As new practices
develop, controversies have surfaced regarding the architect’s
ambiguous
relationship to yielding disciplinary power. This paper will present
(1)
critical perspectives on social architecture, (2) ethnographic
snapshots from
the field, (3) a geopolitical perspective, and (4) a projectile where
the
‘social’ is more radically localized alongside social movements like
the Right
to the City.
Nussbaum on Design Imperialism
‘Social’ architects apply the word
‘social’ to their practices to distinguish themselves from and develop
a
critique of the broader discipline’s capital dependent practices, while
not
necessarily being too particular about the meaning of ‘the social.’[3] While
this critical process has not always been integrated into practices,
debate
erupted online when Bruce Nussbaum asked: “Is Humanitarian Design the
New
Imperialism?”[4]
challenging assumptions and outcomes of social designers' visions by
presenting
Emily Pilloton’s Project H and MIT
Media Lab’s One Laptop Per-Child Project.
Nussbaum asks whether the humanitarian designers collaborate with the
right
partners in local communities, a question he developed after hearing
Indians at
a conference interpret humanitarian assumptions as cultural
neo-colonialism: “What makes her think she
can just come in and solve our problems?"[5] Does imposing aesthetic, educational, or
environmental ideology imply
imperialism? What happened when
the government “perceived the effort as inappropriate technological
colonialism”
or “Western intrusion?”[6]
Critical debate erupted in response to Nussbaum’s questions about the
social
impact and unexpected consequences of social design, some denouncing
Nussbaum
while others enhancing the dissection of social design’s motivations
and methodologies.[7]
Emily
Pilloton agrees that often designers practice “fly-by-night”
architecture when
they “swoop in with their capes and ‘design thinking’ to save poor
folks.”[8] But
Pilloton argues that Nussbaum
“greatly oversimplifies the serendipitous chaos that is humanitarian
design,”
where in her local community, she believes a designer must first be a
citizen.[9]
Cameron
Sinclair, of Architecture for Humanity, also argues that Nussbaum
overlooked
the details where “multidisciplinary, multicultural and diverse teams
(are) working
locally hand in hand with communities on the ground.” Sinclair blames
the design
media for over-simplifying the complex process, and suggests that
Nussbaum
redirect his critique of imperialism to corporations and government
policies, [10]
not “pro bono designers.”[11] Sinclair
suggests that designers should not be “playing defense” against
criticism, but march
forward and “encourage thousands of designers to create a million
solutions to tackle a millions of issues [sic].”[12]
Some
people responded to the debate by advising more gentle interventions
and
criticism rooted in the context. Niti Bahn advocates for humility of
the
designer and mutual respect between them and the community—so the
designer
learns alongside the community.[13]
Maria Popova found
linguistic flaws of the debate too removed from the context and
exacerbated by
design writers, the “giddy, overeager sidekicks, complicit in
disengaging from the very communities in which humanitarian design is
meant to
be manifest."[14]
No individual can solve contradictions of social architecture, Popova
argues,
but “cross-disciplinary teams of designers, scientists,
anthropologists,
linguists, and writers might” be able to function as the “cultural glue”—“inventing new
ways of writing, talking and thinking”—between social designers and the
communities they serve.[15]
Other critics
deepen Nussbaum’s warning of design imperialism, such as Quilian Riano,
who
defines an imperialist practice as one that is “introduced from
‘outside’ and
is not sufficiently grafted to the social, cultural, and productive
capacity
within a given system.”[16]
Gong
Szeto asks an essential question: “what
is not being asked is what causes poverty”—and applies the metaphor of
cancer,
that it “will continue to matasticize until you chemotherapty the root
cause.”[17] If those causes are not considered—policies,
political realities, real markets—then designers will “be in the
business of
producing bandages to persistent problems that will never go away.”[18]
is it imperialism? the answer is yes … because shelter
is not the ‘only’ thing people need, or playgrounds, or eyeglasses (and
yes,
these are “things”) - people also need to know that their voices are
being
heard at the state level, that their homeland is there for its citizens
… it is
imperialism because there is a not-so-subtle imposition of an
ideological
stance that “design can save the world” [sic]. [19]
The Nussbaum
controversy raises important polemical questions to begin unraveling
the
controversies of ‘social architecture.’ How
