Interestingly, when I created Splitting Mediums in 2005, I rooted for the privileged in their struggle against “human debris” (as I called the millions of humans who didn’t fit the hierarchical pattern of modernity). I created a world where they could escape all the decay and cultural devolution. I pictured myself in the quiet, detached suburban home while security forces maintained the border. I was acting within the paradigm of professional expertise in which the trained elite, the keepers of civilization, were better equipped to mete out truth and justice. This is where I see our profession today. We are kicking against the pricks, using our professional status to help the state hold the cauldron’s lid down. The project itself grew out of frustration that my firm failed to recognize how qualified I was to design the world. I credit this confidence to my education. Nikos Salingaros (2013) writes that ever since the Bauhaus architecture schools have tried to “restructure society for the betterment of all people; whether those welcome this or not,” architecture schools have dismissed “passed methods of design” as sentimental, and rejected the appeal to “human scale” as “an indication of human weakness” (p.29). This may seem overly harsh, but only in terms of degree. The rhetoric of architectural education affirms responsiveness to social and environmental forces while the system of reward and punishment allows students to thrive without
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