I suggest this not out of some personal vendetta or distaste for them. Indeed, I am a registered architect in India, a historian and anthropologist who writes on architects and architecture, the Dean of a School of Art and Architecture and, if that were not enough, I am also married to an architect. Rather, it is for two reasons, the first of which is somewhat pragmatic and the second of which, more crucial, is epistemological.The first reason, the pragmatic one, is that our experience tells us these terms neither capture the complexity of the built environment nor the multiple roles we play as agents in its (re-) production, dissemination, contestation, and sustenance. Here, one has only to think of the number of graduates from any architecture programme who engage the built environment in multiple ways as its advocates, its managers, authors, critics, chroniclers, and so on. Furthermore, not only are these terms inadequate to represent us or our work but - with their connotations of primary, chief, original, originary, etc. - they actively get in the way of us being able to form meaningful connections with other agents of the built environment. Thus, architects and architecture find themselves alienated from all stakeholders and allied agents (human and non-human) in the production of the built environment.
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