Differing Strategies Architecture Firms Are Using to Position Themselves Overseas
An essay on capturing emerging markets against a colonial backdrop

by Gideon Fink Shapiro

Summary: The impact of the recession has led some firms to reorient their practices toward institutional and government clients, some of which are capable of forging ahead while private developers struggle to get back on their feet. And in the redoubled search for new work, some architects are reaching farther abroad, taking smaller projects in smaller markets, such as South America and Africa.

When the domestic market is saturated, look abroad for new markets and resources. That was a central piece of the logic that led European powers to build overseas empires. In competing to expand their territory in Africa and Asia, they developed at least two different strategies of control. The French typically governed directly through their own officers, while the British tapped into existing social hierarchies. Both powers imported raw materials from their colonies to the home country for manufacturing and sale on the world market.

As the global architecture market draws North American firms farther afield, they are evolving different approaches to working effectively in less developed regions. These firms are of course not out to dominate territory or redirect local economies but to bring needed expertise to the design of modern hospitals, schools, hotels, and infrastructure. They benefit not by extracting natural resources and selling industrial goods to a captive market, but by diversifying their client base and positioning themselves to receive future commissions in emerging markets.

Clinica Pasteur, Quito, Ecuador. Photo courtesy Perkins Eastman.

Empire was never cheap, and neither is expanding an architecture practice to encompass remote regions. It takes financial muscle and international prestige to win clients in developing countries, who pay a premium not only for foreign architectural services but for extra travel and communication costs. And the risks are higher when you're an outsider. "Most of us who work internationally have experienced how quickly conditions can change," wrote Bradford Perkins, FAIA, principal chairman and CEO of Perkins Eastman, in his 2007 book An Introduction to International Practice. Even after a heady decade-plus of capital investment and construction in countries such as China, UAE, and India, most North American architects don't venture south of the equator.

A new office becomes a standalone
Those that do are often members of the largest firms. For example, Perkins Eastman announced the opening of a new office in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in October 2008, just a week after the stock market's precipitous fall. The firm has a history of involvement in South America and acted on an opportunity to take over an existing Guayaquil practice with local know-how and workflow. "We don't go into a place sight unseen and just start doing business," says Jonathan N. Stark, AIA, principal and managing director of the firm’s overseas offices. In addition to building on the existing client base in the region, Perkins Eastman planned to use the 10-person office as an outsourcing station for the busy North American offices. But as the recession hit, recounts Stark: "We became reluctant to send work out of our offices in the States because we needed it here." So Guayaquil became a self-sustaining branch of the firm. Led by Stephen Forneris, AIA, it has continued to market directly to clients in Latin America, receiving commissions for institutional, hospitality, retail, and healthcare facilities.

Perkins+Will has taken another approach to operating in Africa and Southeast Asia. Instead of investing in a permanent office, as they did in London, Dubai, and Shanghai, they began collaborating with a firm that was already equipped to work there, Dar Al-Handasah. "The value that we bring is primarily in the upfront planning and design development," says William Doerge, managing principal for the firm's international practice. Doerge spoke to AIArchitect from outside Luanda, Angola, where the firm is eight years into a major university master-planning and design project. The Universidade Agostinho Neto will unite the nine scattered schools of the national university system into a new centralized campus eventually serving around 40,000 students. As Angola continues rebuilding from its 30-year civil war, says Doerge, the university represents important "cultural infrastructure" that will allow the country to educate its own professionals instead of sending them abroad. Implementation of the phased master plan is expected to continue over the next 15-20 years.

Forneris predicted to Architectural Record last November that the effects of the recession would be less severe in Ecuador, since credit was tight even in boom times. Similarly, the Brazilian architect Luciano Margotto said in March: "Here the crisis is not too tough since the euphoria was never too great.” But just because the contrast between pre- and post-recession conditions is less marked in some regions, work opportunities are not necessarily easier to come by. "The African markets are reacting to the same thing that's affecting the developed markets," says Doerge.

Grupo Eljuri Building, Quito, Ecuador. Photo courtesy Perkins Eastman.

A radically different model is embodied by Coloco, a small studio based in Paris whose work was featured in the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale. Blending architectural installations, urbanistic experiments, publications, and community planning, Coloco has completed projects in Libya, Brazil, and Senegal as well as Europe. Coloco does not wait to be invited to a new location by a client in the conventional sense. Instead, the three partners launch projects as investigations of problems that they observe and document. In Rio de Janeiro, for example, they focused on the self-organizing communities that inhabit the city's incomplete, abandoned high-rise "skeleton" buildings. More recently, they have proposed a continuous "Greenbelt" of public parks through the city of Tripoli, Libya.

Doerge says Perkins+Will is one of the only North American-based architecture firms working in sub-Saharan Africa. He encounters British firms building embassies in east African capitals, and notes the steady stream of professional services flowing from South Africa. The paradox of working in developing countries as a foreign expert is that you may begin to facilitate your own redundancy. "As markets mature, they start developing their own local architects who will service that need at a lower cost," observes Doerge.

The old imperial powers addressed that problem by prohibiting their colonies from refining the resources they supplied, such as rubber or sugar. Today's global architectural services market is thankfully much less constricted, as ideas and staff cross borders with spectacular fluidity. Whether a given North American firm will profit by venturing into less developed or "unspoiled" markets abroad depends on developing local connections, a ready client base, and, in the words of Doerge, "an ability to listen, understand people and cultures."