Professional practice in architecture has long had an international component and a cosmopolitan

outlook. The international reach of architecture as a profession was established well before World
War II by the commissions of leading practitioners such as Albert Kahn and Le Corbusier. It was
consolidated by Philip Johnson and Henry Russel Hitchcock's promotion of the idea of an
'International Style'; by the international migration of Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and others;
by the Athens Charter published by CIAM (the Congrés Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne); and
by the colonial practices of British, French, and Italian architects. After World War II it was further
propagated by the commissions of successive generations of leading practitioners-Louis Kahn, Eero
Saarinen, and so on; and, more prosaically, by some large U.S. architecture and engineering (A&E)
firms, such as CRS, whose commissions derived from the U.S. government's foreign aid projects (many
of them focused on infrastructure projects and 'tied' to the participation of U.S. firms) and from the
neo-colonial investments of U.S. corporations.

But until recently most practices have been organized around a local, regional, or national framework.
Globalization has changed all that. Enabled by digital and telecommunications technologies, by
advanced international business services, and by the emergence of clients with transnational
operations and a cosmopolitan sensibility, the portfolio of many architecture firms has an
international component and the scope of operations of many of the largest firms is now truly global.
The purposes of this article are to describe the current extent and pattern of global architectural
practice and to explore its implications for architectural education.

Sixteen years ago the United States National Research Council anticipated the globalization of
architectural practice. The joint report of the Committee on the International Construction Industry of
the Building Research Board and the Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems of the
National Research Council1 pointed to the challenges for higher education associated with the
expected globalization of the construction industry and the related design and engineering
professions. In terms of architectural education, the report emphasized the need for students to
acquire greater knowledge of foreign languages and to have a better idea of world geography, history,
culture, and business practices, and suggested that the Fulbright Program should be expanded to
encourage more architects and engineers to gain exposure to other cultures. 2 The research
reported here provides an initial indication of the scale and spatial organization of the globalization of
architectural practice, most of which has taken place since the Research Council's report was
published.

GLOBALIZATION, WORLD CITIES, AND PROFESSIONAL

SERVICES

The first wave of corporate globalization, in the 1970s, was led by manufacturing giants like
General Motors and General Electric, whose global reach had the triple objectives of reducing
labor costs, outflanking national labor unions, and increasing overseas market penetration. In
the 1980s, as the globalization of manufacturing spread and the information economy began
to grow, the leading firms in advanced business services-accountancy, advertising, banking,
and law - established global networks of their own. As these leading service firms themselves
became global corporations in the 1990s, they developed global servicing strategies through
locating offices in many cities across the world. Such cities, operating as part of a worldwide
network, have been termed world or global cities.3

Architecture firms have been slower to go global, but the sustained economic boom of the
1990s saw many larger firms extend their operations through office networks that are
international in scope. By 2002 the largest firms, such as Nikken Sekkei, HOK, and Gensler,
had dozens of overseas projects scattered across every continent except Antarctica. Even
smaller firms, like Architectural Resources (Cambridge, USA), Wilson Mason (London, United
Kingdom), Theofanis Bobotis and Associates (Athens, Greece), and Hayball Leonard Stent
(Southbank, Australia), each with 20 or fewer fee-earning architects on staff, had international
projects on their books.

The economic logic of globalization had induced a global outlook that is manifest in two
practice developments. First, many US- and European-based firms had begun to take
advantage of international outsourcing, drawing on pools of skilled but inexpensive labor in
South Asia and the Pacific Rim. Second, with an international clientele, firms developed global
office networks to serve an increasingly complex market. There has been very little systematic
empirical research on either of these processes. In this paper we focus of the office network
development of a sample of the largest architecture firms in 2002, focusing on firms with global
strategies. We define a global strategy as a network of offices that includes locations on at
least three continents. The development of these firms has been reminiscent of the
globalization of advanced business service practices briefly described above, and we use
recent research on these advanced business service office networks as markers against which
to compare the new global dimensions of architectural practice.

