On time within an architectural community

Introduction

Architecture is understood historically as beyond time, providing reassurance that the built environment is reliable and stable, rather than collapsing around us (Crysler, 1995). Thus it serves as a literal and metaphorical figure for permanence, foundation, structure, hierarchy ‒ and repression (Hill, 2006: 54; Hollier, 2000; Wigley, 1992). Architecture’s recent history is punctuated by texts considering architecture as having “various times” (Solà-Morales, 2002), as evident in how it changes, weathers, and is used (Till, 2009: 104). However, a rethinking of its temporal dimension also includes the practice of making architecture; and how this occurs through negotiation, drawing, visiting sites – varied activities – which extends how we understand the design of architecture as being conceived by one person in a single space; but rather, as distributed through space and time. According to Stan Allen (2009), the temporality of architectural practice relies on the various bodies involved, whose interplay and connections cohere to produce effects (pp. 3–7). This illustrates a shift towards understanding architecture as “with time” through the practice itself or through the temporality of the built environment. However, while the relation between time and architecture is explored in discourse, architecture mostly lacks from discussions of time in other disciplines. This paper draws from often-unspoken research of social time in architecture, yet which enables a more direct connection with other disciplines.

From the discussion of when to have a child in relation to a career (now, later, maybe never); to the looks of colleagues as you leave work early to pick up your child; to the professor in the architectural studio rewarding with a smile those students who had sacrificed their night to complete a project: these illustrate the social dimension of architectural time. It is multiple, divergent and contradictory; but its expectations and different values have the potential to clash (Bastian, 2013: 218). Such stories, as in other disciplines, may facilitate a discussion of social time.

Architecture’s “long working-hours” culture and the corresponding lack of “work–life balance” has received attention for its negative effect on the profession. Some recent research indicates how long work hours and work–life imbalance, along with other factors, impact on architects’ wellbeing (Sang et al., 2009: 290), influence architects to leave the profession (De Graft-Johnson et al., 2005), and to enter into self-employment (Caven, 2005). Furthermore, this culture continues to be especially disadvantageous for women in the profession (Fowler and Wilson, 2004: 102). Their survey findings suggest, “many, especially women … [concluded] that it was almost impossible to have a family life and be highly successful, because of long office hours, which excluded much domestic juggling between children and work” (Fowler and Wilson, 2004: 114). Thus, the limited progression of women in the profession reflects its structural and normative ideas, which in turn serve to perpetuate “gendered (masculinist) expectations of both work and non-working life” (Fowler and Wilson, 2004; Sang et al., 2014: 11).

The long-hours culture begins long before entering architectural practice: “[t]he time demands of the architecture school are an important part of its folklore” (Crysler, 1995: 212; see also Cuff, 1991: 122). Crysler (1995) goes on to describe the attitudes towards time in architectural education as “unmoving, stagnant temporarily” in such a way that “it seems outside of time itself” (p. 212). The naturalness, and lack of questioning of the culture dovetails for Crysler into another temporality, which frames architectural education: the expectation of frantic productivity. Its norm is that architectural students are heavily burdened with expectations of producing the new, as well as establishing themselves as stars.

In this paper we consider various ways that students, academics and professionals in the discipline negotiate time. In the first section we define our theoretical approach to time. In the second we introduce and situate a survey carried out in Wellington, New Zealand that underlies the paper. Then, after briefly situating studio and architectural practice, we focus on responses by students, academics and architects to evaluate the diverse attachments to time that different groups in the architectural community have. In conclusion, this paper seeks to make evident the heterogeneity of temporal experience visible across a discipline which reminds us that the norms of time are negotiated.

Theoretical framework: Chrononormativity and agency

Recent theory has provided provocative questions around time (Chakrabarty, 2000; Freeman, 2010; Grosz, 2004). Freeman (2010), for example, helps us to consider how we are organized socially around notions of normative time, which she calls chrononormativity. She describes it as the “interlocking temporal schemes necessary for genealogies of descent and for the mundane workings of everyday life” (Freeman, 2010: xxiii). Her work focuses on how normative ideas of time “bind us” to different communities, families and identities through temporal processes of working, parenting, partnering, caring, leisure and lifestyle; they are also activated through assumptions of success and of futurity.

