I fully expect, nay demand, a screed from Charles on the relationship of architecture and power, and why great buildings ultimately suck the human soul.

Well, is architecture merely a business? Is it merely about providing the design for a structure that will house various functions and seeing that design through construction? Or is it more about expression of society's needs and desires, the zeitgeist, and where a society is heading. It depends on the architect and the project, I know. But the differentiation makes a difference. Is it wrong for the New York Philharmonic to be playing in North Korea right now? Or are they bridging a gap, allowing both sides to see a little more of the other? Besides, I think the bigger moral issue facing architects is that of the shitty and inefficient shacks we keep building for developers.

Also, some of us do, from time to time, take a stance on something: http://www.adpsr.org/prisons/

Didn't Philip Johnson deliberately use travertine in Lincoln Center to evoke the monuments of Naziism?

@ 2:

yes, it is merely a business. one that has pretensions of integrity, but ultimately, we are whores. you've got to make money. howard roark was fiction.

the happiest architects i know are the ones who have gleefully surrendered all their ideals. building prisons, building walmarts, building indian casinos, building tacky condos in dubai with slave labor, building haute-bourgoisie retrotecture, or building crap 6-pack townhomes for developers who's cherished wish is to eliminate architects entirely, its the same thing.

if there was a job where you identified buildings that deserved destruction, i'd be a leader in the field, and bellevue wouldn't exist.