The literature on the globalization of advanced business services shows that although different
sectors such as accounting, advertising, banking, and law have different clienteles and
different market imperatives, the same world cities have become key nodes for the networks of
business that drive and shape globalization.4 Thus, cities such as London, New York, Tokyo
and Paris have become global service centers, nodes that organize the servicing of today's
hyper-mobile global capital. A world city network has emerged, concentrated in three main
regions - northern America, western Europe and Pacific Asia - but with cities across the world
linking their region or country into the network.5

Major architectural firms, like their advanced service counterparts, are traditionally
city-centered and have recently developed multi-city presences. In this paper we examine the
extent to which the globalization of architectural practice has adopted the city network of
advanced business services as its spatial framework, and analyze the particular specificities
that architectural firms bring to evolving world city networks. The argument unfolds in three
steps:

 First, we consider the global strategies of architectural firms to show they have similar
motives to other firms in their choosing to 'go global'.
 Second, global practices are described as a basic world geography of where global
architectural firms have their offices.
 Third, we produce a more sophisticated geography by employing multivariate statistics
to identify 'global arenas' in which global architectural firms perform their practice. In
the conclusion, we relate our findings to current issues in architectural education.

GLOBAL STRATEGIES

The pursuit of global markets for architectural services goes well beyond the setting up of
project-based offices for overseas clients. As reflected in the extensive literature on
international business management, strategic intent in the global marketplace involves a range
of possibilities and varies from industry to industry. 6 Faced with a globalizing economy, firms
must address how best to complement competitive advantages that have been developed in
home markets with additional advantages that can be gained from worldwide operations. For
advanced business and professional services, the relevant options include mergers, strategic
alliances, joint ventures, and the creation of overseas regional and national offices of various
kinds, all of which have contributed to the contemporary development of a world city network.
The globalization of advanced financial and business service firms was initially a reaction to
the global practices of clients. If, say, a law firm or advertising agency wished to keep the
business of a major corporation, it had to be able to provide its services where that corporation
required them. If this international trend in corporate activities had remained small-scale, then
the required services might have been provided as a one-off arrangement with a respected
local firm. But such stop-gap practices ultimately proved inadequate. Thus business service
firms followed their clients along the globalization path in the late 1970s and especially in the
1980s. This meant creating an office network to match clients' needs. After a while some
business service firms used their global office network to win more clients in new markets. By
the 1990s, many firms could offer a 'seamless service' across the world which was attractive to
clients, old and new, and also allowed for quality control. Business service firms became
'global brands' whose integrity required protection: this could not be guaranteed through
arrangements with local firms. Hence expanding office networks to provide worldwide
servicing capabilities became necessary. In this way, global strategies by major service firms
created a world city network.7

Selected cities thus operate as global service centers, knowledge-rich environments where
global, regional, national and local market information intersects with new professional,
business and creative ideas.8 Detailed empirical analyses have shown that London and New
York dominate this world city network with other important cities located in the United States
(Chicago and Los Angeles), western Europe (Paris and Milan) and Pacific Asia (Tokyo, Hong
Kong, and Singapore).9Generally, there is a greater density of leading world cities in western
Europe (Madrid, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Brussels, Zürich). Elsewhere in the world there are
major cities acting as 'gateways' to regional and national economies (e.g. São Paulo, Mexico
City, Mumbai, Moscow, Sydney, Toronto and Johannesburg). A basic question to be asked is
the degree to which architectural firms have adhered to this established world city network in
the recent globalization of their practices.

There are reasons to think that architectural firms will have globalized differently from
advanced financial and business service firms. First of all, despite their growth in recent years,
most major architectural firms remain smaller than the equivalent advanced business service
firms. Obviously this makes provision of a global office network more difficult. Reinforcing this
is the project-based nature of architectural practice. Although advanced business services are
to some degree project based - an advertising campaign, a complex legal merger case -
architectural work is inherently more 'lumpy' over time with potentially profound implications for
global strategy. Nevertheless, if we look at the way in which leading architectural firms project
themselves on their web sites we find that they use globalization discourses that closely mimic
prior globalizers in financial and business services. Four themes regularly appear when firms
describe their global strategies.

