David or Goliath?

Image by Zeelias65 [click for credits]

These are interesting times. I believe it is the Chinese who use that as a curse, "May you live in interesting times." As an architect it has definitely been interesting for most of the past decade. 

Not too long ago, anywhere from 20% to 40% of us had found ourselves unemployed or underemployed. That has slowly changed, but for a while it looked like the new normal.

The Bad News
The mega-firms dominate the design landscape.
The world we operate in is getting more and more complicated. Is anything less complicated than it was 15 years ago?
Complexity favors the large firm over the small firm even though the 120,000 architects in the United States are still predominantly employed in firms of less than 20 people. Firms of five people are the most common. A pizza shop has more employees.

How to survive? How to flourish?

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