.

Ok. Let’s recap. We’re three years into a recession, and how’s the profession of architecture doing? Wait. Don’t answer yet. First let me paint a mental image for you:

Picture a long metal table with an uninflated plastic life boat on it. There’s a group of architects surrounding the table, all darkly clad and exhausted looking. The table is from Knoll, but that’s not important… They’ve been sitting there for 3 years. And all that time the room has been slowly filling with water. It’s probably up to their waist by now. But, there’s a rip cord on the life boat right in front of them. They could just pull the cord at anytime, and the life boat would inflate. The force of it quickly inflating would probably knock them all out of their chairs, but the inflated boat would provide a safe haven for the architects in the face of the rising water. Can you see it yet?

So where’s the rip cord for the boat? And what is that boat going to be like? And where’s it going to take us?

Maybe we’re all just sitting here, each of us afraid to pull the cord. Maybe we’re afraid of the shock of it, afraid of the sudden force of it. Maybe we’re all just too nervous to pull the cord. Maybe we’re waiting for someone else to. Or worse, maybe we’re still waiting for the water to recede.

I bet there’s another way to go about this profession. I bet we could redefine the whole thing. We just need to pull the rip cord, and get in the boat.

Because, I’m pretty sure the water is still rising.

the photo is from nrahaim’s photostream on Flickr