1. They have been very client-led. For instance, the US company EDAW is explicit that
its location strategy is a response to the global nature of their clients'
business.10 Similarly, the Japanese company Kajima Design recorded a significant
increase in international operations in the 1980s and subsequently reorganized by
setting up 'regional subsidiary companies' in response to a growing customer base
across the world.11 This story is repeated time and again. HOK Group argue that
geographical expansion to serve clients has been important.12 For AEDAS, it is stated
that increasing numbers of their clients need a more global approach because they
are competing in a world arena.13 CH2M Hill explain the practice rationale behind
global strategy: their 200 offices around the world are in place because 'personal
relationships are important for results.'14
2. Seamless service enriches solutions for clients. Going global is not seen as simply an
aggregative process. Rather, a new vision of a global holistic practice is presented.
Thus EDAW claim to be a 'firm without walls' because its offices work together as a
seamless whole. For HOK Group sophisticated technology allows their employees to
 work as one 'virtual office.' Gensler embarked on a 'new identity program' in 1995
(including name change) to reflect their expanded office network enabling every client
to benefit from the firm's 'innovative design and technical proficiency' regardless of
location.15 Similarly, NBBJ operate through sharing resources across geographical
locations.16 The promise behind these visions is, as AEDAS describe their 'global
perspective,' to provide a consistent level of delivery in different geographical
locations.
3. Global advantages are coupled with local knowledge. Worldwide services do not
translate into neglect of the local; with AEDAS their global perspective is accompanied
by 'locally driven solutions.' They claim to provide clients with 'all that is expected from
a global player in terms of expertise, international design flair, security and client
service but with the invaluable additional benefit of real local knowledge.' More
prosaically, Woods Bagot use their office network to 'service global clients
regionally'17 and Bovis Lend Lease offer both global and local capabilities by
combining 'local knowledge with extensive global resources.'18 A. Epstein &
Sons have coined the phrase 'think globally and create locally' to describe their
strategy.19 Clearly there is a global-local nexus at the heart of architectural global
strategies.
4. There are contrasting global strategies along a generalist/specialist divide. Certain
firms combine their global presence with offering a comprehensive package of
services. For instance, Kajima Design offices are billed as 'full-service architectural
organizations.' NBBJ claim to have become one of the world leaders in design by
creating 'process design' which maps a success path for each project. The classic
case is Bovis Lend Lease which offers the capability to manage the entire property life
cycle from planning through to development and implementation. Other firms,
however have sought out niches in the world market for architectural services: Peddle
Thorp in tourism, leisure and entertainment;20 Woods Bagot in health, education,
transport and retail; Halcrow Group in transport, water and property sectors;21 HLW
International in media;22 TY Lin International in transportation
infrastructure;23 and Wimberly A T & G in hotels, resorts, leisure and
entertainment.24 Put simply, there are many strategies behind establishing a global
practice.

This preliminary look at global architectural strategy certainly suggests that these firms will not
differ greatly in their global location practices from advanced business service firms. However,
even within advanced business services, different sectors, with their contrasting histories and
uses of cities, have globalized in distinctive ways. For instance, banking/finance beyond
London and New York has a very Pacific Asian bias whereas management consultancy is
especially strong in US cities. Thus we can expect architectural practice to broadly adhere to
the world city network of global service centers but with some strategic location specificities
reflecting the particular route to globalization of architectural practice.

DATA COLLECTION: ARCHITECTURAL FIRMS IN WORLD

CITIES

For comparative reasons, data collection has been modeled on that previously carried out for
analyses of the global organization of advanced business service firms. 25 This involves
constructing a simple 'business service values' matrix, arraying the offices of selected global
firms across a large number of important cities worldwide. The 'business service values'
indicate how important a particular city is deemed to be within the overall office network of a
firm. This is coded as numeric scores ranging from 0 (no importance, i.e. no office in that city)
to 5 (the most important city in the office network, i.e. housing the firm's headquarters or
decision making center). For this study, a similar matrix arraying architectural firms across
cities in terms of 'architectural practice values' has been constructed; specific details of the
construction are given in the Appendix.

The architectural practice values matrix comprises the office networks of 21 architectural firms
across 65 cities worldwide. Each cell indicates the importance of a city to a particular firm's
global office strategy. Interpretation of this matrix is quite straightforward. Each column of
values represents a codification of a firm's global strategy in the sense of where its leading
offices are, where else it is present, and where it is absent. Each row of values represents the
mix of architectural firms in a city, which are there, which are not, and which have important
offices. In other words this is a simple data array representing the globalization of architecture
practice.

How does this matrix compare to the equivalent service values matrix? The matrix used for the
analyses reported here is somewhat smaller than that used for studying the global
organization of advanced business services. For the latter there were 100 firms and 123 cities,
reflecting the more widespread and deeper globalization of business services. Nevertheless,
the matrix we have created for architectural practices is large: it consists of 1365 architectural
practice scores. This is more than enough to obtain a first glimpse of the new global geography
of architectural practices both through initial mapping and by applying multivariate analyses.

