I think it's feasible to illustrate how people have seen architecture through the modern era and the current world we live in today. When asking non-architecture students what they imagine when they think about the word “architecture” they look at the Falling water Residence by Frank Lloyd Wright and signify the key element of its modern and conceptual design. You look over your shoulder and find that your siblings and family are talking about how well you have excelled in math to be able to get into architecture school, needless to say, my math teacher wasn’t any close to being right when he said calculus is a key element in architecture school, I know he wasn’t talking about calculating the derivative of e to the power of x while making floor plans and breaking my head to solve key elements and conceptual aspects in my model at 2 am. However, you start to ask the same non-architecture student what architect they know best and they mention Frank Ghery or Le Corbusier. 

It’s the integrity of architecture and the “image” I originally sought to define that brings light to people who don’t study and practice it. They have their own perspectives of how they see architecture based on the ideals they have been told, taught, and seen, creating misconceptions of what architecture really is. We begin to study architecture and see the history and such criticism behind its fundamentals but never talk about the diversity and inclusion that should be integrated within such a creative and thoughtful subject. Frank Ghery and Le Corbusier may be the greatest, but you take a flight in LAX and don’t realize that the theme building, being an iconic structure at LAX has Paul Revere Williams as one of the architectural designers. You also may have not noticed John S. Chase, a founder of NOMA, being part of the design behind the Martin Luther King humanities center at Texas Southern University. 

We see how well these structural elements are designed and how they revolve through the perspectives of people around the world on how they view architecture but we digress on why the representation of more diversity is important. Being one of the most humane professions, it always lacks the inclusion that is needed to solidify the idea behind actually setting a significance to the needs of people. It projects a certain absurdity in our own language, thoughts, and our externalized world into this 3-dimensional frame.

By putting these assets into the worldly view on those who don’t study and practice architecture, it creates diversity, it creates inclusion, but more efficiently, it creates an image that digresses from that of “modern” or “pure” or even “white” architecture. It’s necessarily not who we study architecture for, or what we intend it to be. It’s what we will continue to bring forward, enabling an image of diversity full of inclusion, equity, and the enrichment of our cultural history.