When I was a young architect I naively assumed all architects were of the left. The whole tradition of the founding of Modernism, the commitment to social housing, the commitment to cities and the Utopian spirit which animated the founders of the Modern Movement and all of the students in all of the schools from then until the present day lead to this point of view.
Then one day my illusions were shattered when I realized that plenty of architects were - gasp - conservative. I have come to realize that the professions are not political - Venturi and the postmodernists were right about this. People - citizens - are political, not professions, institutions, or corporations (in spite of what the Supreme Court says). And none of us can be just architects. We cannot avoid being citizens first. That obviously affects what we do as architects, but the motivation is not architectural in nature. Our civic duty is to act as citizens, even when we are architects.
Why are conservatives like Mr. Ramos always so disrepectful? Because the world matters, people disagree. It will never be otherwise.
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Michael Ytterberg AIA
Principal
BLT Architects
Philadelphia PA
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