Last week I had a charged discussion with a friend, also an architect, about the future of our profession. She’s an expert in sustainable construction and feels that as fuel prices rise, the need to remodel existing structures for energy-efficiency will furnish an important new stream of work. I tend to be more of a doomsayer, and see years more of rough going. The conversation left me rattled. While we have different viewpoints, specialties, and lifestyles, we could both agree that economic instability and climate change are reshaping the profession. After the dust settles, architecture will not be the same.
What bothers me most deeply, which I wasn’t able to articulate during our discussion, is that the traditional role of the architect, to shape form and make place, is at risk. I’m not invested at all in the identity of the architect; I don’t need to play the part. But constructing buildings is a primal act, like making music or telling stories or preparing food. I was stunned when I reread Vitruvius’ Ten Books of Architecture last year because so much of what the Roman architect discussed more than two thousand years ago is still pertinent, like siting, orientation, scale, and proportions. Architecture has been around for a long, long time. And if architecture suddenly becomes something else, like super-insulating existing structures or remodeling kitchens or securing building permits or creating backdrops for video games, then who will shape form and make place? At one of my first architecture jobs my boss took me with her to a rural job site. She stepped forward, waved her arm in the air, and described the building she imagined there – she simply conjured it. Isn’t this what architects do?