Intellectual [dis]Honesty in Architecture

The discipline of architecture has a dubious reputation among other disciplines — as an arena where self-validating criteria perpetuate arguments of self-importance. This is reified through the ideological premise of “architecture for architecture’s sake”. Architects caught up in the pursuit of a pure architectural expression have been known to go so far as to completely denounce program, function, purpose, and site; i.e. all practical measures. When seen through the eyes of modern architects, the unconventional and unnatural forms expressing this ideological construct are often considered sacrosanct, so much so that architectural academia, today’s design industry, and Western media seek to sanctify its image as a visual commodity. So unusual are the aberrations of fashionable architecture that many are fooled into believing that what they are seeing is a genuine advancement in architectural thinking. Unnatural in appearance as they may be, images of such fashionable architecture circulate the globe, establishing, legitimizing, and forging a cryptic language of design. As a result, the obscure ideas that accompany these forms have been institutionalized in the modern education of an architect without question. T