Air Time Is What Architects Need

Re “Whatever Happened to the Architect Groupies?” (Jan. 2): The architects missed their opportunity to “penetrate the public consciousness” by not putting their show on TV during the ‘80s.

The American Institute of Architects’ awards should have been presented on TV with music, dancers and the envelope.

Awards shown only in architectural magazines reached an audience limited to those who competed for the awards. The public was not educated to know that many stars and runners-up exist in the world of architecture and they are beautiful, eccentric, temperamental and sometimes sexy.

MARION SAMPLER

Los Angeles

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I guess I always felt that the “decent obscurity” that Michael Rotondi (dean of the Southern California Institute of Architecture) says we architects deserve was desirable. I simply don’t understand how some of us were ever able to become “starchitects,” not to mention being recognized by such bastions of good taste and wisdom as Vanity Fair.

I also did not know that our clients and observers of architecture are part of an “audience that follows entertainment trends” and “is notoriously fickle.” As if it wasn’t enough that such a small percentage of the public is even aware of our profession, and has no idea of what architects do, now we have to be concerned with entertaining controversy and thrill seekers that will surely make architecture “sexy” again.

Most of us were told very early in our architectural education that few architects become rich through designing buildings alone, and that a Frank Lloyd Wright or a Walter Gropius happened only once in a blue moon.

The number of dollars available for promotion should not be the determining factor in the dissemination of information about good architecture. Our schools have failed to teach students to be aware of not only architecture, but most other arts. Our Institute of Architecture has historically failed to educate the public about who we are and what we do.

Unfortunately, I have no new, exciting, sexy, socially conscious, politically correct, dazzlingly fashionable, trend-setting, guaranteed-to-succeed ideas to offer to remedy this situation. Neither do I expect to become a brand-name architect. I do believe, though, that our work should speak for itself, that work is marked by integrity and good design, it will not be trendy or fashionable, but it will endure.

NELSON FAY, AIA

Encino