This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Residential Knowledge Community and Committee on Design .
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Michael Ytterberg AIA
Principal
BLT Architects
Philadelphia PA
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Names are meaningless only when there is no meaning. Those who deny meanings typically are seeking to deny the unspoken value system that motivates their actions.
And though Mr. Hosack is quite right to insist that many more of the decisions concerning the built environment
could profit by a rigorous mathematical basis, that approach, too, will never escape the issue of value.
I am always heartened to know that there are many architects out there like the gentleman who responded the other day, Mr. Moffett, who accepted a plurality of styles as a given in contemporary society. He was right on target with his suggestions.
As long as architects are governed primarily by ideology (and modernism has always been, and is acknowledged to be, an ideology), the public will never accept the profession as being primarily motivated by the interests of society as opposed to interests that are self-serving. Good health is obvious to all - doctors do not have to educate the public on the virtues of good health, only how to get there. Winning a law suit has its own universal value - lawyers educate, again, on how to get there or avoid them. "Good design" that isn't based on the values of those it seeks to serve is meaningless.
We can accept the human condition as the grounds for study on how to serve society, or we can stay focused on the head of a pin.