Week 8: Reading 01 - Architecture as a Device

The article opens up with the topic of Unification, the act of architects getting together to work on the same topic despite their intrinsic nature not to. The question is will this collaboration lead to new ideas and innovation or will it be a form of exemption from taking responsibilities for their actions?

A variety of currently occurring worldly issues results in this unification, consequently following with The Act of Swallowing in which new ideas, methods and aesthetics are “swallowed” via collaboration. This challenges originality and authenticity as well as the role of the architect.

The article talks about how architectural criticism should be more about “judging intentions” based on “their purposes, roles and effectiveness” and that in the face of a crisis dire circumstances can cause the architect to limit themselves by limiting spatial possibilities, in turn deducing their role to a “service provider”.

I believe that in terms of economic crisis, one of the first to be hit hardest are architects. Although the author makes a valid point that by limiting their “spatial possibilities” they are of no benefit to themselves, I believe it is also due to the increasing redundancy of the profession. The role of the architect is no longer what it use to be. The once holistic role of “designer + engineer + builder” is segregated to just “designer”, with educational institutions doing little to reverse the segregation. Design based tertiary courses producing graduates with limited knowledge of how buildings actually work and how they are constructed.

As the profession of architecture is such a broad field, limiting education of the field to just design will be of no benefit to the future generation of architects, regardless of the state of the economy.