The story of the film The story of the film The story of the film The story of the film The story of the film Architecture over the last couple of decades has really become a commodity And it's been perceived to be a commodity that's produced by Highly skilled and talented artists Rather than being produced by those individuals who are serving A broader public need So a lot of what has happened in the rise of the starkatex over the last two or three decades Has really been a kind of privileging of people who are making large-scale sculptures In our environments Without fully considering how people will be using those places How the art will be seen in those places How work will be enhanced in those places Or how people can really enjoy themselves in terms of recreation safely in those places To a large extent I think would have to be argued that much of what we've celebrated in architecture over the last 20, 30, 40 years Has been a kind of self-indulgence on the part of architects who have often been dismissive of their clients and their clients' real needs And who have often looked at buildings that they've developed that have leaked or have not worked effectively or have not provided the kinds of environmental security that they ought to have provided And we've made stars of those individuals I think to the detriment of the public at large I think the good news about that is that in many of our architecture schools at this moment And we've made a lot of research finding that students themselves are asking for a more socially conscious and a more environmentally conscious kind of architecture A kind of architecture that really serves human needs Architecture has always been a fairly small and privileged profession There are only about 100,000 licensed architects in the entire United States And the vast majority of them come from a very limited demographic Fewer than a quarter of all of the licensed architects in the United States are women Fewer than 6% are people of color and that includes African-Americans, Latinos, and Asians together represent 6% or 7% of all of the architects in the United States That demographic has tended to reward itself for the work that it does for itself and for a particular kind of client So that while there are about 150 in architecture schools in the United States All of the awards seem to go to people who graduated from only a small handful, maybe a half a dozen Primarily from the Northeast and the Northern West Coast And the magazines that celebrate architects tend to focus on a small handful of architects Often it's not architects who aren't even American but architects who come from abroad who do a particular narrow kind of work for wealthy clients Over the last 30, 40, 50 years in the United States in particular, there's been a lot of wealth and that wealth has often gone into supporting a kind of design that has a lot more to do with style than with substance So we look at a lot of things that have been designed over the last few years and we see that they may look great or they may look interesting but in fact they don't always fit They don't always work as well as they ought to We've designed cars that use too much fuel We've designed electrical instruments and tools that presumably make life easier but in fact consume excessive amounts of energy We've designed cities where it's difficult for people to walk around We've designed buildings that consume 40% of all of the energy in the United States And so we're finally catching up with the fact that we have been very consumer oriented in a way that has privileged style over substance And has tended to focus more on the desires and needs of particular individuals than on the larger set of societal needs that design can help to address And so we are at a point of crisis. We see that on a daily basis a lot of the things that have been designed over the last 15, 20 or 20 years have failed us They're using too much energy or they're breaking down excessively And they're not really meeting the kinds of needs that we would have anticipated they would have met So the big challenge that many of us who are involved with design school space right now is to recalibrate the way we think about design to bring a new set of values into the design process that focus more on real human needs and a little bit less on style It really is a great privilege for those of us who are now involved in architectural and environmental education to be able to work with the students who are in school and coming out of school There's been a large focus on the extent to which today's students have a set of technical skills that enable them to work faster and smarter and using more information And using different kinds of materials and methods that weren't available even a decade ago And that's been wonderful but what's really been great is that students are now while they're in school and when they come out of school Much more committed to social service, to social justice, the issues of service to those who have traditionally been underserved That has been the case really for the last 15 or 20 years For many years, everyone wanted to be like Frank Gary They wanted to create great sculptures in the landscape Whether those sculptures worked or not was largely irrelevant The ability to use aerospace engineering to come up with forms that hadn't been built before was considered to be a primary task of someone coming out of school That's over, that's over At this point, students are coming out and they're thinking about work that they can do in Baloxie They're thinking about work that they can do along the Gulf Coast They're thinking about the needs of people in refugee camps They're working with individuals around the world who need shelter and who need ways of living that are affordable and supportable and sustainable The students themselves have been pushing through design schools to force faculty to think differently about the way faculty see the environment, use the environment and create objects that serve not just the aesthetic interests of the architect but also the long term sustainability needs of clients Thank you for your time