Chrononormativity operates in the way our lives are measured, and how we measure our lives based on time; this is a measure that we feel. For example, we are orientated towards the right time to do things that promise a better life. In architecture we can experience chrononormativity as temporal expectations: linear career progression, registration, maintaining continuing professional development points (CPD), commitment, availability, full-time work, separation of work from non-work, and creative activity that conflicts with time management.

Freeman (2010: 4) argues further how identity is constructed through the discourse of time, that the “the rhythms of gendered performance – superficially, repetitions – accrete to ‘freeze’ masculinity and femininity into timeless truths of being”. Thus to fit into particular norms of gender, to become a viable subject, we must also comply with the correct gendered performance of time (Riach et al., 2014: 1678). Burns et al. (2015) make clear that to become a viable subject in architecture one must fit within the temporal and gendered norms of the discipline. They found in their survey the repeated argument of “[t]he impossible reconciliation of an architectural career and childcare … architects explain that their hands are tied by clients and builders, who expect consultations on a demand basis rather than according to an agreed timetable” (Burns et al., 2015: 152 see also Caven, 2005; Fowler and Wilson, 2004; Sang et al., 2014: 5). In such situations women are understood as not being able to meet the profession’s temporal norms. In this context, architecture is similar to other professions’ “premised on an ideal (i.e., male) worker, an individual who can unconditionally commit to a firm because he has few domestic responsibilities”, thus meeting the profession’s chrononormative norms (Pedulla and Thébaud, 2015: 118; see also Acker, 2006; Williams, 2000).

Moreover, chrononormativity, or temporal binding, delimits flexibility and freedom against particular social norms and in turn, forms and organizes bodies to fit within a normative framework that work towards “maximum productivity” (Freeman, 2010). If we are unable to fit or to be recognized within a time-bound structure it is harder to feel a natural sense of belonging. For example, when a person works through the night, gives up sleep, or foregoes social gatherings after work to care for a child, they become aware of their social location and feelings of alienation in relation to the “speeds of accomplishing tasks and processing information” required of work (Cosenza, 2014: 156). A chrononormative framework helps give sense to, and explains, architectural practice in a patriarchal and regulative framework.

In Freeman’s temporal structure framework, agency is conceived as repressed and controlled by structures. For example, chrononormativity speaks to how social structures repress agency through reproducing temporality as normative: singular, linear and progressive. However, what is apparent and of interest for the current study was how the temporal structure, organization, and mythology of architecture are more complicated and have a generative relationship to agency.

Before proceeding to a discussion of agency, this paper acknowledges the contention around the notions and connections between structure and agency in social theory (Archer, 1996). Social agency, while pertinent, is not a term that has salience or currency in the architectural discipline. In this paper we draw from a general understanding of agency as an individual’s action, not limited to structure but conditioned by, and made up of, a variable mix of creativity, autonomy and reflexivity – which allows for the capacity of innovation – and the unexpected (Giddens, 1991; McNay, 2000). Then the paper focuses on agency in terms of a person’s interaction and negotiation of temporal norms – agency is therefore understood as relational, contextual and situated, rather than a universal quality one has (Barad, 2007; Bluedorn and Standifer, 2006; McNay, 2000). To situate our position further we take direction from the work of Michael Flaherty and his conception of “temporary work” to define the relationship between time and agency.

Flaherty (2013) describes how we negotiate our experience of time as “a species of agency because it involves the intentional self-determination of temporal experience” (p. 240). Thus Flaherty’s work shifts us from seeing time as something we passively receive towards an idea where agency is assimilated and is conceptualized/operationalized through the act of negotiating time. Furthermore, the self is conceived as a socialised entity produced through social interaction, rather than an uncaused cause (Flaherty, 2013: 242). But critically, seeing our relationship with time as active, produced through interaction, allows us to discuss how people practice, transform, or negotiate norms of time – or even undo temporal norms. This allows us to take into account how people act to challenge chrononormative values they face in the daily construction of time. However, as Flaherty (2013) points out

Breaching exercises demonstrate that compliance with cultural norms is a form of agency. Through socialized self-consciousness, the individual is motivated to comply with folkways and mores. Agency is, therefore, part and parcel of the causal chain that brings about sociological determinism. (p. 240)

