ABSTRACT
Many chapters of this book can be read as speculations about why the term
‘primitive’ appears to have continued currency in architecture in spite of its
denunciation within cultural theory and, particularly, post-colonialism. This
paper contends that this peculiar persistence can be attributed, in part at least,
to the unease of some architects at being cast as elite professionals within the
institutional structures of contemporary western society. Professional status
appears to be worn more proudly by others in the building industry: engineers,
surveyors, quantity surveyors. Many architects, it seems, are less driven by
productivity and profit, rather more preoccupied with a perceived transcen-
dence of the architectural object and an endeavour to build richly inhabitable
space for others. Architects are, perhaps, an elite uncomfortable with the
comforts of professional status, trying to do what they perceive as right while
accepting the institutional framing of their circumstances. This situation has
parallels with the attitudes of nineteenth-century philanthropy which seem to
characterize the notion of ‘primitive’: looking outward from a privileged and
supposedly educated position with an assumed benevolent curiosity and an
ultimate reluctance to disrupt the status quo. This paper seeks to explore the
curious persistence of ‘primitive’ in architecture by asserting, and investigating,
a perceived sense of guilt among certain architects surrounding expertise in
contemporary practice. It examines as a case study the London-based practice
Sergison Bates, their building, their writing about ‘the everyday’ and the use of
that term to describe their work by critics and journalists.
