Graham ,
Thankyou so much for these blogs. The spirit and content must ripple out and touch a lot of people both inside the profession and make its way into the built environment all over the world. I went to architecture school in the 1980s in St. Louis and worked my way over on a tanker to work for Sverre Fehn and then bounced around Paris and London and New York in my journeys - sometimes doing stints for other great names but most of the time doing "bread and butter" work and living life as best I could. I also had a brief experience for about two years teaching in architecture school as well as attending crits.
Like your blog, posing the question why? is so important in todays world (and not only in architecture). It expresses " I care" and "I believe" and in some cases " I love" - all of these things that are essential and at the heart of our profession in making a better world yet somehow do not get qualified either in our professional systems or in many cases our schools.
Unfortunately so much of our built environment manifests itself through other means and expresses the polar opposite - I dont care - I dont believe - I dont love - In this sense Architects and designers and their institutions have much to answer for regarding letting this happen, the state of our built world and its effect on the natural environment. Obviously in this sense, Architects and designers have failed and something needs to change.
In my opinion, we need more people asking "why" in architecture schools and architecture programs to support them and we need more people to fight the good fight in making as Charles Eisenstein writes - The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible.
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