Empathy

Preparing a lecture for Edinburgh University’s Update in Architectural Management Course forced me to reflect on what we mean by the word ‘client’.  And also, what that word means to an Architect - I use a capital letter because the audience were all students about to sit their final professional examinations after at least seven years of study and experience.

 

And for me their critical lesson needs to be the importance of empathy.  We need to see clients as representing people like us, not as representatives of the other.  

By assuming that they share our own drives and foibles, we can begin to identify with each other, and perhaps cease to be divided by a common professional language and simply be united by a common humanity.

 

Descriptions of the briefing and design process tend to use a shorthand of what makes all of the participants different – the unique skill each brings to the project.   I have heard an economist actually say – “as an economist I think this, however, as a human being  . . “

 

What we mean by ‘client’ is someone who is first and foremost another human being.