The project “Dear architects…” [Drazí architekti…] attempts to trigger a discussion about the architects’ role in the current society (in the Czech, and Slovak, context) – how it is understood by architects themselves, but also other professionals researching on societal and environmental issues (such as social geographers, urban sociologists or anthropologists, political scientists, art historians and theoreticians, philosophers, artists, economists, politicians etc.). Nearly two hundreds of Czech and Slovak professionals were asked to re-think the position of the profession of an architect, their way of work and the discourse of architecture. What role should architects play in the current society? Is their task to focus on the quality of the built environment concerning aesthetics and engineering, or are they expected to express a critical opinion? What are the things we should be talking about, and we are not talking about?
In the context of globalisation and homogenization of cities, architects were merely expected to react on issues, which were given by someone else – and were not required to behave proactively. With the increasing complexity of planning of the built environment, architects often restricted to a mere implementation of normative, formal or economic demands and resigned to question them or call for social responsibility. On the contrary, architects are often not able to accept responsibility. From a profession, which has a privilege and responsibility to articulate and translate the collective aspirations of society, one would expect some ambitions to comment and reflect on broader societal issues, such as social inequality, economic crisis, individualisation, migration, globalisation and so on.
There are, of course, topics that are part of the Czech architectural community’s agenda and architects lobby for them, such as the city architect, an amendment to the building law, the land use plans and the participation process, the relationship between architecture and heritage preservation. Motivation, however, is rather the defence of the profession itself and of the construction market, the arrogant need for control or the blind follow-up of trends rather than the public good. Many of the current challenges we face as a society are neglected by a significant part of Czech and Slovak architects and urban planners. The question is whether they ignore them deliberately or maybe they do not realise their impact on architecture and urban development. The right to the city, democratic and inclusive planning, privatisation and commodification of public space, the regulation of public space (use), gentrification, spatial exclusion of certain social groups (ghettoization), social and rental housing, cities’ marketing and competitiveness, sustainability, digitalization, sharing platforms – this is a random list of topics that is usual subject of discussions abroad – among architects and other professions, not just in the academic scene.
Architects on the Czech and Slovak scene have conformed with the system and rarely question assignments or legislative changes. Although some international trends are infiltrated into local discourse and practice (albeit with delays), their already existing critique is often overlooked. There is only very limited connection and knowledge sharing between architecture and other sciences looking at the urban development and urban life critically – individual topics are dealt with independently, without any relation to other disciplines. Most formats for the presentation or reflection of architecture and urbanism are rather descriptive, independent (critical) scene attracts only a small circle of listeners or readers who are mostly not opinion leaders. Often, not even students at schools of architecture are not encouraged to think independently and critically or to question the assignment – to debate. Perhaps Czech schools train capable graduates of architecture, who can assert themselves abroad too. The international employers appreciate the high level of skills, such as drawing or computer skills (so-called “CAD monkeys”), but the training in a social and architectural discussion as rather weak.
In the Czech and Slovak architectural discourse, I did not notice a significant discussion about the changing role of an architect in contemporary society. In our context, the architecture profession is understood quite narrowly – the architect is someone who designs buildings. If anyone works in theory, history, criticism, publishing or curating architecture, or is “on the edge of architecture” with overlappings into other fields, even she has a problem to call herself “an architect”. Non-architects, on the contrary, are mostly reluctant to comment on the architectural profession. An interesting achievement was the awarding of honorary title “Architect of the Year”, organised by ABF company, which “wishes to point to the importance of the role of architects influencing the quality of life and cultural development of the society”. In its first year in 2014, the title was awarded to Josef Pleskot. In the following years, the medal was awarded mainly for presenting the architecture to the lay public – Adam Gebrian in 2015 and Marcela Steinbachová in 2016. In 2017, Kateřina Šedá was awarded, who is formally not even an architect.
If the essential nature of the architectural profession is really “to get the job” (as e.g. Henry Hobson Richardson and Philip Johnson proclaimed), then we cannot be surprised that architects accept any commissions and they conform all design aspects, which should be in favour of the public, to the economic demand. If they produce cheap and low-quality architecture, they cannot complain that they are financially underestimated and people do not value their work. Architects should attempt (not just) through the design of the built environment to improve living conditions of everyone, without exception.