Complex Questions

The New York Times reviews the morality of architects building for the lovely regimes of China, Abu Dhabi, and Kazakhstan, and such past patrons as Hitler, Stalin, the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein.

“The ideological issue is as old as architecture itself. By designing high-profile buildings that bolster the profile of a powerful client, do architects implicitly sanction the client’s actions or collaborate in symbolic mythmaking?”

Lucky Bush Library architect Robert A. M. Stern is joined to the ranks of tyrant handmaidens, but unbowed.

“I’m an architect,” he said. “I’m not a politician.”

Sadly we’ve seen no Bush drawings yet to add to the Times’ slide-show [no real ones anyway].