Earlier this year, Los Angeles educator and architect Peter Zellner, founding principal of ZELLNERPLUS, was named principal and studio design lead for AECOM’s Los Angeles architecture practice. To many the move was surprising, considering Zellner’s longstanding relationship with SCI-Arc and his reputation for edgy design. But for Zellner it represents a chance to work at a larger scale and to take advantage of new resources, among other things. AN West editor Sam Lubell sat down with Zellner to discuss his new position and the profound changes in the corporate architecture practice in general.

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Will the knee jerk reaction against corporate architecture change?

Maybe the definition needs to change. Once upon a time Mies van der Rohe was a corporate architect. We tend to forget that. He did a lot of work for corporate America. We need to look at what we think avant garde architecture is and what corporate architecture is. We’re now in a very strange moment in our culture where we have agreed to these really overvalued definitions that say this type of architect does art and this type of architect does commerce and we can’t mix the two.

Why is there so much bad corporate work?

How we look at the problem of being cost effective is wrong. Something gets designed and when it runs contrary to construction economics the design gets value engineered. Getting around issues like cost and sustainability and structural performance or local politics early enough should allow architecture to rise to the occasion, not to become a thing that is sadly overlooked and is a poor byproduct of the usual processes.

What about ego? It would seem that it has to be subsumed in a corporate firm.

One of the mythologies of the avant garde is that the great artist does everything alone and with unique tools and skills. Today everyone uses the same tools and everyone works in specialized teams. From that perspective there’s no difference between the corporation and the avant garde. They run in parallel. Maybe only aesthetics vary. There’s a lot that the avant garde can learn from the other side of the equation, for instance how to get things done effectively and vice versa. There’s a false dichotomy in our culture between the people who come up with ideas and the people who deliver things. In a hybridized condition one could imagine a sort of corporate avant garde.

Now you have a generation of designers who can come up with great shapes but have no idea how to deliver them. They just get to hang things in galleries. There’s an unfortunate unwillingness on some parts of the academic avant garde to engage the world. I’m interested in being engaged in the world. I’m not interested in sitting in the academy complaining about why I can’t get work.

What’s been the reaction at SCI-Arc?

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