YES
Tristram Carfrae, Chairman, building design practice, Arup
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Engineers are using modern computing power to optimise building designs; mechanise building construction; and automate their operation. At the same time our architect colleagues (those with greater sartorial elegance) use the same technology to create ever more elaborate, expensive and inefficient building forms.
By 2050, the world needs to double its urban capacity while halving each person's eco-footprint. We can rise to meet this challenge by engineering sustainable buildings; intelligent transport systems; smart utilities; and renewable energy sources (the value of which will come, of course, from their post-modern decoration).
We engineers outnumber architects 10 to one, yet you rarely read our thoughts and opinions in the press. Is this because we have to be absolutely right, beyond any shadow of doubt, before we dare venture into the public domain? Where is the judgment and intuition we use every day in deciding what to (and what not to) calculate? Engineering is, after all, the valuable art of making science productive; of providing luscious fruit from dry research; of solving wicked problems.
So it's partly our own fault that we are undervalued - if only we could talk! If we could be passionately eloquent about what we have done, and what we could do, then maybe we could set aside our anoraks and work with our architect friends to create a better built environment: one that is beautiful, functional and efficient; one that people want to live in; one that the planet can afford.
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NO
Piers Heath, Environmental engineer, Foster & Partners
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The valued engineer is the one that is a seamless part of the creative process of designing and building. If engineers are simply given the role of necessary support service to delivering buildings, rather than a force in shaping and influencing their design, they will be destined to feel undervalued.
As an engineer working at Foster & Partners, I am continuing a tradition at the practice going back to the 1970s where sustainable solutions to architecture and planning are designed by an integrated team that includes the expertise of in-house engineers.
Today that integration is more seamless than ever and includes not just engineers but specialist modelling teams, urban planners and others. We are part of the design board that oversees the entire portfolio of work, steering and challenging the architect teams, and bringing combined knowledge to the delivery of sustainable projects.
This integrated approach puts the engineers where they should be, centre stage with the architects. The debate then is not about being undervalued, but about being understood, appreciated and brought into the creative process. The real challenge for engineers is to create the opportunity to be involved in projects from the outset. When engaged in the early analytical stages of design, the impact of their expertise on quality and performance is persuasive.
As the integrated design process becomes the rule rather than the exception, no engineer should use the excuse of feeling undervalued.
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[Building Design 15 April 2011]
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This seems to be a good question to ask if you are an engineer but it is important to keep the roles and duties of each discipline in mind. As a society we relate the aesthetic of a building to the architect and the strength of a building to the engineer. The ability to make something beautiful seems to be intrinsic to a person's nature and is relatively rare. It is disciplined by schooling and experience but it is not taught so much as felt. Architecture is an art expression and the ability to produce good architecture is more mysterious than the production of calculations. Maybe that is why the Architect is named but not the Engineer. Also, both professions would be lost without good detailers.
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