Boyer and Mitgang described architecture as a social art “whose
purposes include, yet transcend, the building of buildings.”2 While
they found that teamwork and diversity of practice had begun to
permeate the profession, there nevertheless remained a pervasive
image of architects as lone creatives à la Howard Roark, upholding
architecture as the “queen of the arts.”3 As a result, there continues
to be a conflict between the potential future of architects as
leaders in a society facing complex socio-economic and environmental
issues and the image of the architect as a privileged sophisticate
using aesthetic skill to serve the upper echelons of society.
Within architectural education in particular, this plants “the seed
of self-doubt and the lack of a clear vision of what the architect can
and should do.”4
As Dana Cuff discussed in Architecture: The Story of Practice,
architecture schools indoctrinate students into the language and
tacit knowledge of the profession. This traditionally emphasizes
individual, formal production and pays minimal attention to the
collaborative, economic, and power relations that are critical components
of all architectural practice. As Cuff discusses, architecture
students become cliquish and self-referential as they begin to
embody professional values “such as the principle of peer review
and a developing segregation from the general public.”5 In practice,
this “tends to distance the architect from the laity, both the clients
and the public at large” because the architect has not learned to
negotiate how formal and aesthetic priorities can be interwoven
with issues of economic, social, and political power.6 Because architects’
fees are typically a percentage of construction costs our
work is part of a value system that emphasizes economic costs and
benefits while neglecting “things of value that we cannot easily
quantify.” As a result, we create a built environment that embodies
short-term economic gain but “does not always capture what we
value as a community, society or culture.”7
Architecture is, nevertheless, an inherently social practice. “What
is missing, and could point the way for the profession’s next evolutionary
phase, is attention from the (academic and professional)
institutions to the social art of design.”8