Because architecture is a service profession and not an art or a science, the social and ethical conditions of its production are as critical as the material, spatial, social, and ethical conditions that it happens to produce. Good work must be good and do good in every way. Not only as a matter of principle, but because the work produced in our crueler workplaces tends to be primarily designed to support the status and soothe the self-conception of the bosses, or for the intramural advancement or defense of their subordinates—to which the delight and welfare of those designs’ end users become subordinate. Work produced under such conditions tends toward formalism and uselessness. And so contributes to the deskilling of our profession and the degradation of the built environment. Cultures of celebrity and of cruelty are also, in this way, mutually reinforcing. Architecture’s traditional culture of cruelty must die out at a rate faster than the mere departure of its most celebrated and longstanding practitioners to their last judgement and eternal reward, and their …
