This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Custom Residential Architects Network and Housing Knowledge Community .
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Perry Cofield AIA
Design Ways & Means Architects
Arlington VA
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I think an ARA could be quite beneficial to society, if it had a role in staving off environmental calamity. An ARA could be more agile for this type of badly needed advocacy.
Custom house designers, merchant builders, material suppliers and codesters mainly advocate for their individual interest groups. Lest these guilds unify some positions on land use planning and energy consumption means and methods, what you will have is simply...more of the same. Andreas Duany is starting to get there with his transect theory. It does not have to be all singles or townhouses or apartments. Until land is treated as resource rather than a commodity, net progress will be zero. In other words, what you gain for the house will be lost to the road.
Whether a house designer is not as good as a Custom Residential Architect should not be a question. All should be trained to follow the same criteria... and ultimately become one and the same, in the Jeffersonian scheme of equality. Of course some will be more skilled than others. But would ARA advocate creating a separate license for Residential Architects? This would be a life-enhancing objective. A house is not an auditorium or a hi-rise....it is the primary engine of sprawl.
It amazes me how all this pecking order crap obscures the truth that we must behold from now on: Change your ways, or see if your children can evolve sufficiently for a world roughly 11 degrees hotter 30 to 50 years from now. Try this yourself for awhile, right now. What will it be, moms and dads?
AIA is too selfish and yet too timid to really advocate anything- it should be more like the NRA in its take-no-prisoners positions. If we have to learn sustainability to keep our license, why does it not call out certain buffoons more often? NRA sure doesn't. To date AIA's most noble accomplishment has been to keep the architectural profession from being run utterly roughshod. And yet, many of its members do very cool things. Why is AIA reticent on so many matters, starting with things like appraisals? At the same time, why does AIA attempt to infer "control" over something it has so little control over? That would be the single family house in America.