resources expended in this instance is time, as time is the basic cost unit in a professional organization.

Because the project is not as well defined in quantitative terms, the more there will be a need to establish a method for guiding the design process to a stage where the design can be expressed in concrete terms. This process will tend to be value driven. This can perhaps be explained in the context of Mintzberg's [205] five coordinating mechanisms for an organization. One of these mechanisms is standardization of work outputs. Because a project of exceptional design will, almost by definition, be less standardized than a more typical project, additional efforts will be required to coordinate the process by which an output is produced. I believe that the process will be largely value driven because results of the design process are, in a sense abstract phenomena, the interpreta-tion and evaluation of which are governed by a value system.

It should be noted that the uncertainty associated with aesthetic elements is different from the uncertainty or complexity due to either a project's size or technology. The former uncertainty arises from attempting to produce a concept that can be understood by others in the project team. This is very different from the uncertainty that exists with technological systems, where the overall concept is understood, the means of attainment are unclear. This latter type of uncertainty perhaps better lends itself to several possible means of solution, as the end can be seen, and a multitude of resources assigned to the framed problem. The former uncertainty, associated with developing the concept, probably does not lend itself as easily to a multitude of methods for solution, as this process is essentially value driven, and the number of people who can contribute at this stage are necessarily limited.

The value structure that drives the project system will be strongly shaped by the values of the client. One of the strongest ways in which a client shapes the value system of a project is in the selection of the individuals and/or organizations that compromise the project teams. A client will generally seek out those individuals or organizations that he perceives can give him what he is seeking.

An example of this client perception can be noted in the case of the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. Eugene Claudius-Petit, who was responsible for either awarding or securing the commissions to Le Corbusier for the complex of buildings in the French town of Firminy, and for the government complex of Chandigarh, India, wrote: [206]

But my discovery of...Le Corbusier was also the discovery of this man, whose talent was as yet untapped, whose sensibility was so acute that he could not only discover in the movement of people in the city problems to combat but also imagine their possible solutions.

If the client can be viewed as the overall manager of the project, then various studies of organizations can be used to see the effects on the project's value system. Fox [207] observes that manage-ment has wide scope for shaping the normative system. Peters and Waterman [208] in exploring successful companies note the importance of culture and a "hands-on, value driven" approach. On a more pragmatic note, Cartwright [209] notes that a major base of influence is the possession or control of desired resources. On construction project-s, the client will not only control the direct economic remuneration of the groups directly employed by him, but he will also control the far more substantial resources that are required to execute the project. Particularly for those designers who seek to produce works of art, this control of the resources required to execute the project is critical, I would argue, as the production of an aesthetically valid building is generally more salient to the designer than the direct remuneration for his services.

March and Simon [210] postulate that in a group situation, the greater the perceived prestige of the group, the stronger the propensity of the individual to identify with it. In addition, the greater the extent to which goals are perceived as shared, again the stronger the propensity of the individual to identify with the group. In the context of a project of exceptional design there may well then exist a higher degree of individual identification with the overall project due to the prestige. Identification of individuals to the project due to the perception of shared goals would probably be higher for those groups or individuals directly involved with the design of the project, more than for those individuals who were responsible for its physical execution.

Following from previous hypotheses, I believe the higher the aesthetic element of the project, the more that the client will select the architect (or lead designer) on the basis of a design ability that is congruent with the value structure of the client, rather than for the architect's technical or managerial capabilities. This perhaps can be viewed in the case of the American architect Bruce Goff and his highly individualistic design for the unbuilt Dewlen Residence in 1956. This project is generally recognized as being one of Goff's more significant works. Jeffrey Cook [211] has written that the client in this case was a professional writer who before commissioning Goff for his own house, had researched and written an article on Goff entitled "Architecture's Unpredictable Artist".

On most construction projects, but even more so on projects of exceptional design, the lead designer will become the interpreter of the client's aspirations and values, translating them into a form from which others can physically construct these design ideas. On common, or other-wise standard projects, the client generally has a reasonably clear idea of what he wants, due to the multitude of built references. The client then only has to select from those built references what best suits his ambitions for a standard project. On projects of exceptional design however, the number of built references is very small, so it becomes much more difficult for a client to select suitable references for his aspirations. In this regard, the architect Louis Kahn, arguably one of the four or five greatest western architects of this century once said [212]:

It is the world of the architect to indicate those spaces which have never been and could not have been thought of by the client, but for which the client really wants you. The great client wants the architect to tell him that the fullness of the environment must be presented, from it true choices can be made.

