We find ourselves in an era of building design - as each subsequent generation of Architects have before - unprecedented in the ability to engineer anything, and realize everything. The desire to advance the profession, and create beyond the boundaries of what was possible yesterday, drives us to build higher, and smarter, but also belies the troubling propensity of our field to forget that it is not the sheen of a high-tech curtain wall, or the irrelatable volumes born out of advanced modeling software that ultimately determines the success, or failure, of a building.  It seems that in the rush for prestigious awards, and the pursuit of the next-best-thing, we will never need pause to wonder “can it be done,” but should, and must always ask ourselves, “should it be done.”

We must realize that our success, or failure, inevitably hinges on the manner in which our work serves to facilitate the well-being of a society built around exchange in increasingly complex social, and cultural networks. We must realize that, even now, as technology increases the rate of this exchange, that the well being of these networks still depends solely on the health of the impulse - the human being, and that no other profession finds itself as uniquely positioned to affect the well-being of the Human Condition, as that of the Architect.

The Human Condition, as it has for a thousand years and more , needs only the thoughtful manipulation of form, space, and light - the essential elements of architecture - to thrive. It cares not for imbued meaning or sweeping gestures, but rather, flourishes when left to discover a singular significance unique unto it’s own relationship with the space it occupies. Whether the framework of this discovery is that of carbon-fiber and cable-stays, or stone posts and lintels, is of no significance.

This is not an advocacy for an architectural stasis, but rather, for a renewed commitment to the process of investigation, and for the preservation of the singular human experience. Through the responsible application of “new,” the Human Condition will prosper as never before. But without responsible investigation and research, we risk progress for the sake of progress, and at the expense of that singular experience - which ultimately determines our collective success as a profession, and well-being as a society.