do architects work locally? How do they work with people? How does
vision match
outcome? Following Bruno Latour’s introduction to actor-network
theory in Reassembling the Social, we ought to
begin inquiries by following controversies, and then not repeat
“social”
assumptions or naive representations, but instead, “find extra vehicles”[20] of explanation. Here I
propose stepping into the local to assemble agents, objects, and
connections—herein architects, clients, tools, buildings, and
relations—which “trace a network” so we may
be able to measure the velocity of social architecture.[21]
The following
ethnographic research was gathered in 2008 during eight months of
participant
observation of the Rural Studio, Architecture for Humanity, the Alley
Flat
Initiative, and others. The ethnographic snapshots are thin slices to
represent
the intricate processes I observed and recorded between the various
community
members – architects, students, clients, neighbors – documented with a
video
camera, audio recorder, and notepad.[22]
The critique is not meant to reduce the projects to insignificance, but
to deploy
a more empirical representation of controversies in order to suggest a
projectile for future practices.
Architecture as Object
The Rural Studio is a design build program at Auburn
University founded
by Samuel Mockbee (1944-2001) and D.K. Ruth (1944-2009) as a reaction
to what
Mockbee regarded as the postmodern mystification of the architectural
process. The goal of the
program is to connect students
back to place, the construction process, and the role of the “citizen
architect.”[23]
The studio has constructed over a hundred buildings, which have rightly
drawn
worldwide attention. I will present two community buildings—one failed
and one
with an unpredictable outcome—because they were executed with a
shortsighted
perspective of architecture within a living community and instead
simplified
architecture to an object.
In 2001, the Rural
Studio built the first Boys and Girls Club [BGC] in the small town of
Akron as
a safe haven for children. In the well known book The
Rural Studio – which has become the dominant representation of
the Rural Studio as social architecture for the poor – Andrew Freear
(the
current director) said: “‘This is the closest you can get to community
architecture.’
He contrasted the town's involvement in the club's construction with
that of
‘so-called community architecture that is driven solely by
architect-developer
motives.’”[24]
The project was celebrated as a success and the instructor
distinguished it
from other community architecture projects. The Rural Studio and
publication assumed
that the project improved the social relations of the community,
without asking
how well the building functioned, who would staff it, or how it
fulfilled their
social vision.[25]
Unfortunately, the project failed and could not remain a BGC because
the owner
decided not to donate the land to the town. Six years after the
building’s
construction, the building was abandoned—doors boarded up, windows
smashed, and
site derelict, littered with beer bottles and trash. The Rural Studio
had not
suitably rooted their process in the social systems of the community.
Five years after this failure a new group of students
decided to build a
second BGC in Akron only a stone's throw from the first one. The new
students
chose land the city owned and were very ambitious by integrating a
gigantic
wave-like lamella structure to shelter a basketball court aside the
building.
The group confronted problems when someone stole their tools and the
copper out
of their building, after which they kept a guard dog at the site. The
building
has now been completed and widely published. However, one instructor
asked a
challenging question about the project:
We know the city owns the
property. We know they'll take it over. And the next question is: Who's going to run that damn thing? And
if they don't get AmeriCorps or somebody in the community to do that,
it's
going to fail again. And it's going to be this beautiful thing that
sits there
and dies. And it's very likely that that might happen.
While the Rural Studio learned from its mistakes and
integrated them
into its process, the instructor wondered whether the process went far
enough. The
social architectural design process—as represented here in the Rural
Studio—was
focused predominantly on the object of architecture and was
shortsighted because
it was not entrenched deeply enough in or did not help
establish local
groups to implement social improvement.[26]
Professional Deficiencies
Architecture for Humanity [AFH] was
founded in 1999 by Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr by developing a
website and
launching a design competition. Eleven years later they have 69 active
chapters
around the world where volunteers work in their local communities.
