architect as history

I found this picture at a blog named "callitaweasel" which features the musings of someone who might have too much spare time on his hands--wait, I shouldn't throw stones in my glass house. This is the Third Reich Dome designed by Albert Speer, who helped manage the Nazi war machine for several years, threw himself on the mercy of the Nuremberg Court and died in 1981. He was ever an architect, and his story serves as a cautionary tale to anyone in this profession.

The designer is a servant, and although the designer may convince himself or herself that the power to shape the world and the tools to do it are grasped in solitude and the legacy of the work shall echo down through the ages, there is always someone else to answer to. The client or the user provide the emotional and financial capital to carry out the work, and the judgment of posterity can be most harsh when it regards the eternal work with a yawn and summons forth the demolition crew.

The architect exists in a state of corruption, no matter the pristine values of the employer or the good intentions professed by all parties and  there is a constancy of compromises and lost opportunities.