Louis Kahn elsewhere wrote [213]:

A great building, in my opinion, must begin with the unmeasurable, go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasurable... But what is unmeasurable is the psychic spirit. The psyche is expressed by feeling and also thought, and, I believe, will always be unmeasurable.

The architect (or lead designer) on projects of exceptional design is responsible for translating the unmeasurable to the measurable. This means that the architect will be establishing the framework within which other members of the project team will have to operate. As a result, the architect, at least during the design phase of the project, will retain a high degree of influence over the members of the project team. This influence is higher than would be exercised by the architect on more standard projects, as on the latter, it is more execution, rather than design, that is important in the project. The concept of influence will be explored in greater detail in the chapter that covers organizational structure.

The Importance of Strategic Concepts

The more that the project tends toward exceptional design, the more importance the strategic concepts assume relative to other factors in the project process. The underlying success of a work of architecture lies in the quality of the basic design concepts. Two works of architecture that exhibit this principle are the Kaufman House (Fallingwater) by F. L. Wright in 1936 [214], and the church at Ronchamp, by Le Corbusier in 1954 [215]. On the Kaufman house, the architect Paul Rudolph [216] writes "Fallingwater is a realized dream...It touches something deep within us about which, finally, none of us can speak." Both of these works are generally considered among architects to be master works of this century.

Both of these buildings exhibit a certain lack of refinement in their execution and detailing, but in these instances, it is of only incidental importance to the architectural quality of the work.

As a consequence, the more that the project approaches exceptional design, the greater the influence of the architect on the project team.

Generally speaking, the more that a project approaches exceptional design, the more the project process (i.e. the process encompassing all individuals and organizations) will become organic in nature. Organic in this sense refers to the method of project management, administrative systems, and the flow of information. In this in-stance, a parallel might be drawn with other endeavors that utilize sophisticated technical systems, in that they also work with a great-er quantity of unknown factors, and are challenging the status quo. For the latter, Mintzberg [217] notes that the more sophisticated the technical system, the more elaborate the administrative structure, the larger and more professional the support staff, the greater the degree of selective decentralization, and the greater use of liaison devices.

On the subject of selective decentralization, I believe that not all subgroups of the project process will exhibit organic structures due to the project being of exceptional design. The chapter on organizational structure will further explore the concepts of influence, but due to the degree of expert power, particularly in the design organizations during the strategic design phase, a certain amount of autocracy exists within the individual design organization, even though their relationship with other organizations may be organic.

This same concept of organic external relationships with a differing internal structure can exist for other groups within the project process. The chapter on external environment will study some of the influences of this onto the individual group structure. In this context an example can be given of a large general construction consortium that may operate largely as a bureaucracy, but is forced into organic relationships with the project team due to the nature of the project.

The Nature of the Client

Little research has been done regarding the nature of clients who commission works of exceptional design, and how they differ from other clients. The following is not substantiated by formal research, but is gathered through the writer's experience as being an architect on a number of projects of exceptional architectural design. Further research would be required in order to substantiate or amplify the following propositions.

In my observations, it is generally those clients, whether individuals or organizations, who are recently successful, who are more likely to commission works of exceptional architectural design. Clients that have been established for a considerable length of time tend to be more conservative, and less inclined to commission this type of work. The latter type of client may often commission a building of good design quality. IBM is a good example of this instance. IBM has numerous facilities that are recognized as being of high quality, but none that are recognized as exceptional works of architecture. March and Simon [218] have postulated that most human decision making, whether individual or organizational, is concerned with selecting satisfactory, rather than optimal, alternatives. When this concept is applied to the commissioning of a design, it perhaps explains why an organization such as IBM has a number of good buildings, but no exceptional buildings.

The clients who commission projects of exceptional design generally seem to be either individuals, or organizations that are dominated by an individual. In the context of discussing the first decade of the NASA program, the senior administrator from that time, James Webb [219] has noted that it is essential that projects have their continuous sponsor support, especially in difficult periods. It may be that only individuals, or organizations dominated by an individual, can give the high level of support that is required in order to get a project of exceptional design constructed.

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