Their
website claims that they “directly benefit” 25,000 people from their
designed
structures, and their “advocacy, training and outreach programs impact
an
additional 60,000” people a year.[27]
In 2006, Sinclair won the
TED prize and $100,000, which he invested in developing an open source
website
for architectural services called the Open Architecture Network [OAN]
to
connect the good will of designers with housing designs.
Sinclair founded
AFH in response to “disillusionment” with the conventional design
workplace and
later realized he was not alone. AFH received so many volunteer
inquiries for
designers wanting to contribute to the social good that “[they] decided
to
embrace … [an] open source model of business. That anyone, anywhere in
the
world could start a local chapter and they can get involved in local
problems.
… All problems are local, all solutions are local.”[28]
In 2006, AFH published Design Like You
Give a Damn, which gave exposure to social architecture and
distinguished
AFH. AFH integrates humanitarianism with an open source model, which
concurrently provides a wide umbrella image for the work they do. They
are not
a conventional architecture firm that receives commissions, employs
architects,
and labors through the building realization process. AFH partners with
all
those willing to get involved in order to maximize humanitarian impact,
funneling funding, recruiting volunteers, and encouraging local
chapters to
organize
In AFH’s first
projects they struggled to fulfill projects because they had not been
trained in
the social sector, which led Sinclair to reflect that AFH “needed more
than a
great idea to get something built.”[29]
Out of AFH’s early struggle, they have emerged to be with international
influence in the social sector. The following ethnographic snapshot
will
present a local chapter of AFH to understand the struggle to begin a
social
architectural practice because of the discipline’s non-social
orientation.
In 2004, a group of
young designers met online and decided to organize a local chapter of
AFH in a
major American city.[30]
While
none of its members were licensed and few had done any social work,
they shared
the aspiration to contribute socially to the world. A
30-year-old architecture professional organized the first meeting
at a Starbucks with two female graduate students. Each of the first
members had
directly experienced poverty in some way, and they were first
generation
Americans. Their motivations stemmed from hearing about AFH and
personally
identifying with poverty. So the group began meeting in their free time
and
began to dream about projects.
The members met at cafes, restaurants, apartments, and
workplaces to
discuss different people’s ideas. The structure was non-hierarchical
and
everyone was encouraged to speak and present their opinions. The
discussions
varied between motivations, projects, and partnerships – resulting in
little progression
and frequently in postponing of work. The group struggled with
balancing the
volunteerism “in their free time” with the professional practice. In
this
balance between volunteering and work, between meaningful
non-hierarchical
volunteering and the professional workplace there was a colossal gap
between
envisioning and realizing projects. The group had been socialized,
educated,
professionally trained, and raised in families to move forward on a
professional path of personal prosperity. Their pro bono experiences
and
motivations were considered irrational according to the market logic,
and
rebellious against the status quo of the society around them, which is
why they
were so inadequately prepared to practice social architecture and so
ambiguously focused.
In its first seven
years, the local chapter has not constructed a building, although in
2008 when
I researched them they were more organized and determined than ever.
They have
created a website, architectural designs, outreach, and partnered with
other
groups. However, AFH’s open source model does not train people to run
local
chapters. Instead, local chapters are entirely self-guided. The
general structure of the local chapter was a copy of the mother
organization in
San Francisco. Unfortunately, the act of mimicking AFH – as in all
cases of “institutional
isomorphism”[31] – did
not ensure that the local chapter would be able to increase its
efficiency in social
architectural production. The inability to strategize, develop
unconventional goals,
and reach those goals, stems from inexperience in the public service
sector and
the inapplicability of their professional architectural skills; the
volunteers
were accustomed to manager-controlled hierarchical working
environments. The
professional orientation and pressures of being first generation
Americans
resulted in their confusing navigation between consumption and
humanitarian
aspirations: “Why am I driving this Lexus? When not too long ago I went
down to
Bolivia and saw some kid eating out of a garbage can.”
