The City as a Source of Equity
Alejandro Aravena
Published in Verb Crisis, 2008.

Architects ceased being architects and became officials working for international bodies, urban economists, urban sociologists, etc.
By “ceasing to be an architect,” I mean individuals who abandoned the notion of the project as a synthetic mechanism for taking action in the real world.
When the marginalized group of “creative” professionals realized their irrelevance and lack of participation in important issues, their response was to regain their importance with impact and shock. What many of the more famous members of the profession currently strive to achieve is to make an impact, to trail a veil of smoke behind them in order to disguise the relative superficiality of their work.
Extract from


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