STUDIO SERVITUDE
What about our society tells us that architecture is a great career field?
Is it the varied workscape? Is it the respect factor? Is it the ability to make a good salary?
I think it's always been in multitude of thoughts we had about architecture. But mostly, in this society, based around production and monetary gain, we have found that we are in the service industry.
When we usually think of that, it is commonly in the way of the food and beverage establishments. Those are the ones in the service industry! Not architects.... But they both truly are. We are ultimately providing a product for a consumer (the client), and thus are paid for our contributions and services to the actualization of it.
What if the script was flipped?
What if we were in a different kind of servitude? A studio of servitude towards generosity and help towards humanity. Would society have to change? If we lived in a society that didn't promote monetary gain as the priority or focal point, would we be facing poverty at the rates we are seeing them? Is this a form of communism? Perhaps.
Mockebee in 2009 said:
"Physical poverty is not an abstraction, but we almost never think of impoverishment as evidence of a world that exists"
I think he did mean that poverty is around as a cause of what society has become. If we placed our ideals in a more selfless way, free from money, recognition, and affirmation of ability, towards this servitude studio, then maybe that is a truer architecture.
I guess this kind of ties into a meritocracy as a credit system towards success. I don't have a political science degree though so I probably can't speak on the implications of what that may or may not mean. What I can talk about is the shame that there isn't more reward to help out in the less well off parts of our community. Its also a shame that I even need to bring up the concept of reward as a motivator. the issue is that its not always a livable practice to do this sort of work So the first thought is always the compensation surrounding it. Samuel Mockbee was able to sneak his way into these sort of projects through is association with Auburn University funding. For most of us, without allot of hard work this isn't a path to successful practice unless its intermittent work between larger better funded projects.
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