Edited by author 05-09-2001 06:49 AM
hello

I'd kind of like to take on some of the points made here in this forum, and also peter's observation that 'real' physical architecture emerged from a basic human need for shelter.

In 'real' architecture, there is very often a tension bewteen the 'demand' side (client, project manager, special interest group [usability engineer?]*) and the supply side (general and specialist contractors, engineers) - the architect (in a traditional project model [say, JCT80 contract model here in the UK]) does a number of different things: asnwers the brief of the demand side, inject his/her own parti/vision/style to the realisation of it, and mediates and shapes the overall process in order to produce something as near as possible to that orginal vision so they don't get their arse sued off by the 'demand side'.

(* real architects are notoriously bad for not designing for end-user's needs...)

'real' architects attend college for 5-7 years, and usually aren't acknowledged as 'hitting their stride' until at least 4-5 years into a professional career.

I just spent a couple of months at metrius, which is the 'experience'-focussed arm of KPMG's e-business consulting operations. One of the exciting things about that was that the SCALE of KPMG's warmachine kinda opened up the SCOPE of what we could feasibly affect with human-centred design. Through alliance partners and the like we could feasibly reach every e-enabled part of a business, right down to the guys in the white vans installing the 10base-T.

That was scary.

As Mies said: God was in the details, and suddenly they could all be part of our resposniblity. True arhcitectural responsibility. We discussed this notion as something that EVERYONE in the team had to feel (a little like peters riff on user-centrednes being everyone's responsibility) - that the information or experience architecture was a THING, a PROCESS, a layer of GLUE rather than a person or a role, and that EVERY SINGLE PERSON representing the realisation of the clients needs, and the vision and value we could professionally inject to both meet and EXCEED those needs had to be able to express it, hold it in their heads, and understand their place in making it happen.

This is not to say that those who specialise in producing structure for information retrieval, for creating interaction design, for organising content or any other of the hats that 'IA's wear aren't part of that - they absolutley are - but making the IA a thing and not a person just seems to make for a more fruitful process, leapfrogs a load of navel gazing, and makes an easier 'sell' to prospective clients.

IA is all around us, it binds us and penetrates us, holds everything together - it is what gives a Jedi his power...

Right - my other point was about the orgins of REAL architecture and parallels that might be drawn to information architecture... I guess a fair few people here may have read 'how building learn' so some themes may be familiar.

As nice a defn. of architecture as I have ever heard was from my old prof. at architecture college who said 'architecture is the elegant and satisfying arrangement of expended resource' - kind of colliding his own pragmatic views of arhcitects as process engineers as well as product designers if you like with Le Corbusiers more poetic/heroic view of architecture as the 'masterly arrangement of forms in light'.

Peter states that architecture emerges from the human need for shelter - and vernacular building styles produce powerful robust solutions - they also give rise to more poetic form - the identification of place, and the acknowledgement /amplification of nature are two themes often seen (more on vernacular architecture in another old prof of mine, simon unwin's fabulous book: http://www.cf.ac.uk/archi/unwins/aawebs/analarch.html)

In that book, simon's root definition of architecture as its "conceptual organization, its intellectual structures" interplays with this being something ALWAYS there, in parallel with the basic maslow-ian need for shelter. Organisation, defination and poetic connection to something bigger are ALSO emergenet properties of archiecture - which are now seen as the defining qualities of GREAT architecture.

In information spaces, one can see an emergence in the vernacular (geocities, blogs etc?) in answer to higher human needs of expression, communication, social identification AND the basic organisation, usubility, cognition - This is often not address by the bloodless intellectual arguements about information architecture grounded in other media, other professions, other domains - it shouldn't be ignored, as neither should this nascent domain's connections to more established bodies of thought.

just a spur to thought...

cheers all

/matt