Ethical Boundaries

The roll of the architect is a big one, but not as big as we make it out to be. Yes, we design spaces for people to occupy, but don't always do the best job. Collaboration with others is always key, but stepping back and admitting we don't always know what is right could also be important. The discussion last week led to; are we over stepping our boundaries as architects? The answer is simply yes. Take social housing for instance; a psychologist, social worker, school counselor, or anybody thats job is day to day dealing with people living poverty and not having the best opportunities available to them could tell us much more about what should be involved in a specific social housing project than we could by sketching on a google map of what we believe should be there.
The architects role should be held to a higher standard of ethics, a role that isn't self centered and includes information from sources that are not available or out of our range of knowledge.