This is a well argued and useful point that Walter is eloquently making. It is interesting that this concern with the public appreciation/understanding of the architects role and the desire of architects to expand that role is currently a hot topic in more than the US. It is of concern in Britain as well as this article attests:
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/comment/opinion/can-architecture-reclaim-the-lost-territory-of-the-good-ordinary?/5073703.article. (You can register for free to read this.)
A point I tried to make a few weeks ago is that the rhetoric of most architects fails to address the very thing that distinguishes architecture from the other disciplines in the business of building. Architecture is a wonderful profession that integrates more aspects of the built environment than any other, aspects both rational and emotional. But it is precisely this aspect of the emotional - the meaning we read into our constructions - that separates architecture decisively from the other disciplines, or the cathedral from a shed. We architects are reluctant to admit this, however, because the last thing we want to deal with is the irrational desires of the populace.
We know the correct meanings, the public does not. This is implicit in the doctrine of modernism, which is, of course, a critique of modernity. Modernism tells us that industrialized consumer culture (the modern world) has perverted the relationship of man with his environment and that our mission is to restore the harmony found in earlier cultures. Yet much envied professions like medicine and law do not judge the values of their patients/clients. They accept them. Until architects can accept the values of the society in which we operate and think first of our clients' needs as they define them we will never achieve the authority to which we aspire. We can not start every job thinking we have to educate the client as to what they should want. No appeal to rationality on its own will convince the public that their desires are baseless.
(And BTW, Walter, I hold a PhD from Penn, but do not teach there.)
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Michael Ytterberg AIA
Principal
BLT Architects
Philadelphia PA
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Original Message:
Sent: 02-10-2015 09:00
From: Walter Hosack
Subject: Practice and Profession
This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Regional and Urban Design Committee and Committee on Design .
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An architectural office is a city-state that competes with others for work. I have never had the impression that offices are very interested in sharing their competitive advantage, if it exists.
I have the impression that the architectural profession wishes to improve the public perception of its value in order to increase the work available to competing offices. This requires cooperation rather than competition.
At the risk of over-simplification, an office goal is to survive competition. A professional goal is to increase market share in an effort to protect the public interest.
It appears to me that the profession is struggling to develop an argument that will increase the public perception of its value in order to increase its market share, and has had difficulty achieving its goal by repeating the arguments of the past. It has also had difficulty defining research that will produce the tools and knowledge needed to improve this argument and the public perception that follows.
The Point
My point is that all must recognize the difference between practice goals and professional goals if they haven't already. Professional goals improve the tools and knowledge that is shared by architectural practitioners. I agree that we must communicate with the public in terms they can understand as Mr. Hainsfurther advocates. This is no different than a doctor talking to his patient, but it is a practice goal. The purpose and value goals of Mr. Jonassen are also practice goals. A professional goal would seek to improve the knowledge, education, tools and experience all practitioners can use to solve a problem of great public significance.
A medical analogy might help to make my point. The goal of the medical profession is to improve the tools, knowledge and treatment of injury and disease. The goal of a doctor is to successfully treat a patient with the education and experience provided.
In the case of architecture and city design, the problem is shelter within sustainable geographic limits without excessive intensity. This is the larger context that has great public significance, and the problem grows one project at a time in a pattern currently referred to as "sprawl". A practitioner must be able to address a project. A profession must be able to address the problem before solutions can be found.
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Walter Hosack
Author
Walter M. Hosack
Dublin OH
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