On Architects and Mediated Architects

There seems to have been a recent uptick in the amount of discussion about the relationship between traditional architecture and information architecture, specifically in what the two fields have to learn from each other, both as practice and theoretical discourse. (The basics are laid out in Brett Ingram’s piece in the November+December 2009 issue of interactions.)

The latter came to my attention first, when I was exposed to — and impressed by — the extent to which architecture (at least within the ivory tower) rests on solid philosophical grounding, whereas IA seems almost purely practice. Where, I wondered, are these conversations happening in the Information world. Of course, architecture has a few thousand years on IA as a discipline, but interaction design philosophy is starting to happen.

After taking a class with Malcolm McCullough, a champion of the architecture–interaction design relationship, and attending a bunch of the UM Taubman College’s Future of (Design|Urbanism|Technology|History) conference series, it became clear to me that architecture is looking to interaction design, user experience design, and information architecture for inspiration, particularly with regard to ethnographic methodologies, user-centered design, and technology. But, at least from my vantage point, there seems to be relatively little flowing the other direction.

I’m not the only one who has noticed this void in information discourse. IA Dan Klyn has been wondering something similar, and doing something about it, at least by writing and spurring conversation. The discussion that ensued in response to the above-linked post on the architecture forum Archinect is an interesting, if somewhat semantic, discussion of who and what is an architect.

So in a display of bad academic form (but hey, this is a blog…), I’m going to not track down original sources and just trust Archinect user namhenderson, who reports that IA Jesse James Garret posits that the act of user experience design is not medium specific; interaction designers and architects simply use different materials. (Based on the discussion at Archinect, I’d love to see some more discussion of what an IA’s materials are and how the separation of IA from UI widget design and visual design impacts this and the process.)

I’m going to take it one small step further: traditional architects are Architects, and information architects (and user experience designers) are Mediated Architects. And as Malcolm will tell you, buildings are becoming (thanks to technology) or are being recognized as (thanks to environmental awareness) information mediators in and of themselves, a trend that will likely blur the line that currently distinguishes the design of unmediated physical experiences from the design of purely digitally mediated ones.

Still, this seems to be a realization that is being more readily acknowledged in the academic worlds of traditional architecture and ubicomp than in the practice of architecture or information architecture. Hopefully, that’s only because embedded and building-scale digital technologies are relatively new, so neither practice has much experience working with these new materials, materials that can, and must, belong simultaneously to Architects and Mediated Architects.