Method

Architectural time was not the focus of the survey that underlies this paper, but was a clear theme in the responses. The original survey grew from a conversation between Gerard Hoffman (Head of Counselling Services, Victoria University of Wellington), Glenda Weston and the primary author of the paper. We discussed the differences and similarities of values and expectations among staff and students with a particular concern for the different values around work, work practices and the potential impact on student wellbeing. Though these discussions were suggestive rather than conclusive, they prompted the general aim of the research. The questions we developed from these conversations focused broadly on occupational wellbeing, that is, positive job satisfaction, happiness, engagement and feeling of fulfilment – which also considers how factors such as work–life balance impact on wellbeing (Stoll et al., 2012).

As previously stated, drawing from the survey results, this paper explores how architecture’s norms of time are negotiated by various groups. To achieve this, the paper draws on the results of a cross-sectional survey conducted in 2015, which consisted of a 38-item self-administered questionnaire, emailed to students and staff at the Victoria University of Wellington Architecture School, Wellington, New Zealand. A 22-question survey was emailed to practicing architects in the local Wellington region. A total of 118 people responded to the surveys, including 64 architects with even numbers of men and women responding with 88% of respondents signalling they were from a higher socio-economic background and 80% identifying themselves as being from a white ethnic background; 40 first-year master’s students with even numbers of men and women responding, with 92% of respondents identifying themselves as coming from a middle-class, upper middle class or upper class and, 82% identifying themselves as being from a white ethnic background; 14 academic staff responded, with, 72% of respondents signalling they were from a higher socio-economic background and 92% of respondents identifying themselves as being from a white ethnic background. Of the staff respondents 35% were women, which is slightly above the proportion of female staff at Victoria University of Wellington Architecture School. The response rate for students and staff was 50% and 40% respectively. The percentage for architects was hard to determine because the number of people active on the list was uncertain.

Of interest, more males identified themselves as coming from a diverse background. Of the architects, for example, 23.3% of the male architects identified themselves as coming from a combination of ethnic backgrounds compared to 3.2% of the female respondents. “Women”, as a community, represented a far less diverse group than the men. Similar results were found across all cohorts. So rather than capturing diverse demographics, this survey confirmed architecture as a white middle-class profession. This finding reflects research in this area which suggests a low entry into the profession from diverse backgrounds, from class (Stevens, 1995) and from ethnic backgrounds (Anthony, 2001: 13). We would suggest, following Stevens and Antony, that classlessness, as whiteness, are historical processes, located through a repetition of embodiment in everyday acts and representation in architecture that continues to make and remake whiteness and classlessness – while casting the illusion of normalcy and beyond critique. The similar background of the three cohorts comes some way to explain the commonality of responses to the survey questions.

Wherever possible, similar questions were used for students, academics and architects. They included questions about happiness and satisfaction, in keeping with a broader occupational wellbeing approach. In the text below, how the participants rated themselves on the Likert scale for happiness and satisfaction are used as tags at the end of quotations. Across all groups surveyed only a few respondents signalled that they were dissatisfied with their work. At least half of the male students, male academics and practitioners and female practitioners were happy with their work; however, this was not true of the female academics and female students in this survey, with only 29% and 31%, respectively, signalling they were happy with their work; and, not a single respondent was very happy.

Questions specifically to the academics focused on where they perceived students placed their value. Practitioners were given a shorter survey because they were more likely to make time for a shorter one. And questions around teaching practices were removed. Respondents were also given the opportunity to write comments, which provided a supporting context and allowed for free and unrestrained responses. The cross-sectional survey design allows insight into different groups within the community, rather than the “isolated” accounts of students, academics or architects. The survey structure makes it possible to see similarities and differences across a community at different life stages (Erickson et al., 2010: 957).

Analysis

In the initial survey we identified themes that emerged from the data; for example, time was incorporated into a coding template. The analysis then drew directly on the theoretical concept of time, which allowed the researchers to select and interpret specific parts of the respondents’ words (King and Horrocks, 2010). This meant that while our survey was guided by the literature, we retained flexibility for emergent themes to be incorporated (Sang et al., 2014:6). However, because the themes emerged after we had the results, our analysis focuses on perceived accounts rather than a more accurate account of time based on an activity diary (Carrasco and Domínguez, 2015: 332). The data analysis consisted of two parts. The first was a comparative descriptive analysis of the survey data between the separate participant groups of students, academics and architects. The second part was a contextualization of the data towards a discussion on the heterogeneity that exists in how architecture’s temporal norms are negotiated through concepts of chrononormativity and agency.

