Community, Community.

One think I understand from much of the material given and the presentations in class is that to an extent, Architects have a level of entitlement that interferes with their ability to perform common-sense design. Our knowledge puts us in a mindset where we often seem to view ourselves as "the one who knows best". What was quickly realized in this first week about community is that it may not be the case, that our knowledge can only take us so far. The conversations that have really sparked an interest is this idea of designers getting involved in community design solutions when they don't know the community they are serving for. Often times we do this and it hurts the community more than it helps it. But, because we assume we know what's best it causes us to see pass what's actually needed in that community.

It can easily be argued that precedents would allow us to be able to approach the design solution with ease but the counter to that is that not all communities are the same. They don't all experience problems that same way. Of course clients/communities are not able to execute and that's definitely where we come in to play, but as far as the Architect knows best, i think the client/community has a general idea of what they want and what they need. And if they don't know what they want, they definitely know what they don't, and that's most of what we as architects have a tendency to offer.