The human layers¶

Architecture work is done by people, with people, and for people. The technical outputs are real and important, but they are produced in a social context that shapes what designs are possible, what designs get implemented, and how accurately anyone understands the state of the system at any given time.

The PSL and Satir framings are both relevant here. PSL provides the three-layer structure. Satir provides the account of how people behave in that structure when they are under stress.

The three layers in architecture practice¶

The rational layer in architecture is the domain of technical reasoning: what the system requires, what design satisfies those requirements, what trade-offs the design involves, and how the design should be communicated. This is the layer most architectural education focuses on, and it is genuinely important. But it is the layer that is most often treated as the whole of the work.

The emotional layer is the domain of people’s experience of architectural decisions. For engineers, architectural decisions often touch on their sense of competence: a decision to replace a technology they know with one they do not, or to establish standards that make certain approaches they have used successfully feel illegitimate. For managers, architectural decisions often touch on their commitments: a new architecture may make previous delivery estimates no longer credible, or may require admitting that a direction that was presented confidently needs to change. For executives, architectural decisions touch on their priorities: investment in architectural coherence competes with investment in features and with the immediate demands that generate the most visible pressure.

None of these are primarily rational responses, and they are not irrational ones either. They reflect real considerations that the architecture will need to accommodate or address. An architect who understands the emotional layer does not manage it cynically; they attend to it honestly, which often means naming it directly: “I understand this requires learning a new approach; here is what I can offer to support that.”

The political layer is the domain of authority and sanction. Architectural decisions are binding decisions about shared resources and shared standards, and their bindingness depends on authority. An architect without organisational authority to require that their designs be followed is in an advisory role, whether or not that is how the role is described. Understanding the political layer means understanding who has the standing to make architectural decisions binding, and working with rather than around that reality.

Satir’s survival stances in architecture contexts¶

Satir observed that people under stress revert to survival stances. These stances are as visible in architectural settings as anywhere else.

The computing stance is a particular occupational hazard for architects. It means retreating into technical detail and precision as a way of avoiding accountability for the social dimensions of a decision. The architect who responds to concerns about implementation difficulty with increasingly detailed technical justification, rather than engaging with the concern about capacity, is computing. The stance is recognisable because it produces technically unassailable responses to questions that were not primarily technical.

The blaming stance appears when implementation diverges from design. The blame goes to the implementation team for not following the architecture, rather than to the model for not anticipating the implementation constraints. This is not always wrong, but it is often too quick: a systematic pattern of implementation divergence is more likely to be a model problem than a compliance problem.

The placating stance appears in architecture reviews and consultations. The architect agrees with concerns that were raised, incorporates them nominally into the design, and continues with the original intent. The reviewers feel heard; the design does not change in the ways they intended. This produces relationships that appear functional but is not trustworthy, and it produces architectures that carry unresolved concerns as silent liabilities.

The distracting stance appears when an architectural conversation is becoming uncomfortable. The subject changes to a related technical detail, or to a process question about how the architecture review should work, rather than the question of whether the current direction is correct.

Congruence in architecture¶

The Satir quality that produces honest and durable architectural practice is congruence: alignment between what the architect says, what they do, what they actually think about the design, and their understanding of the context. A congruent architect presents a design they actually believe in, names the trade-offs they actually made, acknowledges the concerns they actually have, and communicates honestly when the design is not working.

Congruence is not the same as rigidity. A congruent architect can change their mind, revise their designs, and acknowledge when they were wrong, because those are honest responses to new information. What they do not do is present a position they do not hold, agree in the room and disengage afterwards, or retreat into technical formalism to avoid the harder conversation.

Creating the conditions for congruent architectural practice is partly a matter of individual habit and partly a matter of organisational culture. In environments where architectural error is career-consequential, architects will learn to protect their positions rather than report them honestly. In environments where finding the model failure is valued more than appearing to have had the right model all along, the same architects will produce more accurate architectures faster.