A week ago, in sharing with you the shortlist of Barnes Foundation’s architectural aspirants, I wrote:
I wish that architects of conscience would boycott this project, but the commission is too much of a plum.
Today, Christopher Hawthorne, the LA Times‘ architecture critic, expresses the same wish. He writes:
As a profession, architecture has never included many refuseniks, those who decline to work for a particular client out of principle….There are times when architects serve the culture, and their profession, best by staying on the sidelines, quietly or otherwise.
In this context, he quotes the words of Herman Melville‘s Bartleby: “I prefer not to.” Hawthorne concludes:
I wish more architects had said the same thing to the Barnes Foundation.
The doyenne of architecture criticism, Ada Louise Huxtable, has already had her censorious say on the Barnes’ proposed move in a CultureGrrl BlogBack last February.
Are there any architects out there who received a request for qualifications or for proposals from the Barnes, but turned it down on principle? If so, please step forward with a comment and take a BlogBack bow.