I
would love to just do [AFH work] 100% of the time. Unfortunately we
have to keep up this lifestyle. … I’m ashamed to say. I do spend a lot
of time bettering myself to some capacity. I want a better home. We all
want something more. We almost can’t get away from that. We’re taught
that.
The volunteers
identify with poverty because as one said, “It’s in the family.” However, due to their professional orientation
and their conspicuous lifestyles, they were incapable of realizing
their
vision, although content that they gave the effort. Constructing the
controversy of the local chapter gives empirical perspective to
Margaret
Crawford’s thesis that the architectural discipline cannot be socially
responsible due to ineffective practices and esoteric philosophies.[32]
Ambiguous Navigations
I spent one month conducting participant observation
fieldwork on the
Alley Flat Initiative [AFI] at the University of Texas at Austin [UT].
I was
lured there by Sergio Palleroni’s book and a PBS video called “Green
for All,”
in which he defines “the responsibility of an architect to be
inclusive, to
include all things about this world, and that means all communities.”[33]
Steven Moore, the director of the Graduate Program in Sustainable
Design at UT,
received grant funding to launch a sustainable workshop that became the
AFI –
meant to develop a sustainable architectural prototype. Moore,
primarily a
theorist, invited Palleroni to lead a design-build studio in order to
build the
prototype.
Palleroni’s
design-build class had a studio and construction component and appeared
to be
“disorganized” to students accustomed to disciplined instructors who
ran
conventional courses. Palleroni’s studio departed from the classroom
culture
because it dealt with “real life,” which Pallroni said, “cannot be
theorized.” The studio’s
project was to design an awning in
Austin, Texas, and a house and greenhouse in Biloxi, Mississippi.
On site the students
completed the previous year’s alley flat building. One day they
installed a
rain screen, with the experienced builders using the skill saw and the
beginners using the screw gun. The students incorrectly spaced the
panels; they
had to unscrew, respace, and rescrew. Design-build is trial-and-error;
mistakes
are made; lessons are learned. Palleroni explained how this
differentiated
design-build from the classroom because on-site mistakes have material
and
social consequences.
One student said:
“There's a detachment in architecture sometimes as a student. Even
though
you're designing for someone you're kind of just designing something
for
yourself, something you enjoy, something you think looks amazing.” In
contrast,
Palleroni’s studio tries “to accommodate the clients' needs and their
intelligence.” However, most students
were skeptical of the social architectural model because of its
inability to
financially support someone. And while there has been a significant
expansion
in education, social architects have been subsidized by university
employment,
largely ignoring the economics of sustaining social architectural
studio
practices.
The AFI began by
analyzing the East Side of highway I-35 in Austin to determine how to
empower
the Latinos who live in the area against the rising real estate taxes
as
Latinos were being gentrified out of the area. Latinos in Austin had a
long
history of being displaced by rising taxes – yet they felt Austin was
their
home – so the AFI attempted to provide a solution so they could stay.
Moore and
Palleroni’s research demonstrated that the AFI should build additional
buildings on the alleys so families could rent the space for
supplementary
income.
The UT professors
developed the AFI with a partnership in the Latino community – the
Guadeloupe
Neighborhood Development Corporation [GNDC] directed by Mark Rodgers –
because “[GNDC] knows people that are in
need of housing and who have a depth of knowledge about neighborhoods
that
we'll never have. And so our job [is]…to provide them with the
technical
knowledge and design capacity to help people in the community realize
their
definition of what their needs are – not our definition.” Palleroni
distinguished this process from other design-build programs because he
believed
the social architect must first serve the community and only secondly
the
student. The GNDC’s role in the AFI partnership was to ensure that the
Latino
community’s interests were met and that the housing units remained
affordable.
