What is an architect, his responsibility, his mission, his role in society, his vision about the future of buildings and humanity ?

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Permalink Reply by David Rose on September 17, 2010 at 5:38pm

Someone once told me that an architect has to look at all scales of human interaction understanding the smallest details to the big picture.

An architect is responsible for conveying the progress of civilization through the creation of spaces that have function for its inhabitants while using environmentally sound processes and materials. An architect must take into account the past, present and future of both building techniques and global cultures in order to convey a structural message that relates to past and present ideologies while gently leading the path for the future of human consciousness and cultural identity.

We are influenced by our senses. What we see, hear, feel, smell and taste all have impacts on our psychological and cultural identities. The fact that we are being exposed to those sensations relates to a manifestation of current culture. Every piece of human culture has physical aspects that exist within the definite senses. Architects and those who design spaces must therefore take into account the physical multi sensory aspects of their creations in order to best understand the psychology of the space, acting in reference (or not) to the physicality of the culture that they are conveying. The creation of space is a physical manifestation of culture through the presentation of texture, color, timing, depth, light cycles, temperature etc. and though some of us might like to believe that ideas come from the core of a white cube everything we think and do has relation to the greater temporal scale. The mind is composed of little bits of culture that all intertwine leading us to extrapolate what we call consciousness, cultural identity.

So in summary, an architect helps to build the evolution of society by physically manifesting items of culture in the form of spatial constructs where representations of culture meet the human mind in a multi sensory locality. An architect has a physical sensory responsibility to the people who experience the constructed space while also acting as an artist and painting the picture that we call society.

: )
-David Rose

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