Students and academics

In this section we first situate studio teaching which is positioned as the hallmark of architectural education, and which has a significant impact on defining the educational experience and enculturation of students. This is followed by students’ responses to their studio experience and long hours and academics’ perception of student’s time. Lastly, we look at notions of success. Through these responses we look at students’ and academics’ chrononormative values expressed through responses – as a doing and, at times, an undoing of temporal norms.

Normally, studio teaching occurs in a large space where students work together and engage in the process of design that requires repeated attempts from the outset. This design process involves clusters of iterative actions, or looping, where some of the design explorations will feed back into the design process while others will not. The process is often described as nonlinear, to capture the complexity of inputs and development. Over time, through incremental periods of development, the design will evolve, and as it does, it has its own set of requirements. The project is guided by a design tutor who conveys their expertise to a student who is regarded as an empty vessel (Crysler, 1995). Recent widespread use of social media has, at times, extended the student-design tutor interaction from the strictly physical studio-space to online university platforms (and at times occurring through social media). However, as noted by Lori Brown and Joseph Godlewski (2014), despite the critique of the hierarchical conditions of studio-learning and the studied benefits of learning through dialogue and conversation - the “top-down ‘expert’” model still persists in the 21st century studio and, we would argue, through the online platforms as extended studio-sites. Of course, architectural mythology would suggest design is not inscribed by various competing temporal activities, interactions, collaborations, but is rather the act of a genius who is able to sit at a café, take his serviette – and simply draw the final design. Thus time is felt in the studio, often in competing ways, where the process of design and its varying temporal pressures contrast with the mythology of time as linear, progressive and simple.

A hallmark of studio learning is the long hours (Kuhn, 2001). Kuhn does not focus on their negative impacts, but on studio as a space where students can provide social support for each other. Webster, in contrast, takes a critical view of the long-hours culture arguing, “the effect of socializing the students into the long-hours culture and ‘total’ vocational commitment” through time: “through repetition, students progressively embodied many of the accepted norms of an architectural identity including hard work, disciplinary commitment, competition, and communal solidarity” (Webster, 2007: 24, for the coercive power of the design studio see Groat and Ahrentzen, 1996; Stevens, 1995, 2002; Vowles, 2000). Bachman and Bachman’s (2006) research makes clear the consequences of this enculturation of long hours on architecture students which “include serious health effects such as premature aging and immune system damage from prolonged sleep loss and other bad health habits” (p. 298, 27; Anthony, 2001; Ahrentzen and Anthony, 1993; Groat and Ahrentzen, 1996). The studio is a key period in architectural socialisation when temporal norms become somatic fact. In this sense, time is not only of the essence, it actually produces “essences”, that is, bodies who work long hours (Freeman, 2007: 160). More recently, the rise of technology and “paperless” design studios has seen the drawing boards replaced by laptops and computer monitors – physically changing the culture of the studio environment. As a consequence, studio-time is undergoing a change in rhythm where a 24-hour analogue studio space is fragmented and distributed to smaller computer labs and/or home environments. Despite this reconfiguration of space and time, the matter of working long-hours is still an underlying expectation ingrained in architecture students as “the idea that ‘all-nighters’ are a necessary part of any project work” (Brown and Godlewski, 2014). In our survey 81% of the students, similar to Brown and Godlewski’s results, felt that they should work long hours to complete a design project. As one respondent commented:

It takes a long time to figure out certain elements of any design project. Sometimes it can be a very quick process, other times it can take days or weeks. Generally though, I think long hours lead to a better result, and because everyone else is doing the same I would feel like a lesser student if I did not. (M, somewhat unhappy, somewhat dissatisfied)

