About the same time I wrote the post on whether architects should code, saying that architects should be able to prototype but shouldn't be part of the dev team (in the sense that the architect shouldn't get coding tasks that results in production code), Johanna Rothman wrote a blogpost that claimed architects must code .

Two days ago she posted a more detailed explanation of her view. I agree with most of the points she made:

1. Architects need to participate in the project; that is, not be some outsider who just drops her architecture on the team and leaves).
   
2. The best way to test a design is to code and run it.
   
3. It is beneficial for architects to know to code.
   
4. It is important that architects understand the implications of their decisions on the code and developers.

I don't see how architects taking coding tasks serves the greater good, versus their monitoring teams that code and making sure all aspects of the architecture actually fit the problem and work. Again, this may work on smaller projects, but probably not on larger ones.

You may also want to look at two related posts I made in the past
SAF Architecture Evaluation: Evaluation in Code talks about some of the ways architecture can be validated in code.
SAF Deployment: What to do when the architecture seems stable? talks about the architect's involvement in the project when they think the architecture is "finished".

A couple of points regarding the analogy Rothman uses--that is, architects who design bathrooms for hotels. Building architects are seldom a good analogy for software architects (I once used it as well). However, there are far too many differences (maybe I'll blog about that sometime in the future).

This brings me to the second point. This analogy doesn't serve Rothman's point well since building architects never actually participate in laying down brick or installing bathrooms. The fact that hotel bathrooms are not comfortable means that this quality was low on their priorities. In any event, verifying if a bathroom is usable--you don't have to install it just use it. (If you do take the analogy, you don't have to code it just stick around to see what's going on