However, the partnership between UT and GNDC did not
result in an
outcome that everyone agreed with. For instance, Susana Almanza – an
intellectual and prominent leader in the Latino community who runs an
organization called P.O.D.E.R.[34]
–
believed the AFI would not empower Latinos against gentrification, but
would
instead exacerbate the gentrification of Latinos: “Will
the concept really help the community? Or
is it going to cause more damage than help?” Although the
professors
spoke about serving the community’s vision, Almanza believed the
community
process was flawed because it was reduced to a formula: “The community
is not
involved at the table. We're just invited after the plan has been drawn
and
then they say do you like plan A, B, or C. And there is never, NONE.
... You've
got to pick one of these particular plans.” Almanza believed that new
alley
flats would increase real estate taxes in the neighborhoods because
they added
an additional unit, worsening the Latino’s chances of staying.
Rodgers shared
Almanza's skepticism about whether the taxes would increase more than
the
supplementary income. Rodgers, representing GNDC, insisted the unit
remain
affordable and not only sustainable: “P.O.D.E.R.
and everybody else in that neighborhood is going to become totally
outraged
that [GNDC] and the UT program basically built an alley flat for more
gentrifies. And everybody said, ‘Whoops.’” Other members of the
Latino
community had trouble distinguishing aesthetically between the real
gentrifies
– the developers building in a modern style – and the AFI:
The designs I am seeing are all these... off-centered
architecture. It’s
just like eh [crisscrossing her arms]. I feel crooked. This is not my
mentality. My mentality is linear things. … And they drive me a little
bit
crazy because those designs do not fit in with the fabric of the
neighborhood's
architecture.
With community members interpreting the AFI as increasing
gentrification
and aesthetically similar to the actual capital-motivated developers: How can we interpret whether the project supported
or imposed on the Latinos? Who were the right partners?
Rodgers related the academic pressures put on the
professors to “a gun
that says you need to produce,” which makes Rodgers wary: “It’s a
little scary
and I’m watching it very cautiously.” Moore defended the AFI’s
action-oriented
stance towards completing projects and justified in their vision
because if the
Latinos do not “find ways of increasing their own economic capacity –
meaning
cash flow – they're going to get pushed out” and “become victims of
history.” Still,
Moore remained critical of social architecture:
There is a danger. Not that students fail. But that
students fail at the
expense of the community. And I find that to be a problem. And if
students
don't have the broader perspective that's needed – it can become experimenting on the poor.
Behind the progressive rhetoric, Rodgers analyzed the
professors’ value
systems that overemphasized “green sustainable designs,” which Rodgers
then
related to the history of modern architects – from Le Corbusier to Mies
van der
Rohe – of imposing a vision on society:
If you can do these green sustainable designs
you're going to change society for the better. So that's a pretty
heavy-duty
value system to be carrying along. … Where's the trade off?
The UT professors
chose to be design-build architects,
which motivated them to take action. What
if the community did not want a building constructed? Inaction is
often not
an option, for the architect believes that they must build. The AFI
walked an
ambiguous line between imposing their own vision and supporting the
Latino
community, the outcome of which is not easily discernible. Did
the GNDC partnership sufficiently “root” the AFI in the local
social struggles for equality? Almanza criticized the AFI because
it
resembled racial discrimination under the guise of the current fashion
of social or sustainable architecture.
They
give it this new term about sustainable
development. And I just look at them: Let
me correct you right away. We had those communities. You destroyed
them. You
let a slum like come in. You took away our emergency services. You took
away
our police service. You let crime and everything come in. And then
you say,
We're going to do economic development in
your community. All it meant was, You're
getting the hell out of there. All it meant was, We're
going to displace you.
Following Controversies
As social architects exert an even
larger influence on the architectural profession and other disciplines,
their
methodologies and local alliances need to be continuously reexamined to
discourage ineffective and paradoxical practices. The Nussbaum
controversy
disclosed many weaknesses of social design, however the debate was
dismissed by
important players in social architecture, and it did not result in
critical
consciousness coming to be regarded as integral to the social
architect’s
methodology. By observing the social architectural process through
ethnographic
snapshots I located three structural failures that could expose the
paradox of
social architecture—resulting in the opposite outcome of what was
intended: (1)
the shortsightedness of architecture as object, (2) disciplinary
deficiencies,
and (3) an ambiguous navigation of values. How
do we gauge success when ‘participatory’ practices are contested by
locals?
