in my experience in north america 'theory of design' is for the most part an academic luxury of the high design firms primarily who serve a small niche of the AECO market. this of course is unfortunate for many reasons. in the USA anyway a more productive question might be "What are some new approaches for introducing good design principals (beyond code and within costs) into pragmatic projects?"

one practice that i have started to support is that design to manufacturing building systems can introduce mass customization(ie pre-engineered structural design options) and is scalable(ie still affordable). in other words arbitrarily choosing to start within a defined kit of parts that can be configured infinitely can still provide opportunities for expression of many artistic and style based architectural principals even within a prescribed method of construction. we all know that it is easier to be creative given a few restrictions rather than a blank slate. therefore perhaps we should allow ourselves to consider becoming fluent with using forward thinking methods as a worthy goal. this will most certainly 'enhance viability of an architectural firm in practice' in the near future. but this still leaves the initial posted question above up for debate.