#architectural profession

[archi-fied]

The Profession Ahead I Future of Architecture I ArchiTalk I DYP University

[melodramaticarchitecture]

" The alternative to mass unemployment, with emaciated figures slumping across their drawing boards as malnutrition overtakes them one by one, would seem to be something that architects have been half-promising to do since the middle of the last century in one way and another - to look into their professional skills and accumulated wisdom, not for the comforts of (misconstrued) history but in order to find out what it is they can offer that no other profession or trade can. What is it that architects uniquely do? Perhaps it will prove true that all they can do, really, is to design public monuments, and are hopeless at housing. But, equally, it may turn out that the one thing they do better than anybody else is to "weld diverse talents into an integrated team." Or have unique skills in organizing zoning appeals. Or can do neat lettering on protest signs. But in a decade where society will have to look for enhanced performance from practically everything and everybody it comprises, architects had better find out what their act really is, and then get it together. I would hate to see the grand old profession wiped out by hypothermia and deficiency diseases, because some of my best friends are still architects! Talk to us - bu talk sense!

Reyner Banham, in The Annual of American Architecture, 1980, AIA, p.70