Collective Signature and the Big MAC -- Michael Kubo
Full Citation Kubo, Michael. `Collective Signature and the Big MAC'. Log 54
(2022): 69 - 77. Print.
Notes
- The way experiments in collective authorship after WWII lead to the
architectural corporation (pp. 69)
- The Architects Collaborative (1945) becoming a huge corporate architecture
producer by the 70s (pp. 69)
- The postwar search for "design identity" without the "genius" signature of
The Architect; TAC goes for a collective signature (pp. 69)
- Signature and identity as important to these practitioners as a mark of
disciplinarity (pp. 69-70)
- The transformation from "collaborative ethos" to corporate ethos; the search
for "corporate identity"; corporate consistency (smoothness) or "virtuoso
architect" at top of the ladder as identity-forming (pp. 70)
- The end of TAC in 1995 was the moment when architectural corporations were
displaced by the Multinational Architectural Corporation (MAC) (pp. 70)
- Marked by expansion of scope of practice: diversified services (Architecture,
Engineering, Construction all in one AEC) (pp. 70)
- Architectural design as one small component of a whole range of services (pp.
70)
- Marked by extensive and often unclear involvement in built environment & lack
of "corporate identity" but for their scale (pp. 71)
- MACs are not architectural firms, but larger, more distributed entities which
essentially do everything (pp. 71)
- Marginalized design output, anonymity, yet largest employers of architects
(pp. 71)
- Factors that gave rise to MACs: legal and economic challenges to architects
that pushed for diversification of practices and agglomeration (pp. 71)
- "merger mania" leading to concentration of work in the hands of fewer,
larger, global practices, following globalizing incentives of "corporate
world at large" (pp. 71)
- Kinds of architectural corps: "A" (Architect), "AE" (Architect Engineer).
"EA" (Engineer Architect), "EAC" (Engineer Architect Contractor) (pp. 72)
- Design without "the architect" and often without professional architects at
all (pp. 72)
- AECOM as a case study (pp. 73-77)
- Significance of having grown up out of an oil company (pp. 74)
- The taking of government contracts: military, prisons, etc. (pp. 74)
- The significance of it being an ESOP (pp. 74)
- Note Kubo's central question of "what is it?" which hinges on identity and
definition (pp. 75)
- Work in the Emirate region (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, etc.) (pp. 76)
- The questions that arise: "how then to produce a historiography of the
MAC...?" (pp. 77)
- "...how MACs have gained such an outsize footprint in the global design
market without the need for legible authorial identity..." (pp. 77)
- Ontology questions and questions of disciplinarity (pp. 77)