A BASIC GEOGRAPHY OF GLOBAL PRACTICES

To measure the importance of each of the 65 cities for global architectural practice, we simply
sum the firms' practice values for each city. This exercise shows London to be by far the
leading city with a total of 51, followed by New York and San Francisco on 26. There are 9
cities with scores of over 20 and these are listed in Table 1. We can think of these as the
premier architectural practice cities. Note that they broadly conform to the geography of global
advanced business services: 8 of the 9 are from western Europe, USA and Pacific Asia.
However, although predictably including the 'big 3 cities' from Pacific Asia, the distribution
between Europe and the USA is unexpectedly very lop-sided: London is joined by no other
European city whereas there are four US cities listed. The other surprise is Melbourne.
Although not an insubstantial global service center, it is by no means in the top rank globally
and is not even first ranked for business services within Australia.

This top stratum of architectural global cities can only be understood if we view them in context
with the remaining 56 cities. Using practice value sums the other cities are divided into four
other strata and these are mapped in Figure 1. Three things immediately emerge from this
global distribution. First, the importance of the USA and Pacific Asia with respect to western
Europe is confirmed: numerous western European cities are depicted but, after London, they
all only figure in the bottom two strata. Second, Melbourne in the top stratum is not a
geographical aberration; other Australian cities appear as important cities of architectural
practice. Third, middle-eastern cities are relatively well represented in the middle strata, with
more cities at this level than western Europe! Finally a few cities appear from other world
regions, but the numbers are quite small and there is no representation at all in sub-Saharan
Africa and central Asia.

This basic geography of architectural practice provides several strong hints about the nature of
this particular dimension of globalization. Most obviously it appears to be a market-led process
that concentrates global architectural practice in leading cities in four regions: USA, Pacific
Asia, Australia and the Middle East. These regional markets are very different: US cities
represent a long-term tradition of large-scale building renewal and development; Pacific Asia
has been the boom region of contemporary globalization with development focused upon its
major cities; Australia possibly represents a smaller version of the US cities process; and the
Middle East is a region of concentrated wealth creating political clients who are trying to boost
their local cities. The latter two interpretations do not correspond with findings on global
service centers: neither Australia nor the Middle East is as important in this larger globalization
and therefore we keep an open mind about what is going on in these two cases of architectural
practice concentration. But the demotion of western European cities from constituting a
leading global services region to playing a minor role in global architectural practices does
seem to be clear-cut. For instance, Paris always appears in the top 5 world cities for global
advanced business services; here it scores a paltry 7 for the architectural practice sum. While
London is clearly 'the global place to be' for global architectural practice, it may be that
London's preeminence casts a 'shadow effect' on other western European cities: it has been
demonstrated that New York has this effect for advanced business services in the United
States.26 However, this can only remain a hypothesis; all we know from Figure 1 is that London
is the outstanding city of global architectural practice in western Europe with no rivals
whatsoever.

This is as far as a basic geography can take us in our interpretation of this globalization. We
need a more sophisticated geographical analysis to take the argument forward and tie up
some of the loose ends identified above.

DATA ANALYSIS: DELINEATING PATTERNS OF GLOBAL

PRACTICE

We use principal components analysis (see Appendix) to identify distinctive patterns of office
networks among our sample of large architecture firms. Principal components analysis is a
multivariate statistical technique that reduces large data matrices to a few major dimensions of
variability.27 It is commonly used to delineate distinctive patterns that are latent within data but
which are lost in simple aggregations such as the summing of practice values in the previous
section. Principal components analysis uses correlations between variables in a data matrix to
cluster like-variables (our firms) and like-cases (our cities) together. Each separate cluster
defines a principal component, a dimension of common variability. In our analysis, firms with
similar patterns of offices across cities will describe a particular component, a distinctive
(statistically separate) common pattern of global architectural practice.

Principal components analysis reveals a prime structure in our data that comprises four
components that between them account for 48.7% of the total variance. Thus we reduce 21
individual global strategies into just four general patterns of strategy. Although this is a very
parsimonious solution, it covers a little less than half the variation in the data. Naturally we
would have liked to have captured more variance but it appears to be the nature of this
particular aspect of globalization that there are many unique features to the global strategies of
architectural firms. Perhaps this reflects the fact that the globalization of architectural practice
is in its early stages. Nevertheless, to find just four common patterns covering almost one half
of the architectural practices in our sample shows that a definite spatial configuration is
emerging.

