The London office of architect Zaha Hadid seems like an unlikely place for a protest. But yesterday, protestors gathered to condemn the statements of the firm’s director, and Hadid’s longtime collaborator, Patrik Schumacher. Holding signs that read “fascist” and “class war,” the protestors railed against Schumacher’s recent manifesto for urban policy , which called for the privatization of all urban space and an end to affordable housing policies. In short, the poor don’t belong in cities anymore.

Does the architect have a responsibility to the greater good of society? Or just to the client?

Meanwhile, the firm itself is an unlikely lightning pole for political controversy. The firm–whose eponymous founder died suddenly this year, leaving Schumacher as its leader–is known for a brand of formalism that emerged in the 1990s, as new digital tools enabled the design and construction of radical new forms. Its work often seems distinctly apolitical and ahistorical, ceding design decisions to algorithms capable of generating immensely complex forms–an approach known as parametricism, which even Schumacher has struggled to define. Yet ZHA, a firm so indicative of architecture’s tenuous relationship to real users, is now at the center of a controversy over the industry’s political and ethical role in the world.

It might seem like an insular debate within the rarified world of academic architecture, but it also gives us a glimpse into a moment of reckoning for a profession whose relationship to politics has always been blurry. And if you look hard enough, you’ll see that it also mirrors a similar process happening in Silicon Valley, where the tech world is struggling to define its own responsibility to society at large.

It all started on November 18, when Schumacher gave a keynote lecture at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin.

In it, he outlined a libertarian’s urban manifesto of sorts, where privatization would fix all of the woes of the modern city. Railing against affordable housing policies including low-income housing and homeowner subsidies, he argued that city centers should be ceded to the wealthy–and to people who “contribute” to the economy. “Is it not fair that it’s someone else’s turn to enjoy the central location?” he said, as Dezeen first reported. “Especially if it’s those who really need it to be productive and to produce the support required for those that have been subsidized.” Meanwhile, public spaces like parks should be privatized. All in all, it was remarkably close to the vision President-elect Trump seems to have for American cities. (Schumacher, it’s worth noting, is a supporter of Brexit, and has argued that the EU’s regulations stifle innovation the same way Trump has argued that regulation stifles business in America, Dezeen reports.)

The reaction was swift. London Mayor Sadiq Khan called the manifesto “out of touch” and “just plain wrong.” In a fiery rebuttal, critic Phineas Harper called for the community to stop paying Schumacher attention, saying that the doing so “reveals the intellectual weakness of our profession.” Schumacher responded on Facebook, commenting that he had been derided as “the Donald Trump of architecture,” and that he had simply wanted to start a “constructive conversation” and challenge the “current left-liberal (anti-capitalist) consensus within our discipline.”

Then, on Tuesday, Zaha Hadid Architects sent out an official statement disavowing its director’s remarks, writing that “Zaha Hadid did not write manifestos. She built them,” and that Schumacher’s comments did not “reflect Zaha Hadid Architects’ past—and will not be our future.” The executors of Zaha Hadid’s own estate came out with their own statement, according to the Guardian‘s Oliver Wainwright. (While a spokesperson for ZHA confirmed to Co.Design that Schumacher is still with the firm, Schumacher himself did not respond to requests for comment.)