Architecture is an inherently collective endeavor. This simple fact is routinely suppressed, has been suppressed, perhaps as long as architecture has existed. The solitary genius overshadows the hundreds, if not thousands, of people working together to execute ideas into something real. Within this collective lies the lifeblood of any firm, for which the sole architect is but a figurehead, and sometimes not even that.
You are trained through years of architecture school to see yourselves not as workers—that is, people working together, subjugated by the hierarchies of labor—but rather as temporarily disadvantaged individual creators who may one day be the geniuses calling the shots. The reality of life as an architect is often shockingly different from that which is experienced in school, where one is master of one’s ideas and their execution. You may feel alienated and disenchanted, as though that ephemeral power you had to change the world has been surrendered to the drudgery of the 9-to-midnight grind. But your power never went away. It’s just in need of another o…