In terms of work–life balance (hereafter referred to as WLB), what was notable in the survey was that 57% of the male students had time outside the studio for personal activities but only 38% of the female students did. Academics had a similar pattern: 50% of the male respondents indicated they had time outside of work for personal activities, while only 30% of female staff members found they had such time. So while we did not ask academics or students to record how their time was spent, we note that their temporal experience was felt differently. We argue that these findings resonate with Erickson et al.’s 2010 work that the feeling of “time squeeze” is more keenly felt by women – and increasingly by men, particularly those with young children. While not conclusive, drawing on the findings that female students feel the time squeeze differently from male students, we offer, speculatively, several reasons. First, the process of design often feels overwhelming for students due to the number of multiple variables and possible solutions: creative thinking can take time; the iterative process and demanding production standard; and time-management of the multiple stages of design. The tutor’s role is to provide support towards progression towards a studio deadline. However, research in architecture indicates that female students receive less time to support their progress (Ahrentzen and Anthony, 1993). Perhaps this lack of time support opens female students out to the possibility of feeling overwhelmed, stuck and out of sync with the temporal norms of the studio. A further suggestion is how the future, which orients behaviour, is felt in the present. That is, how female students look forward to the future, to consider family, in the context of an education which operates, for the most part, as a boot camp – the potential here is they start to withdraw from the profession before they are truly able to engage (Stone, 2007). However, what is evident from this survey is that time pressure is clearly felt by students in different ways.

We also asked academic staff a slightly different question about studio and how they thought students used their time in it, compared to when they studied. Among them, 62% suggested that when they were students they committed more time to architecture than the current cohort, with only 19% suggesting that the level of commitment by today’s students was the same as when they were students. Academics who feel students are not spending enough time, who are not committed enough, is one more mechanism that shapes and reinforces the chrononormative values of architecture felt by students. What the survey does not capture, and which is a clear practice in architecture schools, is how staff tell stories of how they acted as students doing all-nighters and stories that convey a level of commitment to the school and to the profession, which also reinforces temporal norms.

We focus next on how success was defined. Of interest was the differing language students and academic staff used to describe what success meant and the importance placed on WLB. The definitions of success provided by students varied. They combined subjective and objective measures, so while a student might suggest the importance of grades, this was aligned with skill development, social life and happiness. The following quotes by the students on WLB demonstrate the subjective and objective nature or responses:

Getting good marks. Learning a variety of skills that will prepare me for the industry. Making connections with other students and people in the industry. Still having time to have a life and enjoy spending time with friends. (M, satisfied, happy)

In contrast, academics’ responses to how “students defined success at university” showed little divergence. Most consisted of one word. Male and female academics believed that students are focused on grades, prizes and scholarships, with grades predominating (86%) ‒ as if learning can be final. Thus, we have a contrast between a focus on the present by students, to a focus on the future by academic staff. Supporting this, the difference between academics and students was also clear where academics reduce success to the temporal dimension, understanding success to resonate with historical chrononormative values. This is in contrast to the students where the responses are more complex, and at times express chrononormative values embedding them more actively construction with the possibility of a different temporal experience.

Students were asked to define what a successful career might look like, males (75%) and females (67%) produced similar results in broad categories, placing WLB and a good job as significant measures of what their career success would look like. But having work recognized by “others” was highly significant for both groups, followed by awards and publications. Across the comments, the altruistic desire of students was evident: to contribute to society, where success is about fostering community and connections rather than individualization and division. Most staff (70%), indicated that recognition by others was key to how students would define a successful career. But we found it significant that only 14% of responses suggested that success for students would be WLB. The expectation of staff for students iterated a particular normative way of understanding time: singular, linear and progressive. Our findings here reveal that the academics’ perceptions are imbued by powerful discourses of “chrononormativity” – where power works through felt temporal norms.

If we consider “time work” to be present in both regulative and transformative actions of an agent – that is, the worktime of academics – their temporal orientations, we suggest, are closely bound to the hidden curriculum of architecture. The norms in the studio and architecture work pre-emptively, managing time in relation to the “demands and the rewards waiting in the ‘real world’” of architectural practice (Crysler, 1995: 208). As Crysler argues, there is a reluctance to change teaching practices because of the expectations of architectural practices. These pre-emptive beliefs – approaches to time which are enacted by teachers who perpetuate a sequential understanding of the academia in relation to the profession – exist alongside a belief that architecture always requires long hours. Academia is a powerful mechanism that affirms a particular view of the profession. This power forms the basis of collective expectations and orientations which shape architectural “time work” both in the studio and the eventual “real world” of the profession. Whether or not the long-hours culture is true and occurs in architectural practice, is not questioned, but rather such “time work” of academics is brought forward into the present, shaping the students’ time demands.

