Beyond the (archi)stardom: Subject positioning and power relationships in architecture studios

The work processes in architectural firms involve partaking in creative and routine activities as well as dealing with contingencies. Architectural professionals are hence required to parley between the routine, the creative, and the unforeseen in the architectural processes regularly. These parlays are structured through power relations. Using qualitative interviews, we explore the subject positionings and roles of professionals in the work processes of architectural studios in Italy. Our preliminary findings show that the archistars (starchitects) are always solely reference figures. The regular (non-archistar) studio owners and project leaders instead operate in a horizontal organizational structure during regular creative-routine activities. This organizational structure becomes more vertical when confronted with contingencies. For ensuring the credibility and transferability of our findings, the next steps of the study will involve a) completing the analysis of the entire qualitative data set and b) conducting surveys based on identified themes from the qualitative analyses.