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Architects, don't imitate your idols – instead, think more like them

Words:
Muyiwa Oki

Great architects deeply understood, and responded to, their context. We should talk the language of now, but never let the status quo limit us, argues Muyiwa Oki

Filippo Brunelleschi understood the language of his time in sacred geometries, as seen here at the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy.
Filippo Brunelleschi understood the language of his time in sacred geometries, as seen here at the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy. Credit: RIBA Collections, drawing by Bernardo Sansone Sgrilli 1733

At every stage of our lives, we look for idols – figures who shape and inspire our ambitions and show us what is possible. Early in my journey, I admired the modern masters: Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright. 

I was fascinated by their ability to create a new architectural language responding to their era’s industry. Fallingwater, with its seamless integration into nature; Corbu’s ‘home as a machine for living in’ – thrilling in their audacity.

Now, in a career milestone, I ask: are these still my idols? Should I still model my practice on them? More pressingly, do their ideas still speak to today’s realities? In a recent town hall at the University of Brighton, a student put it plainly: what type of architect do you want to be? 

If history tells us anything, great architects were not great because they were merely creative. They deeply understood, and responded to, their context. Even the Renaissance virtuosos – Andrea Palladio, Filippo Brunelleschi, Michelangelo – worked within their time and spoke their era’s language. The Catholic Church was a driver of the Renaissance, so their work told the story of the Christian faith in domes and sacred geometries. 

Modernism was forged in the fires of industrial change – the rise of manufacturing, the advent of new materials, new power sources like electricity, the growth of new liberal economies, and the age of the automobile – and its architects met a new world with novel forms and functions.

Economic imperatives

I’d posit that today, the ruling force of our time is economics, not the church nor the machines. Arguments for preserving public space, or urban regeneration, have to be justified in economic terms. 

We defend museums by citing their role in local economies. We push to make space for girls in public parks, laying out the case in reduced crime rates and increased property values. Everything must prove its worth through the market lens. And if you don’t speak that language, you don’t get to participate in the debate.

That’s where architecture finds itself. When architects design buildings, we shape economies, cities and policies. Yet, too often, we see our role as separate from economic debates, as if architecture exists in a cultural vacuum.

But, as Ha-Joon Chang argues in his book Economics: The User’s Guide, systems aren’t fate. There is no single way for an economy to function – there are choices, policies and incentives that drive behaviour. Similarly, there is no single way for architecture to shape society.  

So, what kind of architect do I want to be? One who changes things, because right now, there’s a poverty of ideas – a suffocating consensus that architects can only work the way they do. The first step to changing the world is refusing the premise that the status quo is inevitable.

But change demands engagement. We can’t just sit in studios, sketching. We must step into economic and political conversations. We need to understand the financial mechanisms driving development: who funds what, why policies prioritise specific outcomes over others, and how we can incentivise good stewardship of the built environment. 

The world is desperate for architects who fight, not with bricks but with ideas. High-quality housing isn’t just a design problem – it’s a power problem. Cities aren’t about beauty – they’re about justice. Economics? That’s just the battlefield.

This isn’t about abandoning design, but seeing architecture as a force operating within, and able to challenge, the economic frameworks shaping our world. The best way to honour our idols is not to repeat them but to think like them: see the world as it is; imagine how it could be better.

 

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