#19
MONEY

After waking up from the dreariness of the Soviet era and the dream of the 1990ies (according to the essay “The End of History?” by Francis Fukuyama, 1989), experiencing uncertainty after the recent (current) world economy crisis, we start perceiving an architect’s role in the contemporary world a little bit differently. The field of architecture has been increasingly affected by strong financial, ideological, political and cultural factors. With the diminishing authority of architects, representation of the public interest is being replaced by the “doing business” rankings, and all this determines architects’ working conditions, payment rates and copyright protection, as well as quality of their architectural production. Thus working under the global economy conditions and willing to make influence on urban development, an architect can no longer (and maybe has never been able to) ignore the logic of financial systems.

A pessimist would say that an architect from a public intellectual has been turned into an agent highly dependable on its clients, no longer able to be critical to environment and itself. Such “an invertebrate” has been delegated with the power to shape the environment – predictable, safe, but dull. On the other hand, can an architect, not driven by money or taking part in power games, also be successful at the same time? We are willing to believe that a contemporary architect is capable of integrating money into the discipline of architecture, rather than just giving shape to the fluid capital.

The 19th cycle of talks on architecture calls for an inconvenient discussion on the subject of money, during which experts in the fields of architecture, journalism, politics and social sector will look for a relationship between architecture, architect and money. We will try to answer the questions: what does money make to an architect, and what does an architect make with the money?

The 19th series of talks of Architecture Fund are sponsored by Lithuanian Council for Culture, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, Netherlands Embassy in Vilnius, Viljandi windows doors, Protectus.