ABSTRACT
The latest financial and economic crisis has caused professional associations and journalists to observe that an increasing financial pressure is being put on architects. Research on financial capitalism and reciprocal effects between the financial sphere and the real economy has largely been carried out in regard to listed companies in the field of industrial sociology. The links between the financial sphere and architecture are therefore to be seen less in the area of maximum yields and more both in a transformed client structure and in the expectations that clients have regarding architecture. Judith Blau investigated the connection between professional ethics and the capitalist economy. In a study on American architectural firms, she showed that there appeared to be a Marxian dialectical move among offices, namely 'the economic forces that pull firms into the orbit of successful enterprise run counter to the forces of professionalism'.
