ABSTRACT
Some time ago I was attending a constituency meeting of my local Labour party. In a comradely nod to the campaigning roots of the party, each meeting had a period devoted to ‘political education’. The topic this time was community architecture. What I remember most of all was the anger of the speaker as he sustained a half-hour diatribe, eyes glaring, which laid all the sores of society at the feet of the architect. All the normal crimes-tower blocks, housing estates, white walls, balcony access, aesthetics over function-were recounted and then conflated with conservative and repressive political regimes. The story left the audience in no doubt as to the evil of architects and their implied association with political corruption. This was then juxtaposed with the benefits of community architecture in which the users were seen to have control over their environmental destiny in a truly democratic manner. The speaker ended by insisting that architects should be stripped of all their power and simply left with their pens, there to be pushed in directions instructed by the community. In effect, the only attribute left to the architect was to be the ability to draw lines without making splodges.
