Re: Professionalism (con'td) Bunker's right!

 i don't disagree with anything you're saying Anand, the
 only thing is is that, on-the-ground, the way 'architecture'
 works revolves around the definition of the architect, the
 authority of the architect, and architecture subsumed to
 this, and possibly even (if to go further) in the Ayn Rand
 sense of super-hero architect as embodying this ideal
 (paralleled Frank Lloyd Wright, was made into a movie).

 the code you are citing is copyright, not architectural law
 which i assume exists for the licensing of architects as
 a professional and legal entity. from what i think i have
 understood, the idea of architecture is somehow within
 or encapsulated or constituted within your constitution-
 here it is not. copyright-law and a definition of 'works' in
 relation to this, are how 'architectural works' are defined
 in the example you gave. it could likely be another way
 of definition used by a lawyer, in another case, to define
 architecture, architect, work, value entirely differently if
 there was a legal battle and these ideas were central.

 on-the-ground, the architect and the idea of 'the architect'
 rules here, architecture is otherwise undefined by the
 populace, it is a background activity, a stageset which
 neither woos/impresses or really informs one about
 their surroundings (a pastiche of everything/nothing).
 that is why 'infrastructure', it has been proposed, is an
 architecture more suited to the architectural/engineering
 ingenuity, unique to the 20th c. in the .US and elsewhere
 but during that time, a way of representing architectural
 orders (in many forms/records/recordings/transmissions)
 and yet that 'modern architecture' does not exist in books
 or classes, it is invisible as architecture. and 'architects',
 then, get to dictate what is 'architectural reality' within a
 non-empirical, authoritarian structure without much peer-
 review (unless one wants to fail classes, and pay money
 for the privilege to be wrong and unworthy of architecture).

 as it is, architecture has been defined around a conception
 or pre-conceived notion of superior knowledge of culture,
 a style/taste/awareness attuned to the general awareness,
 understanding, and appreciation of a wide-scale of things
 brought into relation within architecture, as a discipline.
 though 'the field' of architecture, its pragmatism, has been
 both vacant from education (the realities of building things)
 while at the same time espousing these built things to be
 of highest cultural achievements (when simply buildings,
 without other cultural dimensions beyond pragmatics).

 the myth of the architect, continued by celebrity culture here,
 continues to give high praise to individual abstract expression
 by architects who style buildings with ideas, yet these ideas
 need not have a common, empirical, peer-reviewed referent
 upon which others can pose similar experiments and find
 similar results- instead it is like painting and sculpture, to
 each their own, through this focus on individuality, greatness.
 today, the architect is the dictator of architecture, which is
 a system reinforced by the institutions, and hollow at that.

 online, where ideas can be challenged, checked, at least
 brings some of the wider dimensions to the possibilities,
 there is a plethora of experiences of, in, through, about
 architecture, by architects, people, situations, contexts,
 all of which are what is 'not-architecture' if remembering
 John Young's use of the word, it is this missing piece of
 the present that is lost in the institutions as is, also in the
 approaches and ideas which your questioning and also
 sharing of ideas demonstrates the commonality that is
 faced by everyone interested in this realm, however so.
 in a sense, here, architecture is the enemy, though also
 it could be a liberator, yet it has no power in itself as the
 potential because it is held back by false constraints of
 ego maniacal and entrenched interests and also a lack
 of passion for the questions, to go beyond the status quo
 not with just 'style' which is just-another-consumable here,
 to get to the bedrock of shared and unique questions, and
 to engage it, with, through, and by architecture, not architects.
 architects, as arbiters or 'what is architecture' are part of the
 problem, a huge part. for they benefit from 'knowing about
 culture' while knowing very little if anything, and buildings
 show this vacancy of knowledge rather well, that much of
 the innovation is on the outside of the field, in many ways.

 great link, thanks.