My analysis here
may reveal a “totally pessimistic way of looking at it,” as one Rural
Studio
student said. But, as an instructor at the Rural Studio noted, “there's
also a
bit of exploitation that happens too. Like imagine someone so poor that
they
can't say no to any help. And so that leaves them sort of powerless and
they
have to sort of have take something.” The analysis here was not meant
to
denigrate the work of the social architects, but to explore their
controversies
in order to ask the essential question: Can
architecture provide solutions to poverty?
Leaving Solid Ground
Here we leave the solid ground of
empirical observations in order to interpret a broader non-local
context. I do
not think that societal categories should pigeonhole strategies, nor
that the broader
‘context’ here has been entirely “assembled” in the actor-network
theory sense.
Rather, I hope to expose ‘social architects’ to theoretical
controversies that
parallel their visions for social transformation in order to provide
turf for
them to dig real life projects into.
Social architects build a
project as a solution “to a problem
which is ultimately socio-political.”[35] The irony of social
architecture is that it ostensibly takes sides with the people,
however, this
assumption becomes more problematic upon careful examination of the
practice. As
in Walter Benjamin’s warning—“in every era the attempt must be made anew
to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it”[36]—social
architects must revitalize their critical foundation and confront contradictions.
Architecture may
seem like a problematic site for integrating social critique because
architecture has long been entangled with the powerful. Architect’s
“natural
market” is monumental buildings that give symbolic capital to the
“domination
of the social order” which not only “disguise
the operation of capitalist society, but … make it meaningful.”[37] Remembering this legacy, architects ought to
remain cautious of their clients and remember that it is
a possibility not to
design.[38]
The late twentieth century explosion
of
deregulated capitalism has exacerbated wealth inequality, which Slavoj
Žižek
identifies as one of four “antagonisms within historical reality which
make
[action] a political urgency.”[39]
One
such spatial movement that social architect’s might consider as a
partner is
the Right to the City Alliance. Revitalizing Henri Lefebvre’s ideas,
David
Harvey argues that undemocratic urbanization has become an essential
neoliberal
capitalist method for reinvesting the surplus values of wealth,
resulting in:
new systems of governance
that integrate state and corporate interests, and through the
application of
money power it has ensured that the disbursement of the surplus through
the
state apparatus favors corporate capital and the upper classes in
shaping the
urban processes. [40]
Urbanization has been reduced to a partnership between
corporate
interest and politicians with little attention paid to the interests of
the
people, a configuration that Erik Swyngedouw labels as
“post-political”—in
which “expert knowledge” and “technologies of management” have become a
systematic formula for representative democratic governing.
Representaitve
democracy forces citizens to give up most of their decisions to
politicians,
drowning alternative perspectives. Harvey and Swyngedouw have both
developed
strategies to reclaim the political process. Harvey argues that because
the
built environment has had such a significant influence on
individuals—making
and remaking us—we should demand the right to decide how our cities are
constructed.[41]
Swyngedouw argues, following Jacques
Rancière, for a democratic environmental production mobilizing a
return
to “the properly political,” where the political process is not
representative but about accepting
conflict, disagreement, discussion in
space.[42]
If “space thus becomes an integral element of the disruption of the
'natural'
order of domination as the place where a wrong can be addressed and
equality
can be demonstrated”[43]
how can architects design or facilitate the
creation of those spaces—without overly reducing the people’s vision?