This normative understanding of time, as a long work-hours culture –celebrated, or pre-emptively supporting a normative understanding of time – is deeply problematic when it is used not only to explain social life, but to form the foundation for students’ socialization into the profession. But what this research highlights through the academics’ response is temporal preference and, we would suggest, a gendered orientation towards time actually formed under a high level of institutional control.

Architects

Architects, like students, also work with more complex issues – those of professional and temporal obligations that span financial liability through to the symbolic capital of architecture itself. There are also many contingencies that require architects to change a project or take it in a direction that may not be in their control. Jeremy Till discusses practice as an “open framework that can accommodate the multiple action of time”. Indeed, the process of architecture is contingent and fluctuating through contributing forces by architects, clients, manufacturers, builders, users (Till, 2009: 116). Similarly, Stan Allen (2000) suggests how the unfoldings of architectural practice events “work to effect transformations of reality at a distance … [and] simultaneously inhabits both … imagination and realization” (pp. 3–6). As such, the temporality of architectural practice attends to the past (background of a site and client), the present, and the distant future. More recently, the digital condition of design has also transformed the temporality of architectural practice towards embracing networks, or as Michael Speaks illustrates, “communities that are more powerful than any single studio or office” (Speaks, 2002: 72). Emerging technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) are enabling and transforming practices to extend their work globally while staying in their local territory, with the capacity to connect different time zones to expedite the design process (Tombesi, 2012). Here, the dimension of practice-time is compressed into increased intervals of real-time changes, whereby the design process-time is compressed to nearly nothing. While information technology enables globalizing practice, it equally partializes and distributes control over a project according to each party’s specialization where the architect becomes a “contributor” to the network.

As mentioned, the architects’ survey was shorter and directed towards practice, with fewer questions around their expectations and their use of time. Research in the discipline has tended to focus on the profession’s long-hours culture. However, rather than asking if architects worked long hours, the questions shifted to how they manage WLB – specifically, How do you balance your work, home life and activities? By asking people to discuss negotiation we were encouraging them to talk about how they customize their temporal experience – more so than the students and academics; thus the narratives shift towards their efforts around time work (Flaherty, 2003: 133).

WLB, following Grabham (2014), “requires adaptive negotiation” (p. 6), making evident how our choices relate or conflict with the temporal infrastructures of our workplace. Maynard (2012) explicitly notes the conflict experienced through what he describes as “quiet hostility and passive aggressive attitude” by the employer when strictly following the employment agreement to achieve a good WLB. This meant, for young recent graduates, applying the “arrive no earlier than 8.30 am… leave at 5.30 pm” rule to avoid being exploited. However, this “exercise of right” was seen as opposing the norm and value of architectural practice-time (Maynard, 2012). Clearly, in Maynard’s case, the right to negotiate a working schedule to manage WLB was silently refused. Moreover, for Grabham (2014), WLB addresses the separate spheres of work and of family and challenges “the hitherto ‘male’ time of work: a working day facilitated by women's social reproduction” (p. 3). Understanding and practicing WLB can thus be a way to challenge the normative understanding of time as linear progress and maximum productivity devoid of the worker’s social context – because it requires “adaptive negotiation” (Grabham, 2014: 77). WLB was originally situated in the survey design in relation to occupational wellbeing; however, our focus shifted to how architects dealt with temporal norms.

