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This is our first version, complete.
Architecture Imperiled
The majority of architects in American have been ill-served by the common institutions that have been created to support our profession. In practice, many of those institutions promote membership over service, self-recognition over relevance and words over action.
In academia and journalism, style is too often valued over substance, fashion over craft and image over use.
Government has eroded the recognition of our profession’s authority and unique role in preserving the safety, efficiency, and beauty of construction.
This cascading loss of credulity has occurred over the last generation, and its effect has been disastrous in the current economic crisis.
Our Crisis of Credibility and Its Impact
The collective abrogation of institutional relevance has threatened the historic role of architects as the voice of reason and insight in construction. Multiple erosions of authoritative recognition of our profession’s integrity have compromised our worth to our culture.
The act of licensure itself has become a test of perseverance, rather than excellence, and the wide disparity among state requirements trivializes the legal recognition of our status as society’s agents of safety, utility and beauty in building design.
The AIA, among other institutions, have created a system where licensure is conditioned on continuing professional education that primarily serves as a profit center for the institutions who sanction them, providing programs of dubious value.
The creation of a parallel licensing body, LEEDs certification, has further compromised the primacy of registered architects as the central arbiters of built form. In the assertion of its own value, LEEDs certification promotes an agenda of fabricated exclusivity, putting its organization’s interests above relevant utility. What has resulted is a de facto code of aesthetic ethics called “sustainable design” which aspires to redefine and appropriate what architects have always valued, advocated and practiced.
As architects have become increasingly marginalized in influence and worth to our culture, neither academia nor journalism have supported the historic role of the profession as the sole voice of value in construction. Rather than provide exposure of social relevance and innovative engagement, these beacons and mirrors of our profession remain focused on a cult of personalities and abstract formal expression. Promoting an exclusive orthodoxy these previously open and objective platforms for diversity, contextual influences and craft now position the profession of architecture as an elitist endeavor, - a disastrous image in a time of economic distress.
Not surprisingly, all levels of government have responded to society’s increasing perception of our profession’s irrelevancy by creating an ever-tightening web of regulatory oversight. The perceived incapacity of architects to provide holistic relevant building design have allowed government to sanction alternatives to the use of licensed architects. It is undeniable that the value of the architect has been diminished in this last generation
A Call to Action
There are concrete positions that can re-establish our credibility in a time when our society has legitimately questioned the value of all goods and services. We propose the following reforms and reinventions, intended to reverse decades long slide of our profession:
1) Institutions that support our profession, such as the AIA, insist that all states require a licensed architect to sanction the design of any construction requiring a building permit, including houses.
2) Continuing Education or Professional Practice Certification requirements be administered only by institutions accredited to confer professional degrees in architecture or by the NCARB with consistent national standards applicable across all states. A minimum commitment of pro bono professional practice, teaching, or mentoring be required for continued licensure.
3) All licensed architects be LEED certified as part of their licensure, updated by required Continued Education or Professional Practice Certification cited above.
4) Architectural education include a base curriculum that requires mentoring, internship and building experience of students with licensed architects in the tradition of apprenticeship before a professional degree is conferred.
5) The AIA dedicate an appropriate portion of its budget to grass roots gatherings promoting regional integration of architects and their user groups, and provide for that re-allocation by streamlining its headquarters staff and downsizing of national committee structure.
6) All institutions that support our profession, including the AIA and its local chapters, recognize residential architecture as a unique discipline and dedicate an appropriate portion of their budget to that effort.
7) That all institutions, schools or media be encouraged to promote the true value of architecture to the public at large devoid of stylistic preferences.
NOTE: I am opening the thread for comments, but only with regard to positive suggestions. We will be monitoring this thread for recommendations and sharing it with a small outside group who may arrive to CORA for the first time. SO, please do not allow this thread to drift and play nice, my cyber-scissors are in hand for editing. Further commentary regarding our goals and intent can occur on other threads if you desire.
Peace
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