[excerpt]  … One of the things many of us tell ourselves when deciding on an architecture career is that we don’t do it for the money. Rather, we do it for profound reasons, for purposes that transcend a mere concern for social status, financial independence, or material comfort.

To be financially viable, our job requires the development of specialized technical competencies that can be adequately compensated. But it is well understood from the outset of our education that these competencies must serve a grander purpose, one that elevates the act of building as not just providing shelter for a given function, but also to manifest our view of humanity, nature, and even the metaphysical.

The what, as represented by our profession’s expectations of technical proficiency, means nothing without the why. It is not enough to understand what we do, but why we do it. In an ideal world, each of us should nurture and promote a system of beliefs, a knowledge of reality that informs our design and the technology used to buttress it.

What constitutes these beliefs, what are their sources, and do they matter?