The survey used the term WLB because of its widespread usage in academic writing, popular media, workplace policies and procedures, and in government initiatives. However, the problem of terminology was raised by some architects who found the terminology inexact. For example, one respondent commented – “it is more of a blending rather than a balance”; another rejected the terminology outright, suggesting the complex relationship was best described as a “worklife soup”. Both respondents hint that the relationship between work and life is more complex than a neat division between the two, where both are, somehow, weighed up and balanced against each other. Among the respondents who commented on managing the balance between work and life, many positive stories were articulated equally by women and men about how they managed a mixture of work and life:

Unlike other firms … I hear of … I'd say the firm I work in has a strong desire to maintain a good balance between work and home life. No pressure to stay late. (F, graduate, happy and satisfied)

Flaherty (2011) is critical of responses which reaffirm norms as devoid of self-determination – even when it would seem these circumstances have been thrust upon them. Rather, he suggests we do not completely relinquish control – because acting against normative temporal values would entail sacrifices “which we usually never think of taking upon ourselves” (Flaherty, 2011: 140). He argues that in “the course of constructing the circumstances to which we respond, we pay selective and deliberative attention to the quantity and quality of events, thereby agentically shaping the contour of our temporal experience” (Flaherty, 2011: 141). But this still raises issues around the extent of control that people have on their circumstances, and how this might vary.

One could assume the number of directors, especially associate directors, working long hours, made it harder for subordinates to choose an alternative (Maynard, 2012). Furthermore, such pressure is tied also to the requirement to maintain professional accreditation through CPD points, where there is no end goal, but constant and continual accountability with shifting demands and expectations (Webster-Wright, 2009). A number of respondents raised the problems with balancing work with activities and families which are compounded by the need to meet the requirements of the profession. These requirements include both being economical and how this is managed, and also the requirement for continual training (CPD) which means one is never finished, one is always being measured:

… keep registration current and cover all the basic costs [which] so is very hard. Including NZIA, NZRAB fees, CPD costs, PI insurance, Software costs etc. (F, satisfied, happy)

There are of course other factors which modify one’s agency over time. For example, one respondent writes that the level of demand on one’s time depends on seniority: “…the more senior you seem to get in a practice, the higher the expectation and (perceived?) need of your availability as-needed to the ever-expanding requirements of the job”.

The responses made clear how people’s feelings of working long hours depends on the firm and the level of agency both employers and employees were able to assert in defining and sorting time. Also, of note, a number of respondents voiced how they gain personal satisfaction in long hours which outweighs any possible negative situations. Importantly, what is evident is how peoples’ relationship to the notion of time, as a norm, is intertwined with the possibilities of resistance in context-specific settings (Parsons and Priola, 2013).

One example of the positive and organizational impact of negotiating architecture’s chrononormative norms, and shifting practice management, was a director who wrote at length about how he had restructured his practice so he could look after his children (40:60 split with his partner); this enabled a new standard in the work-place, as his business partner had already indicated, he too, would also like to continue this pattern when he had a family (male architect, 16 years, satisfied and happy). Through this negotiation of architecture’s chrononormative expectations, rather than a career narrative marked by rupture, the shift is towards time being framed as distributed through different activities.

One respondent exemplified the practices and actions of architects adapting to the profession’s constraining norms of time to form their own theory and habits as variations, and at times actively trying to question chrononormativity, by “developing and progressing [their] career on [their] own terms”. One of them wrote:

Sometimes you will need to work late. If this becomes extended for long periods of time and becomes the norm to leave well beyond your 5‒5:30 usual, then time to rethink delegation and staff numbers. Apart from family resentment it is extremely unproductive to continue to work late then be expected to be fresh in the morning. Working late often means you will get tired, can't enjoy the children, you can't be productive during the day, so you work late, get tired, get less productive and the ‘have a new go home time’ that is unsustainable. (M. architect, 16 years, satisfied and happy)

A lack of organizational and management practice is associated with architects leaving their current position (Sang et al., 2009: 297). This suggests that shifts in practices and how time is approached can “overcome areas of concern, for example, management practices” (Sang et al., 2009: 297). These responses indicate people’s ability to negotiate the chrononormative expectations of architecture and to “mobilise the rules differently” (Barad, 2007: 532), unlike a passive victim of temporality (Flaherty, 2011: 2). But this is also because our focus in this research is shifting through a framework of “managing time” towards responses that speak to how time is lived, mediated and negotiated. Moreover, these examples allow us to consider agency as processual, rather than as a processed attribute.

