Abstract

French architects professional crisis is often said to result from the impact of two oil crises on the building trade. Several years of prosperity force to change this diagnosis. In spite of recent building records, French architects still claim to exercise a “disaster profession” that can be no more a sign of economic crisis. The two rival hypotheses, economic crisis vs. crisis of legitimacy, are tested during the ‘Trente Glorieuses’ prosperous period. Architects’ testimonies of these years present all the warning signs of the current crisis. They describe the harmful consequences of design offices’ breaking into the market, and the independence claims of a growing number of actors.