There is a long-fought battle in our discipline over the establishment of architectural territory; it has continuously circulated around the question as to whether an agent of change originates from within or from without. In the interior of architectural discourse, we may position all those who rally for logic: autonomy, formalism, tectonic language and syntax; while in the exterior there are those who rally for a cause: social reform, environmental improvement and political effect. On the one hand, the 'insiders' think of the 'outsiders' as a decoy to the stability of the discipline and its status quo. They struggle to disallow the expansion of disciplinary boundaries to distant peripheries and to invoke the ethos and the spirit of the architect as author. On the other hand, the outsiders value the insiders as blissful in their closed academic 'womb', and oblivious in not utilising architecture as an active tool for sociopolitical change. For decades, the architect has been double-faced, residing in the schism of this battle; running from the exterior to the interior, in and out, all along.
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