ABSTRACT
Owen: I’d like to initiate the discussion among the panelists with a question about identity, as everybody here is addressing that in one way or another. Michael Benedikt was speaking to us, in part, about the embeddedness of a particular attitude to culture: how certain expectations of buildings and environments are embedded in a certain way of making those buildings or environments. Katerina Rüedi was dealing explicitly with the formation of professional identity, how we understand what we are as professionals and what we should do as professionals, in particular within the educational context. Kazys Varnelis, particularly at the end of his paper, was introducing the notion of reflexivity as a way of forming one’s identity as an architect. Michael Davis presented us with the rational subject at their rational best, exercising judgment in the reciprocal interests of oneself and the group to which one belongs. Michael Zimmerman examined the differences and overlaps, in ethical terms, between the modern and postmodern subject. Could each of our speakers, then, situate their own version of this process of identity formation historically, and in relation to the process as described by other speakers?
