What's Our Role?

     As we inch closer to the completion of our Masters, I can't help but use this opportunity in our questioning of politics in architecture to question what we are even meant to do in the process of designing architecture. What is our role? Why have we spent 6 years (some more) studying the things and the architects that we have studied? It seems that the clear answer is to simply promote a sense of due diligence in knowing our predecessors and how we got to this moment. The honest answer, and much more an opinion rather than fact, is to present a set of case studies of individuals who had their own purposes and sought to embody those purposes in their architecture, ultimately showing us that architecture is subjective. 

    How this relates to politics in architecture and us as future practitioners is that we are the mediators. We have developed feelings and thoughts, positions and aspirations that will lead us to design for certain things, but we have also learned about the things that are missing and the faults of our predecessors as it directly relates to the subjects they are designing for. We have been molded by the time we live in and seen the downfall of architecture in being optimally inclusive and representing us all. It is our role to bridge the gap between what people want and what our expertise, through research and questioning, has determined that architecture needs.