Was the modernist architect becoming too authoritarian and dogmatic Research Paper

Was the modernist architect becoming too authoritarian and dogmatic - Research Paper Example It is evidently clear from the discussion that architects in the 20th century chose to enhance authoritarian social relations, sought to enhance social control in general and their proportion of social change in specific, and embraced many dogmas to enhance their professional importance. While architecture must use advanced mathematics to construct a building, and certainly architecture is artistic insofar as it is representative of a society's preferences for spaces and is a statement of intent or design on the part of a person, architecture itself must be defined socially in a particular fashion. â€Å"[W]hat characterizes architecture today is its capacity to be studied as a system of significations that establishes different levels and layers of meanings and sense and constitutes one of the symbolic spheres instituted by society†. Hays argues that since 1968, architecture is a â€Å"technical-ideological practice†. As a consequence of this, Hays concludes that it is absurd to call any individual architect or even architecture as a whole â€Å"hermetic† or â€Å"elitist† or authoritarian because it is like calling rain wet: Architecture as an institution is a collective arranging of power as a technical-ideological collective. But architecture, unlike other areas where there is a monopoly of technical power being exerted, must be brought under special criticism because its designs move into the public realm. These are two immensely different concepts. To use a political analogy: Clearly, decisions must be made, but when those decisions are made by one person, it becomes authoritarian. The model of the architect as artist is thus structurally and intrinsically authoritarian, because the idea is that the architect's vision as to how to implement stakeholder needs is implemented and other people in the chain such as customers and workers are irrelevant. Each worker, each customer, each visitor, each policy-maker brings their own touc h to the art that is the final building, sometimes a vital one. The architect tries to form order out of chaos, a chaos that it assumes into existence but has no independent reality, just like all other authoritarians, and does so by trying to make it so that others in the process merely carry out orders and directives or by managing their perturbations and deviations from his ideal vision. Doesn't this mean all art is authoritarian? There is a truth to that, but the authoritarian nature of the self is also called â€Å"autonomy†. When a painter is authoritarian about their process, they are committing no great wrong. They are the only person directly involved, and a customer is free to accept or reject their painting. But architects are far from this. An architect will build public spaces that must be used by people who had no direct veto power or influence into the style being built. This becomes especially true when one considers the idea of artistic spaces being imposed u pon people because they are artistic, to enrich the philistine. This attitude is fundamentally elitist: If most people don't care about artistic spaces, then imposing that onto them is anti-democratic.