Lithuania THE FUTURE OF THE PROFESSION OF ARCHITECTURE
Two words immediately come to my mind after reading the task: RETHINKING and REACTING. I think they can fit anywhere now, not only in my own country, but in others as well. We have been stuck into the same routine for too long and I guess that most of us have simply become phony and indifferent to anything around. The thing which strikes me the most lately is the fear and uncertainty I see in people’s eyes, and for some reason I think it’s good, it’s good that we have begun to THINK again, and we are awaking from this luring period of PROSPER AND ECONOMIC RISE, which mostly turned us into those money-making machines, that needed to have more of everything, more things, more gadgets etc. I surely don’t object the progress or any kind of development, I just think that while moving forward we have forgotten one simple thing, we have forgotten that we are humans and that we have virtues. We have lost them somewhere around, while rushing in this capitalism – fake – money-making train. We lost trust in each other, have become cruel and dishonest. I’m not an idealist, but I guess, now is the time, which we tend to call crisis or economic downturn etc., which simply means that this train reached the edge and creatively speaking there are only two ways out: to return back (as history has this interesting way to repeat itself), or to get together and to build a new road, so that our train could reach the other side, of course, it means we would need to get rid of many unnecessary and fake things, as the new road is going to be quite fragile at first and we should really be aware and careful. We simply must see the good sides of this change as well; we must react to where we’ve come to and search for solutions. The fear that we feel and the uncertainly we have about the future is good, because it makes us more vigilant and powerful in order to react and start acting. In some ways this notion an ARCHITECT could suit us now more than ever before. This struggle that we deal with now leaves us no choice apart of looking at ourselves, reassessing our own virtues and trying not only to survive through this difficult period, but somehow find the strength to take advantage of it and move forward. That’s why when thinking about The Future of the Profession of Architecture, I would like to slightly change the sentence into Architecture of Our Own Lives Is Our Future. Because what is an architect, a chief builder if translated from Greek, and who are we if not chiefs of our own lives. Before anything else, we have to clean, design and build again our own lives and now is the perfect time to do that. Personally, me as an architect, I can easily suit this notion to architects as professionals as well, as I don’t think that a modern and glamorous sky-scraper in the middle of frayed buildings surrounded by homeless people with reaching hands will ever be considered an art, nor will I feel a human. We need to get deep down to the needs. As some wise Roman historian once said: “Every man is the architect of his own fortune”, it’s that simple.
Edgaras Pantelejevas