[Image: C_Life by ARUP, Sauerbruch Hutton, Experientia, and Galley Eco Capital, via Rory Hyde].

What better way to start off the new year than to ask what the future role of the architect might be? Rory Hyde has posted an article, originally published last summer, asking what "potential futures for design practice" currently exist or have yet to be created.

Hyde himself offers eight possible roles for spatial practitioners: the community enabler (or "custodian of the built environment"), the visionary pragmatist, the trans-disciplinary integrator, the social entrepreneur (motivated by the "powerful narrative potential of architectural communication in catalyzing complex visions for the future"), the practicing researcher, the long-term strategist, the management thinker, and the unsolicited architect.

While "long-term strategist" sticks out more as an abstract category, applicable to all of the others, rather than a position in and of itself, the analytic impulse behind Hyde's list has provoked an interesting conversation; Dan Hill, Marcus Westbury, MM Jones, and Gerard Reinmuth are just a few of the participants enlivening the post's growing comments thread.