the internet architect

Summary: The Internet is here and we ask the fundamental question facing architects today: What does the Internet offer the architect?

How often do you access the internet? If you’re reading this article it’s very likely you’re reading it directly from the Internet or someone has downloaded it for you.

The Global Paperboy

How many of you had paper rounds when you were younger? I know I did. You may like to think of the Internet as a new delivery system. It's like being a global paperboy. Think about that for a moment. Previously, you had to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and you rode your bike around the streets for a couple of hours and you delivered maybe a hundred or so newspapers. Can you imagine as a paperboy how much money you could make if you could use the Internet to send out your newspapers? You could send millions of papers around world every morning. In fact, you could work 24 hours a day being a paper boy, as one new country wakes up you deliver their papers, as the next country wakes up you delivery their papers and so on.

A Global Marketplace

So, 'What is the Internet?' In really simple terms, the Internet is a series of computers connected over the phone line. That sounds really basic and hides the impact that Internet is having on business and communication around the planet. The Internet creates a global marketplace without leaving home. Essentially, we've had a global telephone system for a few decades now. You can call anywhere in the world and talk to someone instantly. The shift for the Internet is that you can now send pictures, images, sounds, photographs, architectural drawings or voice messages over the phone lines in an instant.

Architects and the Internet

What does the Internet offer the architect? A lot of companies have now created their own web-sites. Most are merely electronic versions of their corporate brochures. You look at them once and then you get really bored and you go somewhere else. (This is a bit like the 'electronic drawing board'.) This could be considered to be the first stage of Internet Use. A second phase of Internet use is to do your business over the Internet. When you can do this the opportunity to be able to access a global market for your products becomes available.

The Big Question

The big question for the architect is 'how do you do this?' In other words:

How do you generate your service 100% electronically so that you can access this global market?

The most significant words in that question are '100%' and 'electronically'. If you compared the work practices of working on drawings with clients over coffee, with doing business purely through the computer, you will appreciate there is a world of difference. Again the key is to re-invent architectural practice and along with that we need to reinvent how we design buildings and how we deliver our services.


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