> Where architecture merely aligns itself with its own
> conditions-exhibiting little more than economy, efficiency, and ambition-it
> fails to mediate between its own material existence and our need to locate
> ourselves in the world. Only acts of imaginative transmission allow us to
> figure out how we came to fall into the place we occupy and what prospects
> lie before us.

My first assignment to my architecture students is to go to the library and
copy a few pages of architecture writing which is, in their opinion, the
most outrageous piece of baloney they can find. Then we have a reading in
class and a discussion, to find out what are the characteristics of bad
architecture writing. In the subsequent essay assignments, the students
know what to avoid.

In one class, a student identified the use of the term "we" or "us" which
is intended to slip in meaning from the cultural elite to all persons. As
she explained, anyone who doesn't buy the cultural precept becomes one of
"them", a dolt, a bumpkin. I asked what lesson can we learn from this. Her
answer was to be precise when using a group of people to make an argument.
She quoted the words that Tonto never spoke-what do you mean "we", white man?

What would Tonto say to Kurt Forster?

Signed,
Harvard-trained architectural theorist