You can't sit with us!
“Convinced that everyday life is trivial, [the experts] attempt to evade it. They use rhetoric and metalanguage as ‘permanent substitutes for experience, allowing them to ignore the mediocrity of their own condition.’”
I think this speaks volumes about the architectural profession and the way it might exclude people in favor of elitist community, design, and jargon. We are no longer architect commodified and I think that means getting down to the level of the people we work for and making what we do accessible. No need to leave town to look for the grand and "mysterious" when we can find it in ourselves, our culture, and our interactions. If we can take ourselves out of an elite way of thinking and put more thought into the simplest things, could this translate into real, tangible, "good" work?
I think that sometimes architects feel that because they went through a lot of schooling and have a specialized knowledge that most "normal" people don't have, they are somehow elite and better than the common folk. Doctors also have a specialized knowledge and understand things that "normal" people don't. What if they started treating patients the way that some architects treat their users and the community? Doctors provide a service to help people and make their lives better, architects should be no different.
ReplyDeleteI loved how Margaret Crawford described the everyday urbanism as a "leveling agent", connecting the design professionals back to the level of the users because I think you're right. There's this tendency as architects to have this elite way of thinking which in the long run I think has the potential to be harmful or discriminatory to the users, and to the built environment.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I think that it is absolutely necessary for architects to get in the trenches with the people we are working with and for. I feel like this elitist attitude comes from skewed priorities. I think some architects see the order as Architect>Person>Citizen when it should resemble something more along the lines of Person>Citizen>Architect. This mindset allows us to be more integrated with the people that we are providing a service for. We will also begin to look for answers to the right questions within the context of the "everyday". Is this Sustainable for this context? Will this work in this context? Is this what the people actually asked for vs. what they need? Is butter a carb?
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