Jonas Runberger

Schumacher, Patrik, “Productive Patterns”, in ARCH+ 136, Your Office Is Where You Are, 1997
http://www.patrikschumacher.com

I found this 11 year old text by Zaha Hadid´s 2nd in command very interesting, in the sense that Schumacher looks at organizational theory, and makes links to developments in digital design (of the time). His defines the Parallels as Post-fordism and New architecture (referring to the Folding issue of Architecural Design that I am also referencing in my thesis). He sees a convergence between architectttuuural and managerial vocabularies giving opportunities to find links between these fields.
To certain extents, it is like I have read this text before (but I have not), he is pointing at many issues I have thought a lot about. Still, it is somewhat dated, and as far as I know, he has not pursued this track very much later. I think the issues were brought up as part of the agenda of the AA Design Research Laboratory (a masters program at the AA he is still involved in). Schumacher is also unique in that he posts all his texts on his own website (link above), which is where I found it.
I do find a number of issues that I think it will be worthwhile to pursue, and I list a few below.

• The relation between drawings and diagrams in architecture and diagrams in management (which he calls organigramme, seems to me to be about process modelling)
• He points at direct relationships (not analogical) between socio-economic analysis/management theory and architecture/architectural theory, in the way that architectural effect is completely depending on organization.
• He suggests that the business of architectural consultancy will in itself undergo a change based on post-fordism. This is interesting in that I never heard ov ideas around management at Zaha Hadid.
• He gives an interesting historical presentation of how businesses of scale, in the forming of large corporations, and later suggests a networked business model which dissolves the borders between disciplines and the “proper” professional and academic territories of architecture.
• He makes a similar suggestion for production networks, based on new CAD/CAM technologies.
• He refers a lot to: Burns, T. & Stalker, G.M. , The Management of Innovation, London 1961 all quotes from: Burns, T., Industry in a new age, New Society, Jan. 1963, which is on my reading list
• He discusses open and closed systems in management theory, which is related to the way we have used the terms in the system development with Skanska.
• He discusses business ecologies, in  a similar way that we speak of production ecologies at the AA.

The end part is somewhat locked in the contemporary situation of the  late 90s, but I still think there are many ideas worth pursuing, I may also get in touch with him regarding possible later developments. I do think he is personally very interested in these issues, but he may have been completely immersed in promoting Zaha´s office the past couple of years. He has been suggesting a new –ism, trying to introduce the age of Parametricism in most of his texts since about 2005, which I find less compelling.