Diversity in Swedish architectural firms

The topic for the first breakfast seminar organized by the Swedish Association of Architects (Sveriges Arkitekter) this morning was 'diversity in Swedish architectural firms'.

The meeting was opened by Karin Hammarskiöld clarifying that the theme of the meeting was too broad to be covered in a single session. The following discussions should, therefore, be considered as the corporational points of view of the participant firms, BAU (Peter Bäckström and Ewa Bialecka) and
Dinelljohansson (Kalle Dinell och Morten Johansson). BAU architectural office have almost constantly had around one forth of their employees from other nationalities since their starting days in 1991, and could thus be regarded as a fairly successful architectural firm in maintaining diversity.
Despite all difficulties with finding a job as an architect, stability of the Swedish economy has turned this country into one of the best working environments for architects around the world with regard to salaries and unemployment rates. Swedish architectural offices are constantly approached by foreign architects residing in or outside Sweden. The employers would often prefer to meet the applicants in person before making a final decision.

The central theme of the discussion was the dilemma of the scarcity of skilled workpeople on the one side, and the difficulty of foreign architects for finding a job in Sweden on the other side. Architects who have been educated in other countries could potentially enrich Swedish architectural firms by contributing their knowledge from other cultural and technological backgrounds. This could be of special interest for Swedish architectural firms considering the fact that they often undertake projects that span over various stages through the entire life cycle of buildings i.e. from design, through construction and to operations. Moreover, globalization has forced corporations to seek more customers overseas and foreign employees can potentially serve as useful links for this purpose.

Speakers did not fully agree on how problematic lack of knowledge in the Swedish language would be for foreign architects. The representatives for Dinelljohansson believed that a modest knowledge of Swedish would be sufficient for employees to do their daily professional tasks as long as the relationships among co-workers are non-complicated and processes are straightforward. In their opinion, proficiency in nuances and expressions would only be required for manipulation purposes.

Peter Bäckström, however, contended that there are situations were the employees need to be capable of detecting manipulative deeds perpetrated by other actors in the market as well as manipulating others themselves when required. Such conditions are more common to smaller firms where almost all employees need to, in parallel to their internal tasks, be in contact with other firms and actors as well as customers. Surprisingly, none of the participants on the panel believed that smaller architectural firms in Sweden were, in principle, less multi-national.

The speakers insisted that the need for language proficiency is different in different working environments. Project managers working on-site, for example, are much more in need of improving their communication capabilities partly through mastering the intricacies of the language; while design positions within design teams could be less demanding in this regard as long as the internal language of the office is English. All in all, the participants postulated that the importance of language proficiency for foreign architects in Sweden is often overrated. Proficiency in working with design software such as Revit and ArchiCAD and expertise in technical aspects of design and construction (respectively known as digital and technical literacy) could, in many situations, be of a substantially higher value for the employers. Knowledge of the Swedish regulations is also demanded, but such type of knowledge is often not that difficult to acquire.