Looking Down

Architecture in these times is an architecture at risk. I will argue here that the recent trajectory of the field has been a harbinger of the political populism that generated the Trump administration in the US, Brexit in the UK, the Swiss People's Party, Marine Le Pen's Front National, Germany's Alternative für Deutschland, Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, and other such inverse majority movements. What might be called an emerging architectural populism has led to a situation where our careful art is at risk of becoming its inverse: an architecture without architects. In response, I will argue that this is our moment – this is when we reclaim our field in the only way we can – this is when we create architecture.