The return of style: Strategies of aesthetics in design management and architecture

Architecture as a practice is bound to social, political, economic and material restrictions. It is only as a cultural discourse that it may gain autonomy, revolving around the question of what do the produced architectural forms actually mean for our contemporary setting as argued by architects, academics, critics/journalists, students or friends of the art. This discussion has its roots in the idea of contemporaneity itself and during the 19th century it was labelled as the “debate on style”. Today, the concept of style is undergoing a reconsideration after its banishment under the realm of modernism and the doctrine of functionalism. In the 21st century, contemporary architecture displays an over-production of forms that need to be managed and branded and in this context style re-emerges as a field of business strategies for architects who are willing to develop the identity of their firm and their designs. This paper investigates contemporary theories of style from the field of design management and their possible application in the field of architecture. A research gap has been identified between a) the vague arthistorical and philosophical concept of style in architectural discourse where it is regarded according to Ackerman, as a self-evident truth upon which our historical conception is based and b) the relatively recent theories of marketing and design management where effort is made to define style as a process of designing or styling strategies that may lead an architecture firm to get a certain positioning in their target environment. The paper will first consider several conceptions of style from the field of design management, then overview the conception of style as it stands in architecture, and thirdly, it will consider the matter of stylistic consistency in architectural practice as the pivotal turn for stylistic strategies. In conclusion mention will be made on the implications of style and its re-invention towards the notion of criticism. The main objective is to point out that the current consideration of style either as a retrospective tool of historical categorization, or as the central object of criticism is undergoing a paradigm shift. More as a tool of marketing than as the result of a collective consensus, style is being employed by architecture firms for their prospective endeavours and market engagement and as such should it be critically looked upon.