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What Is The Social Responsibility Of Architect

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Introduction

In the process of the good spatial generation, architects are representatives of institutional knowledge and ‘the captain of the ship’. They have power and control over designing and production of space either directly by taking part in this process via their personal practices or indirectly affecting it through their professional organizations they work for. This is where the role of professional ethics in architecture comes to play and they should be limiting and leading this power through describing architect’s social responsibilities and also should be preventing unethical attitudes in all kinds of spatial practices by using this power and knowledge. (“What is the Social Responsibility of Architects?”, 2010)
However the …show more content…

The architect, who works for the client, portrays and tries to work around the views of that client. Architecture should ideally serve the people, but because of the clients control, this is hard. Therefore architects have to choose between whether to serve the client or the people. (“What is the Social Responsibility of Architects?”, 2010)
Most believe that because the client is the one paying them, their building will be built their way and the architect is there to serve them. This is how the building, which possibly had enormous potential becomes THEIR building – meant to serve no one, but them. Eventually these projects end up as failures. How can a project not designed keeping the users in mind serve the users?
Others, like the TAR (The Architects' Resistance, formed by students from Columbia, MIT, and Yale in 1968) believe the architect should be building for the people even though this is usually different than the client. (“What is the Social Responsibility of Architects?”, 2010) Easy to preach and hard to practice. Who said life is fair?
So what all does an architect need to know (in no specific order)?
• What the client thinks he wants.
• What the client

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