The four components divide into two pairs in terms of their importance. Two 'major'
components account for 16% and 15.4% of the total variance respectively, and two 'minor'
components account for 8.9% and 8.4% respectively. The key statistics for each pair are
presented in Tables 2 and 3. The listed cities are used to label the components; we call them
the architectural practice arenas. The geography is reasonably clear-cut: we have found a
Global City Arena, an Austral-Asian Arena, a Middle Eastern Arena and a US Domestic Arena.
We will describe them in order of importance.

GLOBAL ARENAS OF ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE

The Global City Arena (Table 2) is based upon the top four US world cities (New York, Los
Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco) plus London and Tokyo. The two leading global cities,
London and New York, have the highest scores. This unequivocally reflects a practice location
strategy that concentrates offices in the world's top cities. It is primarily the product of leading
US architectural firms. For instance HOK is the largest US architectural practice (second
largest worldwide), originating in St Louis, it has followed its clients to become global. Gensler
perhaps shows the typical expansion pattern: from its San Francisco base, it opened its New
York office in 1979, its London office in 1988 and its Tokyo office in 1993. In 1995 it promoted
a new global identity and changed its name in the process. HLW of New York made its name
originally with skyscraper design in the 1920s, from 1985-2000 there was a dramatic change in
its client base and today it assists developers globally with urban design and high rise
development. NBBJ of Seattle originally became the leading North West practice but, in the
1990s, they became world leaders with their 'process design' approach which projected them
as new global players in the market. RTKL started in Annapolis and Epstein in Chicago and
both now have a world-wide presence. Kajima of Tokyo is the only non-US firm listed in Table
2; its strategy is obviously similar to those described above, for instance, by setting up
subsidiary design companies in London and New York as part of its global strategy. The end
result of these various global strategies has been to create a very clear-cut architectural arena
centered on the top strata of world cities.

The Austral-Asian Arena (Table 2) is another clearly defined arena, this time regional rather
than by city status. Of the 8 cities listed, 4 are from Pacific Asia and three are from Australia,
with London making up the numbers. This relates to two features from Table 1: first, the
'extra-regional' appearance of London in this component reflects the city's dominance in the
organization of global architectural practice, and second, the position of Melbourne at the top
of the list confirms its surprising appearance as a leading city for global architectural practice.
To a large degree this global practice arena has been created by Australian architectural firms
taking advantage of growing markets in the Pacific Asian boom region. The Sydney firm
Peddle Thorp, for instance, grew initially as a leading Australian practice but with the end of
the post World War II boom it turned its attention to successful Asian economies for new
opportunities to sustain growth. In 1972 it collaborated with a leading local firm to satisfy the
demand for architectural expertise in a rapidly modernizing Singapore. Later it used the same
strategy in Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong. The Adelaide firm, Woods Bagot, has a similar
record of expansion from Australia to Pacific Asia. Aedas is a British company that has
focused its growth in Pacific Asia and Australia. Bovis Lend Lease exhibits a mix of the
previous processes: Bovis, a British firm with Asian and Australian business, was taken over
by an Australian firm, Lend Lease, in 1999 to create a truly global enterprise but with a
geographical bias to Australia and Pacific Asia. Australian operations began early, in 1951;
Singapore was entered in 1973, by 1981 it was in Malaysia where one of its projects was the
Petronas Twin Towers. EDAW and CH2H Hill are US firms with major trans-Pacific
expansions. The end-result of these related expansion strategies is a major architectural
global arena within a clearly defined world macro-region.

Neither of these major components has much affinity to the advanced business service fields
found in components analyses of global business service firms. 28 There is no case where all
the top cities come together as in component I above: it would seem that, for architectural
services, global cities have a specific 'global city' market and attraction. With advanced
business services, Australian cities contribute to 'old Commonwealth' patterns, with little or no
linkage to Asian cities to the north: it would seem that Australian architectural firms have taken
advantage of booming Pacific Asian cities and carved out a market for themselves in a way
that Australian business service firms were never able to achieve. The latter is impressive
when it is noted that Tokyo and its firms do not figure in this practice arena. Tokyo and Kajima
are part of the Global City arena and not part of their local geographical practice arena.

