Architecture is suffering a crisis of confidence. More and more mainstream figures in the field are admitting that the profession has lost its way. As I previously mentioned, Frank Gehry, the world’s most famous architect, recently said that “98% of everything that is built and designed today is pure sh*t. There’s no sense of design, no respect for humanity or for anything else.” Architectural thought-leaders seconded and thirded him. And he’s since been fourthed by another.

Last year, recognizing general public’s low opinion of architects, the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the trade organization for the profession, launched an effort to “reposition” the industry by hiring marketing and brand-identity firms. (You can find a PDF of one of the Institute’s public opinion polls here.)

And now The New York Times, the ultimate arbiter of elite opinion, recently published an op-ed that declared, “For too long, our profession [architecture] has flatly dismissed the general public’s take on our work, even as we talk about making that work more relevant with worthy ideas like sustainability, smart growth and ‘resilience planning.’” The authors are not kooks on the fringe but architect Steven Bingler and Martin C. Pedersen, former executive editor of Metropolis magazine, both of them very much in the establishment.

The authors observe that self-congratulatory, insulated architects are “increasingly incapable … of creating artful, harmonious work that resonates with a broad swath of the general population, the very people we are, at least theoretically, meant to serve.” Bingler and Pedersen note that this has been a problem for over forty years (my emphasis), and that things are even worse today.

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In his response to Bingler and Pedersen, Betsky took a detour to mock The New York Times’ architecture critic for “bizarre forays into fields such as so-called ‘evidence-based design.’” That increasingly growing field, which incorporates aspects of environmental psychology, empirically studies the effects of different built environments on people, such as how the design of hospital waiting rooms affects patient health. Why this is a bizarre pursuit Betsky does not say, but his blithe rejection of results-based science is typical of architects today.

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Betsky is also threatened by the remedy proposed in the op-ed. While Bingler and Pedersen want architecture to retreat from its excesses, Betsky thinks the profession is failing because it has not gone far enough. He wants more experimentation, more risk-taking, more radical design aimed at pleasing architects, not venal clients or the clueless public. He is an architectural supremacist: Starchitecture now, starchitecture tomorrow, starchitecture forever!

As seen from his comments on evidence-based design, Betsky appears to reject the scientific study of architecture’s effects. And when he writes, “I did not know you could design in a way that is ‘tied to our own DNA,’” he appears to deny the existence of human nature. He also denies even the existence of measurable public opinion when he claims that appeals to popular preferences are “mystical.” In short, he has little tolerance for empiricism whatsoever. Compare how the religious opponents of Galileo refused to look through the telescope, or how creationists reject evolutionary theory since it threatens their faith.

Could Betsky’s cult-like denial of reality be motivated by despair? Could it be that architecture has exhausted itself but out of pride refuses to turn for help, that architecture would prefer to commit suicide than to confess it is wrong? There is a way out, as even Betsky hinted above: A return to architecture based on the collective intelligence of mankind.

It is never easy to admit that one is mistaken, still worse that one’s god has failed. It is all the harder when one’s false worldview has been the justification for one’s high social rank. But the growing crisis of confidence is a sign that a cherished dogma will finally be abandoned: The superiority of the architect to the common man.