What does it mean to occupy a place when at one and the same moment you can be everywhere and nowhere, via GSM and WAP, via avatar and alias. In an age when investments must yield a profit for a large group of anonymous financiers, return and functionality are the dominant motives. The territorial is reduced to security. It is difficult to represent values when there are no longer any shared values. Ambitious clients turn into risk-shy investment companies.
Spatial unity becomes impossible under a regime of extreme cost-consciousness.
What remains is a building profession that falls back on its core activity and is at risk of losing its cultural relevance. Unless architecture is able to redefine itself and to broaden the substance of its design activities. And that will only be possible when it no longer leaves the design of the digital environment to trained specialists but incorporates it into the design of the physical built environment. If the virtual world is threatening to usurp the cultural relevance of architecture, then it is logical that architecture should seek to connect with that world. I will describe four stages in which this can happen, ending this trajectory by showing that it is possible to do all four. 1.