The Middle Eastern Arena (Table 3) is another geographical practice arena, with 6 out of its 9
cities from the Middle East, including the top 4. On this occasion New York joins with London
as an extra-regional global city presence. The other city in the list, Kuala Lumpur, has
religious-cultural links to the Middle East. The regional expansion process operating here is of
Mediterranean Arab practices taking advantages of the oil wealth and resultant opportunities in
the Arabian Peninsula. Both Dar Al-Handasah29 and Khatib & Alami30 are Beirut firms with
global strategies on a Middle East foundation. The former first expanded throughout the
Middle East in the 1970s and main design headquarters were established in London and Cairo.
Its main expansion came with meeting the construction needs of 1980s modernization in the
Middle East. This company now has 50 offices worldwide, Khatib & Alami remain more
concentrated in the Middle East. The end result of these global strategies is the creation of a
very distinctive geographical practice arena.

The US Domestic Arena (Table 3) is the most geographically concentrated of all practice
arenas. Note that the USA's three global cities, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, are not
listed. This is parallel to Tokyo's absence from the Austral-Asian arena: the main cities of the
region/country are part of the Global City arena rather than their local geographical arena.
Note also that this is the only arena in which London does not appear. This leaves San
Francisco and Washington as the cities that dominate this arena. The global strategies
described here all have a strong US foundation. The firms are all American, the two with lower
loadings also appearing in the Global City component. The end result of these strategies is the
maintenance of a domestic practice arena within globalization.

These two minor arenas differ in their relation to previously defined service fields. The Middle
Eastern arena is unique to architectural practice, no doubt reflecting the different nature of the
clientele: as well as corporate clients shared with other services, architecture can still find rich
patrons in traditional states. In contrast, the US arena is similar to the organization of global
business service networks, where US cities also appear as a separate grouping.31 In this case,
for both architecture and advanced business services, the US market is so large within the
global economy that it facilitates a safe global strategy based upon keeping a large domestic
portfolio.

Finally, we need to comment on what is missing from this identification of global arenas of
architectural practice: western Europe. This omission provides a stark contrast with global
analyses of advanced business services, where European cities dominate several
professional fields. Previously we noted the low involvement of European cities after London
(Table 1), and this has translated into there being no European dimension to our component
findings. Using an exploratory approach to principal components analysis 32 involving
searching through extractions of different numbers of components still failed to yield a
discernable European component: it is clear that the globalization of architectural practice has
not built a western European arena. Clearly continental Europe has not been a region of
extensive architectural opportunities in the recent past as compared to Pacific Asia, the USA,
and even the Middle East. It seems that long established modern commercial cities collectively
have not generated a key market for architectural services under conditions of contemporary
globalization. Note that this includes US cities from the northeast, such as Boston, that are
conspicuous by their absence from the US Domestic arena. Of course, London and New York
are special in global terms and are exempt from the scope of this hypothesis. Quite simply, the
bottom line is the bottom line: western European and northeastern US cities have globally
significant markets in advanced business services but are relatively insignificant as markets for
architectural services.

DISCUSSION: GLOBALIZATION AND ARCHITECTURAL

EDUCATION

Our analysis has established the lineaments of one key dimension of global practice: the
inter-continental networks of offices established by large firms. This, of course, reflects the
meta-scale organization of international architectural practice, rather than the aggregate
amount and pattern(s) of international practice. It leaves unaddressed some important and
intriguing questions: What is the nature of the work and the magnitude of the fees involved?
Who exactly are the professionals that are engaged in international work and what is their
educational and professional background? What are the patterns of work undertaken by firms
whose international networks of offices do no extend to three or more continents? And do
large A&E firms have significantly different strategies from cutting-edge design firms?

What is clear, however, is that architectural practice now has a significant dimension that is
truly global and that is somewhat distinctive in comparison with patterns of globalization
associated with advanced business services. While the 'arenas' of practice that emerge from
multivariate analysis suggest that the globalization of architectural practice is at a relatively
early stage, it is clear that a definite spatial configuration is emerging as a result of the
international strategies of large firms. These large firms-which in North America employ a high
proportion of the circa 4,500 graduates each year from accredited schools of Architecture-are
increasingly drawn into international projects through the dynamics of global business, and
many of them already have a truly global network (using our 3-continent criterion) of
operations.