Some
architects teach design as a democratic reaction to the unwarranted
growth of
post-political capitalism and root their projects not only in local
partnerships, but in social movements. Dan Pitera—professor at University of
Detroit-Mercy—works at the Detroit Collaborative Design Center [DCDC]
in a city
that is "undergoing an apocalyptic urban transformation."[44]
We work
under the premise that to fabricate architectur[e] ... is an activist
endeavor
that is often ignored or unconsciously pursued. Design supports
or disrupts the
actions of individuals and the actions of the institutions that culture
has
formed."[45]
Pitera roots this process in local chains of
knowledge to enhance the popular dictum “give a voice to those who do
not have
voice”—to “amplify the diminished voice” in an “extensive workshop
process.”[46]
The community chooses the outcome. Are architects willing to consider that they
may not “create anything new … [but]
establish different connections between existing ‘things?’”[47]
Pitera’s critique is upon the profession—“we must mistrust our ‘art’” [48]—and
broader capitalist growth logic—“the life of a city does not fit within
this
paradigm. It includes not only expansion, but also shrinkage."[49]
Pitera identified antagonisms in the capitalist city and
developed
strategies of empowering communities while retaining a “mistrust” of
their
process.
Thomas
A. Dutton is a professor at Miami University of Ohio who runs a design
build
program called Over-the-Rhine [OTR] in Cincinnati, Ohio.
He has developed a 30-year relationship with
the Over-The-Rhine People’s Movement, rooting the student’s education
and social
architectural process in this movement—a progression beyond standard
model of ‘identify
problems and prescribe technical solutions’. Their process “‘engages with’ a community rather than providing a
‘service for’ one.”[50]
Again, like Pitera, Dutton redefines the classical participatory
rhetoric and
architectural tools:
Any critical practitioner of architectural design or
discourse who does not locate himself or herself on the global social
battlefield—as a strategist, that is, not a map drawer but a drawer
of lines of march, a generator of structures for knowledge for
social
action—will be among the first intellectuals to serve the hegemonic
class.[51]
If architects aspire to
build social architecture, how ought they to reconsider the discipline?
To make architecture is to map the world in some way,
to intervene, to signify: it is a political act. Architecture,
then as
discourse, discipline, and form, operates at the intersection of power,
relations of production, culture, and representation, and is
instrumental to
the construction of our identities and our differences, shaping how we
know the
world.[52]
While architecture is an unusual site for
social projects, it also provides a unique opportunity to materialize
critique,
especially on the local level where there can be "connections between all spheres of life
(production, consumption, politics, culture) inside concrete 'lived
spaces' and
dissident territories." [53] Along with Dutton, Marcelo Lopes de Souza
tries to prevent a political project—in this case, the Right to the
City—from
losing its political edge. De Souza suggests that the Right to the City
should mobilize
within a radical pragmatic paradigm of three levels: “sometimes 'together
with the state' (for tactical reasons, and always in a very
cautious and
limited way), but above all 'despite the state' and essentially
'against
the state'.” [54] The local level provides a starting position
for the broader emancipatory politics of tomorrow. Even
Latour, whose actor-network theory is criticized for appearing
a-political at
times, optimistically asks: “how could any political action be possible
if it
could not draw on the potentials lying in wait?”[55]
We must draw on possibilities lying in wait, while of course, not, as
Dutton
warns, be “politicizing students;” or as C. Greig Crysler advises: “critical pedagogy must acknowledge its dependence
on—and ambivalence toward—the hegemonic discourses and institutions it
seeks to
disrupt.”[56] Cornel West also writes that an alternative practice
must not ‘result in a mere turning of the tables.’[57]
Connections
must be drawn between local projects in different places, while
architects
should continue experimenting with democratic practices that question
their own
disciplinary skills and the broader society so as to bridge the paradox
of
social architecture. The architect is a professional image maker, and I
am
afraid that up to this point, “we are
not dealing with a longing for real equality, but with the longing for
a proper
appearance.”[58]
For social architects to fight for real equality they need to root
their
practices in local interactions, social movements, and new democratic
processes
of environmental production.
Acknowledgements: I am grateful for guidance from
Marlboro College faculty members: Gerald E.
