 I think it's so interesting that in ancient Egypt and certainly in South Asia as well, the architect was privy to secret knowledge, again knowledge that would be used in constructing a temple, constructing a palace, again building typologies really associated with the upper echelons of society and power. And so architects were also thought particularly in Egypt to possess magical powers and I think in today's architectural profession they still cultivate that as well with the star architect. I mean I was just reading although he would probably dispute this you know identification with the star architect, the Swiss architect Peter Zemtor and the notion that he has to interview the client and the client has to convince him that he or she is worthy of having a Peter Zemtor architect. So again instead of being initiated into the cult or the priestly caste of architecture in some way and so in a funny kind of way I think that mixing up of architects with magic and religion and again having certain powers still continues on today. Certainly in this country the architectural profession has always been very market driven in the absence of sustained patronage by the state and the government at whatever level in this country has always been a fairly reluctant patron of the arts and architecture and again the concern you know as to whether or not public monies which were limited and particularly are limited today are put to the best use by going to art and architecture. So architects in this country have always had to be entrepreneurs and they've always had to market themselves and in a funny kind of way I think that in our media saturated culture and a culture of branding and of self promotion in many ways American architects historically have been the best equipped to deal with that because they didn't have the cushion of either private patronage or the state as a patron as they did in Europe and certainly globally and so architects in this country have always had to scramble and part of the problem again was that they were so far outnumbered by master craftsman and master builders so they've always had to make an argument for themselves in terms of the greater fees that they charge the greater time that an architect invests in a project typically and the fact that it wasn't one stop shopping that you not only had to pay an architect but then you had to pay a master builder or a general contractor so architecture really didn't seem to many clients and consumers to be an economically advisable form of designing and constructing buildings. Rourkeism is a term that I have used in my writing on the architectural profession and I think others have used as well and it obviously comes from Ann Rand's protagonist Howard Rourke in a novel that is often invoked and evoked but I wonder if it's actually read I have to confess that I found it difficult to get through a very dense novel but one that again the protagonist is Howard Rourke and many modern architects like to claim that they were the model for Howard Rourke because of his sexual prowess as well so Frank Lloyd Wright said of course I'm the model for Howard Rourke or Richard Neutra claim that he was the inspiration for Howard Rourke but he represents in that novel and the 1949 film in which Gary Cooper portrayed Howard Rourke the idea of the architect as an uncompromising individualist and very much a loner an outsider as well I mean you never see Howard Rourke interacting except with potential clients those who are going to bring his vision into reality so architecture is always seen as a kind of singular practice and that the sum of the architectural process is very much encompassed by again the design expressed through drawing or through the model the inspiration that's given some kind of tangible form and then the architect is a very charismatic and prophetic figure who has to convince often recalcitrant clueless clients to buy into his vision and again this notion of the architect as embodying a very masculine expression of power in some way that the woman can only be the sort of helpmate or the architectural critic to advance the vision of a Howard Rourke so I've referred to now it's commonly known as star architects is tracing their lineage back to someone like Howard Rourke although certainly during the Renaissance period in the notion of the architect emerging now as an artist someone who's not tied necessarily to the traditional building crafts and trades and tied to the construction side it has a very very long history I think it's interesting that if one begins to understand what is modern about the practice of architecture and this discourse in the late 19th century and continuing into the early 20th century that to be modern was not only a formal quality but it was the way in which one organized one's practice as well and architects began to emulate large businesses and industry there the practices became very specialized there no one architect could encompass the kind of technical knowledge as well as the artistic knowledge and the business acumen that were necessary so you have the development of partnerships oftentimes of two and three partners and then you had what I like to see is sort of the the base of the iceberg in a way you had these huge numbers of draftsmen who clearly we're never going to become independent practitioners we're never going to become partners in the firm and so they could only participate in terms of these firms if there was a sense that they were included in a practice that was dedicated to art there was also the notion that monumental buildings served a social good particularly in this country which I think is a somewhat specious argument that it was a grand and monumental architecture based upon the classicism of the Mediterranean world that somehow was going to knit us together and the public spaces that it generated and of course the people who felt comfortable in those public spaces were again a very small slice or who were welcomed into those public spaces were a very small slice of our diverse population in terms of race in terms of ethnic group in terms of socioeconomic class I think that architects have always made a kind of Faustian bargain in a sense that they are dependent upon patrons and it's going to be interesting to see given the uprisings in the Middle East now so many western architects have practiced and have had incredible commissions for museums for entire college campuses and we're seeing the kind of fallout in terms of politics of one is too closely identified with these dictatorial regimes for our own geo geopolitical interest and I think architects for their own architectural and artistic interests and I was very interested to see that some of the artists whose works might be included in the Guggenheim in the Middle East were saying they didn't want their work shown unless there was a commitment to improving the living in the working conditions of all of the immigrant laborers who were brought into Dubai who were brought into these countries really under horrific conditions I think again that kind of moral strain that we talked about that infused architecture in the United States from the mid 19th century forward and so influenced the modern avant-garde movement with a social idealism but again they were dependent upon government and workers unions to provide the funds for public housing and workers housing at that time and unfortunately in this country in the neoliberal state as we've seen in the recent attacks on unions those kinds of sources and the idea that government should have a very limited role that kind of patronage really seems to have disappeared particularly in this country so I think it's it's very difficult for architects and I see it in my students who who want to do good who do have a social conscience and although their numbers are still relatively small in terms of schools of architecture I mean that's a really horrifying statistic that African-American architects in the 1960s I think constituted one percent of the architectural profession and today I think it's only something like 1.5 or 1.7 Hispanics are better represented 8.6 and now women are almost 25 percent of the architectural profession so we really have an advanced and in part I think it's because of where the commissions come from it's still a white male power structure that has it within their purview to award commissions