Prof. Sarah McGann on PIVOT

An architect, a lawyer and an accountant walk into a bar. The bartender looks at the three women and says, so, who’s in charge here?

Reflecting on my pivoting career—as architect/educator/researcher/leader—I return to the opening lines of my recent book chapter in Visual Spatial Enquiry, (Creagh and McGann 2019). An important pivot-point for me has been to question who is ‘in charge’ of our built environment and where the role of responsible stewardship and strategic decision-making sits. I am convinced that building design, good and bad, has a causal effect on the social patterns of the people that live, work and occupy, or are excluded from, our built environments. Looking back, and projecting forward, the pivot upon which I rest and turn is the strategic agility and critical thinking first fostered in my architectural education and now employed in research and leadership.

*Prof. Sarah McGann is Dean, School of Arts & Sciences at Notre Dame University, Fremantle. Her musings on the word Pivot appeared in issue 00 of The Fulcrum Agency’s journal.