Largest Architectural Firms. Design Authorship and Organization Management

This book investigates the importance of organization design and management practices as key elements of creativity in the realm of largest architectural firms. During the Twentieth century, and increasingly over the last decades, the most important design firms started to count hundreds or thousands of employees, having to necessarily structure themselves as real creative companies, managing the interaction between different skills – architects, structural engineers, plant engineers, furniture and product designers, graphic designers, IT experts, model-makers, accountants, legal experts etc. – in order to foster their performance and remain competitive in the market. Such an organizational complexity should not only be understood as a functional element for supporting the design activity, but also as an instrument of creativity in itself. The effective application of managerial skills and the fruitful intersection of different competences are likely to foster innovative design methodologies, opening up new markets and design typologies. In this book, a wide range of international scholars take into account, from different perspectives and field of studies, the organizational structure and design methodology of some of the most important largest design firms in the last century, from the USA to Europe and the Far East, as well as specific analyses on managerial and legal issues.