Architecture may be made of concrete, steel, glass, brick, and stone, but architects themselves are human.
They take risks. They make decisions. They challenge convention. Sometimes they make mistakes. Sometimes they become embroiled in controversy. And sometimes public opinion about the person behind a building becomes almost as powerful as opinion about the building itself.
Today, we might call this cancel culture. But long before social media made reputations vulnerable to instantaneous judgment, architects faced public criticism, professional setbacks, and periods when their work became inseparable from controversy.
The question for architecture is an interesting one: Should a building ultimately be judged by the controversy surrounding its architect-or by what the building contributes to the city over decades?
For Scarano Architect, PLLC, a New York architectural firm with four decades of experience working in one of the world’s most complicated building environments, it is a question worth exploring.
Architects Have Always Been Controversial
The idea of the controversial architect is hardly new.
Few examples are more fascinating than Frank Lloyd Wright.
Today, Wright is regarded as one of America’s most influential architects. Universities study his buildings, preserve them as landmarks, and architecture enthusiasts worldwide visit them.
But Wright’s life was anything but controversy-free.
In 1909, Wright left his family and traveled to Europe with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, a client he had fallen in love with. When they returned to the United States, the couple found themselves unwelcome in portions of Chicago society. Wright eventually built Taliesin in Wisconsin as their home and refuge.
Imagine that story unfolding today.
Breaking news, social-media campaigns, viral posts, and demands that clients distance themselves from the architect would unfold.
Yet Wright continued designing.
Japan ultimately became one of the most important chapters of his career. Wright received the commission for Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel in 1916 and devoted years to the enormous project. The hotel opened in 1923 and famously survived the devastating Great Kanto Earthquake with comparatively limited structural damage.
Wright’s difficulties did not erase his architecture.
If anything, history became more complicated than the headlines.
When Architecture Itself Becomes the Controversy
Sometimes the controversy is not personal. It is the building.
New York City provides countless examples because buildings here require architects and developers to navigate one of the world’s most complicated combinations of NYC zoning regulations, building codes, neighborhood concerns, development rights, and municipal approvals.
One extraordinary example occurred at 108 East 96th Street in Manhattan.
The residential building was originally designed as a 31-story building. The problem was that zoning restrictions
permitted only 19 stories at that location. The city’s Building Department had initially approved the project, but a community group subsequently challenged the building’s legality.
The dispute dragged on in court for years. Eventually, the result was almost unimaginable: the upper 12 floors had to come down.
It became one of New York’s most memorable zoning controversies.
But here is the part we often forget.
The building did not disappear.
Today, The Parkview stands at 108 East 96th Street as a 19-story residential building with 110 apartments. People live there. They come home from work, raise families, sit on terraces, and experience the building not as a decades-old controversy but simply as their home.
Time changed the story.
Architecture is a Long Game
That may be one of the fundamental differences between architecture and today’s culture of instant judgment.
Social media operates in minutes.
Architecture operates in generations.
A controversy can dominate headlines for weeks or years. A successful building may stand for 50, 100, or even 200 years.
Cities themselves are evidence of this.
Walk through New York City architecture, and you encounter buildings created during political battles, zoning fights, financial crises, neighborhood opposition, and changing architectural tastes.
Eventually, many of those arguments fade.
The buildings remain.
This does not mean architects should be exempt from accountability. Architecture carries enormous responsibility. Buildings affect safety, neighborhoods, property values, streetscapes, and people’s daily lives. Architectural accountability, professional ethics, and responsible design matter enormously.
But accountability and permanent condemnation are not necessarily the same thing.
Can We Separate the Building from the Architect?
Society has wrestled with comparable questions in art, literature, film, and music.
Can we admire a painting while questioning the painter?
Can we appreciate a film while disagreeing with its director?
Architecture makes the question even more difficult because we cannot simply put a building away.
Buildings become part of cities.
They acquire lives independent of their designers.
Residents change them. Businesses occupy them. Neighborhoods grow around them. Trees mature beside them. Children grow up inside them.
Eventually, authorship becomes the only one chapter of the building’s history.
Risk is Part of Designing Cities
Architecture without risk would produce remarkably boring cities.
Many ideas we now consider normal were once criticized as inappropriate, impractical, or radical.
Architects constantly operate at the intersection of design innovation, zoning regulations, construction technology, sustainability, economics, and community expectations.
That does not excuse mistakes. It does, however, explain why architecture rarely advances without disagreement.
The profession requires judgment- and judgment inevitably invites criticism.
The challenge is learning from controversy rather than letting it become the concluding chapter.
The View from Scarano Architect, PLLC
After approximately 40 years in architectural practice, Scarano Architect, PLLC has watched New York City change dramatically.
Building codes have evolved. Zoning has changed. Sustainability has transformed design priorities. Neighborhoods once dominated by warehouses have become residential communities. Older buildings have found new purposes through adaptive reuse and renovation.
Through all those changes, one lesson remains particularly relevant:
Architecture is ultimately measured over time.
The strongest buildings are not necessarily those that generated the fewest arguments when they were designed. They are buildings that continue to serve people and contribute to their surroundings years later.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s complicated personal history did not prevent future generations from recognizing the significance of his architecture.
The remarkable story of 108 East 96th Street demonstrates how dramatically zoning, government decisions, and public opposition can reshape a project-and how the building can nevertheless go on to have another life.
Architecture remembers controversy.
But architecture also outlives it.
Perhaps that is why the fairest judgment of an architect-or a building-rarely comes from the loudest moment.
It comes from what remains after the noise has faded.