“Authorship is rarely a simple question.” — Architecture this time

I’ve written before that it boggles my mind when people write seriously that legal documents that duplicate others might constitute copyright violations. Originality is not of any value in a legal document — the document’s effectiveness in accomplishing its purpose is all that matters. Moreover, as I’ve also mentioned, legal writing is a quintessentially collaborative enterprise. Of course, law is not unique in this regard. In the course of finishing up a paper on the nature of a judge as an “author,” I came across a story from the New York Times written in 2005 about why accusations of plagiarism by architects rarely make it to court. Guess what? Architecture too is largely a collaborative enterprise. As the story states:

One reason accusations of plagiarism [between architects] rarely make it to court is that architecture, despite the romantic image of the solitary genius, is largely a collaborative pursuit. Principal, project architect, project designer and outside consultants of all stripes contribute to a design. All the while, young architects move from firm to firm, spreading ideas and sometimes eventually opening their own, competing offices. As for student architects, well, just because they don’t get paid for their work doesn’t mean it never enters the commercial arena. There’s so much rich activity going on at the schools,” said Bill Sharples of the Manhattan firm SHoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelli, ‘it’s hard not to be influenced by it.’ With so many influences and so many echoes, authorship is rarely a simple question.”