Discussion

Freeman’s concept of chrononormativity provided us with a productive framework to understand the diversity of attachments to normative understandings of time. Seeing our results in a temporal perspective helps to identify and subvert a linear understanding of socialization as a normal and natural progression by exposing normative assumptions held by academics which are not congruent with students or architects. By highlighting the different temporal experiences shared, particularly by students and architects, we can understand the heterogeneity of temporal experiences that exists in the architectural community. Importantly, we also consider that a great deal of operative temporal agency does not challenge the status quo (Flaherty, 2011).

We acknowledge this study is limited. A different sample would produce different results. Yet, the most consistent response was from the academics, who had the most faith in historical norms of long work hours, linear and clock-based time. This is important to unpack as academics have a powerful influence on the reality of newcomers, setting the expectations of a profession, and shaping what a professional is. Rather than academia offering a way to challenge and support different ways of thinking, it may, in fact, reinforce hierarchical and historical norms amplifying further inequalities. Emphasis on the work-hours culture can have an affective power over students and future professionals through pre-emption. Rebecca Coleman (2016) writes, “power is increasingly becoming caught up in, and filtered through, a pre-emptive temporality, where the future is brought into and comes to organise the present – for some social groups more than for others” (p. 180). Unless a diversity of temporal experiences is celebrated and accommodated by those educating architecture students, the expectations of those entering into the profession are narrowed – or they may choose to opt out before exploring the profession. Moreover, it is potentially disempowering to set up expectations that in architecture time is singular rather than multiple (Clouder, 2003), especially, when long hours disadvantage women because beliefs about gender make caregiving as a woman’s responsibility (see Pedulla and Thébaud, 2015: 118). A social constructivist approach to time draws attention to the production of discourses that legitimize an understanding of identity and time. Thus, identity is understood in the paper as having a dimension that is regulated and coordinated through time (Freeman, 2010: 39). And, we argue certain patterns of relations persist and continue to locate women at the margins of architecture’s “time”. The responses make clear the expectations about time to which one must adapt to gain membership in the profession and to one’s work-place.

However, while the research acknowledges the power of academe and of the profession to shape students and also architects, this paper suggests that the process of becoming a professional is a more complex process, involving a level of negotiation and agency which is not recognized in the discipline. Moreover, Freeman’s critique of chrononormativity recognizes there are multiple and alternative temporal experiences, revealing the complexity that belies a faith in a linear observance of clock time. As this paper indicates, attending to the multiple temporalities offers a way to highlight how people negotiate the norms and the nexus of social relationships, experience and emotions, which exist in dynamic interaction with chrononormativity. Agency and negotiation are important to understanding the social time of architecture.

This research shows, especially for women, the ability to negotiate work time is a measure of WLB success. It was clear that architects did not necessarily weigh work and non-work against each other: relations are more complex and imperfect. Moreover, the gender divide between women’s time as “contaminated by emotions and affections” in opposition to male clock time, was challenged by men’s narratives, whose involvement in care-giving and the world of private emotions questions normative understandings of masculinity (Leccardi, 1996: 182). Similar to Sang et al. (2014), this survey also found “not all white middle-class males – have the same ideals” (p. 243). But the WLB section contained a narrative of how architects negotiate norms, where time emerges through engagement. Rather than relying on a normative script, the negotiation of time by student graduates and architects was clearly linked to their positive feelings about their work, creating an affective narrative of negotiation: graduates were happier and more satisfied when their values concerning time matched the firm’s values; architects, including the self-employed and employees, who negotiated time were overall happier and more satisfied (see Sang et al., 2009). While not conclusive, due to the small sample size, this in itself is a critical insight to challenge how value is placed in a profession bound to a particular normative experience of time and expectation of long hours.

Finally, the research results suggest while possibilities to challenge, negotiate or rework the temporal norms of architecture exist, they are uneven for people in this community. This study found the future of what is presumed or what has potential to occur in the architectural profession can have pre-emptive power over students, academics and professionals. This pre-emptive orientation and attachments towards normative and historical understandings of time, operate on a “nonlinear time operating recursively between the present and the future” (Massumi, 2010: 57). Thus, while existing norms of time are being challenged and unevenly reconfigured, they remain central to shaping the contemporary experience of architecture. These findings suggest that if architectural workplaces and teaching environments are to be more representative, the community needs to challenge understandings of time and to be guided by a more complex approach to time, which is inherently contradictory, entangled and negotiable ‒ more open to be explored in different ways.