By Nold Egenter
Anthropologists should increasingly become aware of the environmental and cultural problems created by architecture and urbanism today (Istanbul II). Architecture is in a permanent theoretical crisis. It is a professional domain which needs theoretical help. It produces gigantic in situ experiments, which develop into failures. Some highly awarded (!) architecture had to be dynamited after it had turned into a dangerous slum (Pruitt-Igoe), only twenty years after construction! Architecture, a throw-away product? Building cities just for one or two generations? A gigantic waist! Even Mario Botta, the famous star architect said it recently: Postmodern architecture is a new type of pollution, a new garbage-problem for future generations! Anthropologists might be amazed about the vacuum of cultural consciousness in architectural theories.
The following text gives a critical review of how the role of the architect in modern society is supported and the impacts of this theoretical dilettantism on our built environment.