Book review: Collective Action! The Power of Collaboration and Co-Design in Architecture

Do you want to harness the power of our collective mind, pool resources and learn together? Do you want to improve design quality by encouraging diversity, community, and plurality of voices? If you do, argues a new book edited by Rob Fiehn, Kyle Buchanan and Mellis Haward, we need a different approach. We need to collaborate.

Collective Action! The Power of Collaboration and Co-Design in Architecture, sets a strong argument for how architects can address common challenges – such as the climate crisis, design for social justice or inclusivity – with a shift in our ways of working and our mindset. As editor and communication consultant Fiehn puts it: ‘It’s clear that if architects are to have any hope of effecting change in an extremely challenging world, then it will be together.’

While the book highlights the benefits of collaboration to all sizes of practice, it brings together lessons from the 2021 RIBA Guerrilla Tactics conference, which the editors curated. It showed small practices that they could achieve more if they pooled resources and experiences. As founder of Incremental Urbanism, a community focused small practice looking to grow, I might be the ideal audience for this book. So what have I learnt from it?

First, it is reassuring to read that we are not alone in questioning whether our values are collaborative, whether our company should be more or less hierarchical, whether credit is rightly given, if there are enough fees to work collaboratively, or if the community engagement is tokenism or collaboration.

Define our collaborative mindset

In the chapter ‘Building a Dream Team’, Marc Cairns and Samuel Stair of New Practice attempt to define scales of collaboration – starting from 1:1 Working with an individual, through to 1:100,000 Working in networked teams. Like the rest of the book, this section communicates the range of collaborative practices, including how to work with colleagues, clients, other practices, local communities, academic institutions and national networks. It demonstrates that collaborative working is a mindset that can be applied to all aspects of practice. So what is the right approach?

As David Ogunmuyiwa of Architecture Doing Place puts it: ‘There is no single formula that our industry can refer to and adopt.’ However, the book explores the collaborative mindset and how it is applied in practice. Many of the authors refer to this mindset as ‘putting egos aside,’ shrugging off the tired notion of the lone, isolated, individual genius and adopting an approach that Cairns and Stair define as relinquishing ego, good listening, and confidence. This has encouraged us in the studio to write down our approach to collaboration.

Reconsider our collaborative hierarchy

‘For collaboration to be fruitful it must be approached as a group of equals.’ At Incremental Urbanism we have questioned our company structure and how we define direction, assign responsibility, encourage younger staff, and respect experience if everyone is equal. In ‘Community and Collaboration: An Experimental, Shared Approach to Working and Rising Together’, WIP Collaborative (Work in Progress/Women in Practice) shares its experience as a democratically organised collective trying to break away from conventional ‘hierarchies that reinforce the concentration of salary, authorship and decision-making power in the hands of a dominant few’.

Having been part of a non-hierarchical architecture cooperative, I question whether a truly horizontal structure with shared leadership is the most appropriate form of practice for collaboration. Collective Works’ section ‘In-Sourcing’ advocates for good leadership: ‘There is of course a distinction between a cacophony and a chorus, and we would argue that it takes a leadership that listens. Allowing individuals the space for accountability and agency creates a better team that can focus its collective energy on a project.’ Whether it is truly horizontal or not, we will take on all the helpful tips the authors share on creating collaborative structures that promote communication, empathy, and support consensus decision making.

Having been part of a non-hierarchical architecture cooperative, I question whether a truly horizontal structure with shared leadership is the most appropriate form of practice for collaboration. Collective Works’ section ‘In-Sourcing’ advocates for good leadership: ‘There is of course a distinction between a cacophony and a chorus, and we would argue that it takes a leadership that listens. Allowing individuals the space for accountability and agency creates a better team that can focus its collective energy on a project.’ Whether it is truly horizontal or not, we will take on all the helpful tips the authors share on creating collaborative structures that promote communication, empathy, and support consensus decision making.

Working collaboratively but making a name for ourselves?

In ‘Delivering Collaborative Practice’ David Ogunmuyiwa discusses this question and the benefits of small and large firms collaborating with Paul Karakusevic  of KCA and Studio Gil’s Pedro Gil. Like many of the other authors, he recommends negotiating scope of work and credit early on, with brand recognition as a minimum, but also highlights that it’s a common challenge. Karakusevic believes there are more benefits if collaborators work on the same building, but Ogunmuyiwa reinforces that the challenge for small practices is the ‘need to see some architectural manifestation in order to get the benefit of future work.’

Better establish tools that can be shared

In ‘Co-Design Tools: Regenerating Communities’ Archio’s Kyle Buchanan and Sarah Ahmed provide insightful guidance on their co-design and consensus reaching tools, and through explaining these they demonstrate how they ‘upskill participants with knowledge that outlives the design of a single project’. Archio’s generosity and openness demonstrates a greater collaborative, community building mindset that I now hope to adopt.

Collective Action! practices what it preaches and through sharing these accounts it encourages new forms of practice, better collaborations and sharing of resources and knowledge.

Charlie Palmer is a RIBAJ Rising Star and director of Incremental Urbanism

Collective Action! The Power of Collaboration and Co-Design in Architecture, edited by Rob Fiehn, Kyle Buchanan and Mellis Haward, is published by RIBA Publishing, 2023