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‘Incorporating Architects’ Forensically Documents the Rise of Megafirm AECOM
‘Incorporating Architects: How American Architecture Became a Practice of Empire’ by Aaron Cayer
The status of architecture as a business has always been an uncomfortable fit. Artistically inclined designers, drawn to the profession for its potential as a creative outlet, too often suffer an identity crisis when confronted with the realities of corporate drudgery and the necessity of entrepreneurialism. But this isn’t always the case; some firms thrive in the business world. None more so than AECOM, one of the first built-environment companies to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In Incorporating Architects: How American Architecture Became a Practice of Empire, author Aaron Cayer, an assistant professor of architecture at Cal Poly Pomona, traces the history of AECOM as a case study not only for the changing role of architecture in the 20th century but also its entanglement with postwar geopolitics, neoliberal policy, and the rise of the U.S. as the global hegemon. The following is an excerpt from his introduction:
At the start of the 20th century, architecture firms were considered “large” if they employed 50 people; by midcentury, that threshold was 1,000. The settings, spaces, and procedures of their work were distinct, most argued, from those of artist-architects, who, more like Ayn Rand’s Howard Roark, worked alone in their studios or in small groups. In 1947, the year after Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall (DMJM) formed, Henry-Russell Hitchcock notably described this split-between creative authors known for their expressive, imaginative designs on the one hand, and large anonymous bureaucracies known for their precision and organizational efficiency on the other. What Hitchcock could not have predicted, however, was the sheer impact such bureaucracies would have on the arc and architecture of the 20-century political economy, or the ways that small firms of creative authors, too, would come to embrace the tools of big business as industrialization waned and as size-based distinctions became less meaningful.
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Reception area of DMJM office, 3325 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, ca. 1963. DMJM, Company General Brochure, 1967. Image courtesy the publisher
Today, many architecture firms in the US can be considered bureaucracies or even complex corporate conglomerates akin to AECOM—as firms with many firms within them. Architecture firm Albert Kahn, born as a partnership in Detroit in 1895 alongside the rise of the auto industry, now defines itself as a corporate “family” of seven “multidisciplinary” firms that comprise the “Albert Kahn Family of Companies.” Perkins & Will, founded in Chicago in 1935, describes itself since 1986 as part of a “family of partner companies” named the Dar Group, owned by the Lebanese conglomerate Dar Al-Handasah.
Even firms for which high design and cultural capital, rather than economic capital, were once understood to be primary motivating forces began adopting the protocols, organizational structures, and lessons of big business—most in order to weather downturns in the economy—at the end of the 20th century. A design firm such as Gehry Partners in Los Angeles can be considered a corporate conglomerate: despite publicizing itself as a partnership, the firm is a corporation that includes six subsidiaries in California alone. Some Gehry subsidiaries offer textiles, furniture, materials, and proprietary technology, while others define a particular nation or region as an economic offering—Gehry Technologies Middle East, Mexico, Brazil, and the Netherlands. SHoP Architects, a younger yet equally notable design firm, comprises more than 20 companies linked to its New York office that capitalize on geographic and economic breadth, including Shop Africa, which supports construction in Botswana, and 30littleramisland, through which the firm’s principals have acquired private property.
Despite the expanded size and scope of architecture firms such as DMJM (and later AECOM), it is true that most architects in the US work in small firms with fewer than 20 employees. By 1972, for instance, only 45 architecture firms—0.5 percent of all firms— employed more than 100 people, while 93 percent were smaller than 20 people.” At the same time, large firms accounted for 14 percent of the field’s total revenue, leaving smaller firms to compete for an even smaller share of projects. While the profession has remained consistently stratified by firm size, large firms nearly doubled their control of total revenue by 1992 (to 21 percent) and tripled it by 1997 (to 40 percent) Beyond this redistribution of capital, it is worth remembering that smaller firms at varying stages of development have also adopted the organizational strategies of large firms. Therefore, the influence of the large firms’ all-out pursuits of capital is even more profound than the category “large” suggests.
The stake of AECOM’s history was palpable during my first attempt to meet with architects at the firm. After emailing a “general inquiries” address posted on the firm’s website with no luck, I tried reaching the firm’s leaders directly. One problem: their addresses were not publicized. I attempted various configurations—first initial last name aecom com; last name ‹dot› first name com; first name last name com. Most of my messages bounced back, but the last configuration worked.
Aerial view of AECOM’s downtown Los Angeles headquarters, 2017. From: AECOM, Annual Report (2017), p. 9. Image courtesy the publisher
“Thanks for your interest and we would be happy to help,” wrote the firm’s second-in-charge. “The best is actually yet to come for AECOM as we reinvigorate our architecture practice. I am copying our head of buildings and places . . . to make sure you get access to what you need. Thanks again. Good stuff.”
After passing by the security guards in the first-floor lobby and presenting my ID at the front desk, I was escorted to the elevators and up to AECOM’s office. There, I checked in with the receptionist, a young woman whose entire body was blocked by a computer screen, her neck wrapped with a cord to her microphoned headset. I met with an executive vice president, who had worked at the firm less than three months, to discuss the firm’s history. While I was introducing myself as an architectural historian, she immediately interrupted. “Architecture history?” she asked. “Why research us?” Her question caught me off guard. By that point, I knew that the A in AECOM stood for “architecture” and that the firm began as a small “architecture-only” partnership named DMJM, so the unfamiliarity with AECOM’s roots in architecture, even among its senior personnel, was surprising. They preferred the more general descriptors “contractor” and “consultancy,” she told me, since they did “so much more” than architecture.
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