Excerpt from "Transactions in Architectural Design" by James S. Ackerman:

It may seem reasonable, even inevitable, that architectural practice should be based on an understanding that architects, like lawyers and doctors, should discover their clients' needs and accommodate them to the best of their abilities. But current discussion within the legal and medical professions of the conflict between service to private individuals who can pay, and to the public who cannot, suggest an expanded or altered definition of professional responsibility. Actually, the conflict between public and private interest may be more acute in architecture than in other professions: the kind of buildings architects design are costly and are made possible only by the wealth of a small segment of the population or the state, yet every one raised affects the lives of people other than the one who makes the program and pays the architect for his services. Furthermore, the decisions of architects are embodied in buildings that last for generations, even for millenia, so that the overwhelming majority of people in our culture live and work in places designed not only for other people but for other times and conditions. For this reason, even the "private" practice of architecture involves responsilities to a widespread constituency.

James S. Ackerman is the author ofThe Architecture of Michelango, Art and Archaeology, The Cortille del Belvedere, Palladio andPalladio's Villas and is professor of fine arts at Harvard University. He has contributed "On Judging Art without Absolutes" (Spring 1979) to Critical Inquiry.

© 1974 by The University of Chicago. All excerpts appear in Critical Inquiry, Volume 1, Number 2 (December 1974). This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of US copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice is carried and that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or reduplication of this text in other terms, in any medium, requires both the consent of the authors and the University of Chicago Press.

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