my advice has always been to look and understand who we are as human beings and how we perceive each other.
friends that I admire are: wolf prix and frank gehry for all different reasons; steven holl; richard rogers, for all the reasons why he is totally fascinated in urbanism; and eric owen moss. they are characters who are fighting for their culture of architecture. all of them have somewhat different notions of its connection, whether this is focusing on sustainability or urbanism etc.
design symbolizes self-expression, and that the use of freedom frightens people. right now, there seems to be a lot of people moving with the herd and are comfortable doing that.