archificial

Everyday I feel more like a whore for architecture. Architects no longer have any integrity they sell themselves out to who will every pay for there services. They live in the fear of failure they will not eat or provide for there families, fear of not pleasing there client who by the way has no idea what they want. Architects must get passed this fear and hold true to what architecture is meant to be. It only takes one architect to reduce the whole profession and for that matter the world by selling themselves out to products and mass produced manufacturing parasites that allow them to save time and a buck. In my office we have "lunch and learns". Sometimes these can be good, when a brick or concrete company comes in and speaks of the many possibilities with there building material, but most of the time it is a product representative from some cheap artificial surface or laminate company. Architecture is not a building pieced together from a series of different product magazines! To be a good architect has nothing to do with how many products one knows of. Integration is not picking out handles that match the trim on the cabinet door! The handle is the door, that is integration! It is the architects responsibility to make their clients understand what they want and need. A lot of people will buy a 250,000$ Greek revival home in which fake arches have been applied on the face of an abundance of wood studs and nails, in which the fenestration's and orientation have no relationship to sunlight or the way in which the person uses the home. A true Architect is a Psychologist, Sociologist, Philosopher, Engineer, Scientist, Inventor, and Artist. It is only by being these things that an architect can focus on the sacred and profane and the general and specific simultaneously. But more and more architect are bitch slapped by there clients and engineers and they have stopped taking responsibility for the spaces they create all together. Integration and sustainability are words they throw around to sell projects and most don't understand what those words really mean. I am done...for now.