The title is stolen from Seth Godin, who has been using it for his new book, This is Marketing.
Architecture students have always had a fairly strong culture, from the long hours chained together inside our rooms. Plus, our work is distinctive work, not just pages and pages of letter sized reports. And in distinction from the other flakier visual arts, we’re hard on ourselves – we have high expectations in rigour and craft.
But when we leave school, this all gets exploded. We’re atomized into different aspects of the profession (there are only so many design positions to go around) as well as into all sorts of different professions.
And even for those of us that stay in the game, this cohort of youths is blended into the hierarchical ecosystem of the business world. The boss is worried about making payroll. The manager got two crazy kids at home. You’re just trying to figure out how to avoid drawing this detail incorrectly.
And yet, I still think there is still an “us” there. I don’t know the answer, but maybe question starts with “what things do we do?”