Architects and journalists

Architects and journalists 

Architects believe that they shape the built environment, that they are responsible for the ways cities develop, how people live in their homes or work in their workplaces. Similarly, journalists appear to believe that they make the news. You see them present their exploits on television and you get the feeling it was they who liberated a city rather than (admittedly courageously) walking behind those who actually took it. With journalists, being close to the action, a real eyewitness, often counts more than being able to give a good overview of the facts or an insightful and informative explanation.

I wonder how much architects actually make in e.g. a city, how much of the built environment is down to their skills, sensibilities and decisions. Sometimes, when I see haphazard rainwater piping on a facade, I wonder how much architects fail to take into account. But even when it comes to the parts that are undeniably architecture, I wonder to what extent architects lead rather than follow, whether they are followers and eyewitnesses of change rather than its initiators and carriers.

One thing that makes things more difficult to read is the combination of prescriptiveness (sometimes moreover moralistic) and vogue: modernist interiors, for example, were sold to the public as the correct way to live, uncluttered and bare, free from the sins of decoration and worshipping the past - not as an aesthetic choice. Nowadays that these heavy associations have died down, people are once again allowed to be eclectic and ironically include modernism in their choices.