Do we need an architect
Some thoughts about architecture
Software architecture is the tool that helps to make educated decision about new features added to software as well as identify how the feature would be created in first place.
As follows, software architect is the person that makes educated decision about new features.
Software architect is role not title, there no way in current state of software engineering when you can hire specialist with only one task to architect software.
Software architecture is collaborative process of formalizing common knowledge about software usually done by expert developers working on current project. This also implies that same expert cannot generate software architecture for any project but only project he did work on.
By formalizing common knowledge in form of documentation you simplifying future decision making about how and what exactly we need to do in order to add new functionality in to our system.