An Architect Mourns His Profession’s Loss Of Control
"...The practice of architecture is directly regulated by at least 50 entities—the United States of America—in wildly varying degrees. In the last generation, “the controlling legal authority” of state governments has amped up its level of explicit specifications and inspection in direct proportion to the loss of public confidence in architects’ abilities to effectively protect the public’s interest. New agents of state, county, and local authorities have been created to deal with things such as the protection of historic architecture, the preservation of the natural environment, and the specific risks of coastal construction, not to mention the interests of those who are handicapped and the need for energy-efficient buildings. Additionally, village districts, historic districts, and architectural review boards boldly went where no regulatory body had gone before: aesthetics. Essentially, the ebbing moral authority of “the mother of the arts” practitioners has caused a withering of the architect’s role by a thousand cuts of government intrusion and regulation...." - Complete article by Duo Dickenson in Architecture Boston
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- Re-Verbization Department The December 2009 issue of Computer Graphics World quotes Joe Letteri, a senior visual effects supervisor for the film "Avatar," describing the technical challenges of the project: "We had to go through a complete re-tooling and re-architecting." Gosh, architecting the first time is hard enough...
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