If their Culture is so Precious, Why is it Packaged and Exported like Menthos?

Humble yet powerful. Tall yet short. Touching, yet lecturesome. I have a question: is there anything a European Architect think he (but rarely she) isn’t? Or are they everything, nothing, and its’ opposite too? Why not when you can always rationalize that the magic from your fingertips will otherwise be wasted like the sperm on the walls.

In an article in der Spiegel from 21.12.2007, architect Christoph Ingenhoven wrote an article aimed at provoking a "long overdue debate" about what Deyan Sudjic describes as the "close ties between architecture, power, money and politics", which make it difficult for some architects to view their work with the necessary political distance. Ingenhoven said he would never "want to be responsible for the representative buildings of a non-democratic regime", adding that he wouldn't build for Libya, because he couldn't see "why [he] should champion an intolerable regime."

Amazingly, what these guys still do best is put a pretty face on de-facto tyrants building idealized factory cities, and using the “sustainable city” cover to retread Cabrini Green style schemes and oafish central planning concepts.

Strangely enough when they impose their imprint on people, they call it “Elysium”. If these self-absorbed, self-declared übermenchen need to bone up on “Architecture and Morality” (both of which they think are out of the common man’s reach), they should probably tone down their marketing racket for a few minutes and look here, where it’s quite clear that the debate is not long overdue to the rest of us, and has been ongoing continuously.