Overview

The School of Architecture and Planning at the University at Buffalo (UB) is hosting a public lecture by Mark Jarzombek, Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at MIT. The event takes place in Buffalo, New York, and belongs to the fields of architectural history, theory, and the philosophy of professional practice.

Focus

The lecture, titled The Much-Maligned Contractor, examines one of the most persistent and structurally embedded divides in the architecture profession: the separation between architect and contractor. Jarzombek traces this divide to its roots in Hellenistic philosophy and argues that it has shaped the discipline so deeply that it now determines specific outcomes in both modernist and contemporary practice. The talk does not take sides in this divide but seeks to map the fault line and understand its consequences.

This connects directly to questions that practitioners encounter daily on construction sites and in contract negotiations. ArchUp’s coverage of construction practice and the evolving roles of architects, engineers, and contractors provides a grounded reference point for understanding the professional tensions Jarzombek is theorising.

Program

The event is a single public lecture running 90 minutes. Jarzombek will draw on his recent book Architecture Constructed: Notes on a Discipline (Bloomsbury, 2023), which studies the frictions between architect and contractor within the context of Eurocentrism, as well as his broader research into the philosophical underpinnings of architectural practice.

The lecture raises a question that sits at the heart of how architecture is taught and practiced: if the architect-contractor divide is a philosophical construct rather than a practical necessity, what does that mean for how responsibility, authorship, and risk are distributed on building projects? For those tracking how the construction process shapes architectural outcomes, ArchUp’s documentation of the stages of architectural design and the role of contractors in the building process offers a useful practical frame around Jarzombek’s theoretical argument.

“There is nothing that better defines the discipline of architecture than the architecture-contractor divide.”

Jarzombek is also the co-author of A Global History of Architecture (Wiley, 2006) and co-founder of the Office of (Un)certainty Research, whose projects have been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2022 and 2025. Those interested in how professional privilege shapes architectural access will find a relevant parallel in ArchUp’s analysis of architecture as a profession of the privileged, which interrogates the structural conditions that define who enters and shapes the discipline.

Audience

The lecture is open to the public and relevant to architects, historians, theorists, students, and practitioners engaged with the professional, philosophical, and contractual structures that organise architectural practice. It qualifies for AIA continuing education credit.

Event Details

✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight

Jarzombek’s choice to interrogate the architect-contractor divide as a philosophical inheritance rather than a practical arrangement is a productive provocation. Most practitioners experience this divide as an operational reality: the architect designs, the contractor builds, and the tensions between them are managed through contracts, site visits, and RFIs. What Jarzombek proposes is that this operational reality is itself a cultural construct, one with roots in Hellenistic ideas about intellectual versus manual labour, and that it carries ideological weight that the profession has largely failed to examine. This matters because the divide does not distribute responsibility neutrally. It tends to insulate the architect from accountability for buildability, cost, and site conditions while concentrating cultural authority in the design process. Whether tracing this to Hellenistic philosophy changes how practitioners negotiate contracts or manage site relationships is a different question, but the lecture’s value lies precisely in making the invisible architecture of the profession visible. For a discipline that prides itself on critical thinking about space, it has been remarkably uncritical about the structural assumptions of its own practice.

Closing Note

The lecture addresses a structural assumption so embedded in architectural practice that it is rarely examined directly. Its relevance extends to anyone working within or teaching the professional structures of the discipline.