September 2011, 1375. VOLUME CCXXX

Our special Preview issue underlines the importance of understanding the present

In the course of putting together an issue dedicated to looking forward, a series of unforeseen events aptly illustrated the folly of trying to predict the future. The dramatic unfolding of the global economic firestorm and the riots across the UK took everyone off guard, but the roots of these crises go back years, if not decades. Such episodes emphasise how we avoid engaging with and interpreting the present until a cataclysm occurs.

In the architectural profession, there is less sense of pivotal, world-turning moments. Yet the fall-out from wider events, such as the economic maelstrom, will gradually have a corrosive effect, starkly pointing up the architect’s role as a service provider at the behest of fickle patrons. These uncomfortable realities chip away at the profession’s perception of itself as highly skilled auteurs. However, this marginalisation is not simply the direct consequence of the latest economic downturn. For some time now, there has been a palpable whittling away of professional status and loss of authority.

How, then, to reconnect architecture with its core purpose of transforming human life for the better? How to put architects at the heart of debate? The wider cultural and social climate within which buildings are produced is radically shifting, as environmental stress on the planet intensifies. How such challenges are collectively confronted is critical, and architects have a vital role to play.

From next month, a relaunched and redesigned AR will engage more intensely with the new global realities. If we cannot predict the future, we can at least interrogate and understand the present.