Know Your Enemy

"Architecture, the most public of endeavours, is practised by people who inhabit a smugly hermetic milieu which is cultish. If this sounds far-fetched just consider the way initiates of this cult describe outsiders as the lay public, lay writers and so on: it's the language of the priesthood. And like all cults its primary interest is its own interests, that is to say its survival, and the triumph of its values – which means building. Architects, architectural critics, architectural theorists, the architectural press (which is little more than a deferential PR machine) – the entire quasi-cult is cosily conjoined by mutual dependence and by an ingrown, verruca-like jargon which derives from the more dubious end of American academe."

"If we want to understand the physical environment we should not ask architects about it. After all, if we want to understand charcuterie we don't seek the opinion of pigs."

"We are all familiar with the hubristic pomp that often results when actors direct themselves. Appointing architects to conceive places is like appointing foxes to advise on chicken security."

Three choice quotes from Jonathan Meades' extraordinarily ferocious assault on architects and the practice of architecture, extracted from his book Museums without Walls by the Guardian. Chucklesome, not least because I'm well versed to working with arrogant, smug architects. That said, as part of the "deferential PR machine", I don't exactly escape Meades' censure.

(Thanks to Alf for the link.)