Albert Speer's son, Albert Speer, also an architect, believes that architects are not social engineers. He is misleading of course when it comes to the minutiae of designing buildings; the concept of "defensible space" is just one example. But in terms of overall vision and intent, architects are generally just executives who carry out the will of their sponsor.
A while ago, Bryan Ferry got into trouble:
In an interview with a German magazine, he described Albert Speer's buildings and Leni Riefenstahl's movies as 'beautiful'. The tabloids savaged him and he apologised, explaining that his comments had been taken out of context and that they did not mean that he approved of the Nazi regime. (Telegraph).
There seems to me to be a bit of doublethink going on. You can debate the beauty or otherwise of Speer père's work, but you can hardly call bricks and mortar Fascist. In this respect, context is everything.
That is not what people believe. They generally believe that if you get offered an apple by Hitler, it is a bad apple, but if you get offered an apple by Mother Theresa, it is a wonderful apple.
If I described the opening ceremony of the not to be mentioned event, as a "Cathedral of Light", a triumph of will, a celebration of physical perfection and dominance, can you really, with hand on heart, tell me you know if I am talking about Nuremberg in 1934 or London in 2012?
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