Do Architects Design?

Of course they do!! Craig blogged about my architecture definition and said that my definition didn't do much for him as it didn't include design. He focused on the communicate and forecast rather than the modelling elements of my definition.

The issue here is what is a model. Webster defines model as Structural Design. So to rephrase for the designers out there

Architecting is designing complex structures.

The reason I don't like this is that it loses its generality and becomes specifically what a designer does. A designer tends to think at just one or two levels of model (or abstraction, I prefer abstraction but I know a lot of people have issues with what an abstraction is) whilst an architect thinks across multiple levels of model.

For example a software designer will be thinking about  functional aspects of design and (in some cases) some of the non functional requirements. A software architect will be thinking about the design from both the functional, non functional, business, project, budgetary, skills availability and many other aspects.

Interestingly Craig's blog just talks about one level of model, functional design, not even the non functional aspects...