The implications for architectural education are profound. Boyer and Mitgang, in the
introduction to their review of architectural education and practice, noted that the combination
of globalization and computerization "has implications for architecture education that many
schools are only beginning to confront."33 These implications are conspicuously absent from
the body of their report, however, and consequently they offer no recommendations or
concrete examples of how they might be confronted. Moreover, with professional registration
and accreditation dominated as they are by organizations whose membership base and frame
of reference is small firms, there are severe constraints on schools of architecture in meeting
the challenge of providing curricula that prepare students for professional practice in a
transnational (rather than a parochial) arena.

Nevertheless, there is arguably plenty of scope within the National Architectural Registration
Board's 12 Conditions and 37 Performance Criteria for curricula to accommodate some
knowledge of business practices and an understanding of world geography, history, and
culture, as advocated by the United States National Research Council sixteen years ago.
Indeed, many universities in the United States do in fact address these issues-traditionally via
required courses on professional practice, with elective courses and seminars on topics in
history and urbanism and with opportunities for study abroad and student exchanges. It would
help, of course, if there were something equivalent in scope, funding, and organization to the
European Union's Socrates II program that includes the Erasmus scheme,34 which supports
an international student credit transfer scheme (ECTS: the European Credit Transfer System)
as well as international student and faculty exchanges, the joint development of study
programs, and thematic networks between departments across Europe. Improved language
skills are another matter. While globalization has made English the professional and
commercial linga franca, it has also intensified the expectation that professionals at a certain
level should exhibit a degree of cosmopolitanism that extends, at minimum, to a few social
courtesies and some technical reading ability in a second language. Foreign language
teaching is an appallingly weak aspect of the US education system, but by college years it may
be too late and in any case there is insufficient room in accredited curricula to redress the
degree of deficiency. College admissions requirements may be the only effective means of
addressing the language issue.

Meanwhile, if a university education from an accredited professional program is expected to

prepare graduates for success in a globalizing profession, then universities must also consider
strategies that parallel the global strategies of firms themselves. The pace, scale, and scope of
global change require, in any event, a capacity on the part of scholars and researchers that is
equivalent to that of large and cutting-edge firms. Just as firms benefit from international
strategic alliances in production and marketing, so universities can benefit from strategic
alliances that involve significant numbers of faculty in collaborative research, in offering
advanced, specialized degrees, and in faculty development initiatives. Such alliances imply
cooperation and collaboration both among disciplines and might also extend to involve
private-sector firms, public agencies, and NGOs. They would extend the capacity of individual
schools and enrich the learning environment of students.

On the other hand, there is an argument to be made that undergraduate education in general
and first professional degrees in particular cannot really be expected to furnish the kind of
knowledge and experience requisite to international practice. The argument here is that work
experience and internship programs are the appropriate settings for professional development,
especially with regard to the need for capacity-building in management and leadership-an
issue that has recently been a topic of priority for the AIA's Large Firm Round Table.35 Still,
there is scope here to think about contributions from the universities-if not within
undergraduate and/or first professional degrees then in innovative (for architecture) programs
such as an Executive Masters degree or Executive Certificate programs.

Finally, we must acknowledge that the issues are compounded by another key dimension of
global practice: international outsourcing. Little systematic knowledge exists of the patterns,
flows, or levels of international outsourcing (here is another important research topic).
Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence suggests that many European and North American firms are
turning to international outsourcing for working drawings and 3D visualizations-partly because
of the reduced costs, and partly because of the increased speed of production when routine
tasks are outsourced to overseas firms for overnight completion. More than 4,300 jobs in
architecture, art, and design were moved offshore from the United States in 2000; but the
figure for 2005 is expected to be close to 38,000.36 Many of these will be middle-tier jobs in
architecture-it has been suggested that as many as 14,000 architecture jobs will be moved
offshore from the United States by 2007 as more complex tasks are outsourced. 37 Whatever
the actual number, it calls into question the emphasis on entry-level skills that are often the
focus of small firms, registration boards, and accrediting agencies. With routine tasks (and
jobs) already moving offshore, and large firms developing transnational, heterarchical
organizations, it follows that our curricula should accommodate and foster leadership skills as
well as the language skills and geographical and cultural knowledge base advocated by the
United States National Research Council sixteen years ago.