What place, then, for us architects?

Four words encompass an answer, and define a balanced system of life, in which each architect takes on, in some measure, each of these four things, as part of daily work.
Making
Designing
Building
Helping

The Summary. In my view we need to change in two especially important ways.
First, the architect needs to be closer to the work of building, more detailed, closer to the material construction details, as a craftsman, contractor, builder.
Second, paradoxically, the architect also needs to be more remote from the work, less egocentric, more in a position of creating generative schemes which apply to really large segments of the environment: thus creating rules and generative processes for whole neighborhoods, communities and even regions.

In all this, we must remember that the architect’s job — ultimately — is to create beauty, harmony, living structure both in the large and in the small. It is the dazzling beauty of darkness and light, color and silence, warmth and material and vegetation, which makes us gasp. That is what an architect’s life is for. That is what we stand for. No matter how sophisticated the work of procurement, no matter how powerful the generative sequences may be, it must be organized in such a way that it helps and inspires the architect to make beautiful and miraculous buildings which make all of us experience the soul.
And, along with this, living structure must be created worldwide. That, too, is something that must have attention. And we, the architects of the world, are uniquely placed by inclination and tradition to take on the job of safeguarding and creating the living structure on the Earth’s surface.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/21 The role of the architect in the third millennium#