Levy, Timothy Segar, Jay Craven, and William Edelglass. I am grateful
for
comments on this draft from William Edelglass, Brendon Potts, Robert
Baylis,
and Judith Ryser. I am also grateful for the open doors of social
architects
across the country; the Rural Studio, Rob Douge, Boys and Girls Club
crew, Mark
Wise, Joe Moore, Pan Dorr, Lucy Bryant, Willie Bryant; Architecture for
Humanity, Cameron Sinclair, Kate Stohr, Barb Alvarado, Elaine
Uang, Stephanie Lperone, Bennett Powell; at University of Texas at
Austin,
Sergio Palleroni, Steven Moore, Peter Strong, Chris Buono, Dan Bui,
Jeremy
Olbrys, Elizabeth Walsh, Amber Czapski, Tracie Cheng, Guy Fimmers, Brad
Deal,
Sylvia Herera, Susana Almanza, Michael Oden, Jennifer Hoss,
Patty
Broussard. Of
course, only I am responsible for the content
Kenton Card is a Masters
student in
Architektur.Studium.Generale, a traveling program between eight
European
universities based out of Brandenburgische Technische Universität,
Cottbus,
Germany. He has conducted participant observation fieldwork on social
architects around the United States and led a community design-built
project
for two years at Marlboro College to create a community social space
and
greenhouse. He writes the blog Alternative Architecture Lens and made
the film
‘Architecture for the Underserved’.
[1] Kelly
Minner, ‘2011 United States
Best Architecture Schools: Architecture Deans Survey’, Architecture
Daily, May 26, 2011,
http://archrecord.construction.com/features/Americas_Best_Architecture_Schools/2011/schools-1.asp.
[2] ‘Small
Scale, Big Change’,
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1064. Andres Lepik,
Small Scale Big Change: New Architectures of Social
Engagement, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010.
[3] The
conversation analysis of Harvey
Sacks provides a valuable perspective into the meaning of ‘social’ as a
modifier of architecture in the phrase ‘social architecture;’ and Bruno
Latour’s Reassembling the Social
explains how the word ‘social’ is vaguely applied to contexts without a
specificity of the people, objects, and connections involved. See: Paul
Jones
and Kenton Card, ‘Constructing ‘Social’ Architecture: The Politics of
Representing Practice’, Architectural
Theory Review, Nov. 2011.
[4] Bruce
Nussbaum, ‘Is Humanitarian
Design the New Imperialism: Does our desire to help do more harm than
good?’, Fastcodesign, written on July 07, 2010,
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1661859/is-humanitarian-design-the-new-imperialism.
[5] Nussbaum,
op. cit.
[6] Nussbaum,
op. cit.
[7] ‘Debate
Summary’, Design Observer, July 16, 2010,
http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/feature/humanitarian-design-vs-design-imperialism-debate-summary/14498/.
[8] Emily
Pilloton, ‘Are Humanitarian Designers Imperialists? Project H
Responds: Not all American designers are leaving the country to do
good’, July
12, 2010,
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1661885/are-humanitarian-designers-imperialists-project-h-responds:
written on July 12, 2010.
[9] Pilloton, op
cit.
[10] ‘Architect (who
they can easily
interview/contact) designs building (in an interesting location)
that
improves X (insert systemic issue of poverty here).’ Cameron
Sinclair, ‘Admiral
Ackbar, It’s a trap! – How over-simplification creates a distorted
vision of
Humanitarian Design’, written on 07/08/2010,
http://www.cameronsinclair.com/index.php?q=node/74.
[11] Sinclair,
op. cit.
[12] Sinclair,
op, cit.
[13] Niti Bhan,
‘Post-Colonial Design
Blowback: the challenge facing the global design industry’, Perspective,July
16, 2010,
http://aaltodesignfactory.fi/blogs/nitibhan/2010/07/post-colonial-design-blowback-the-challenge-facing-the-global-design-industry/.
[14] Maria
Popova, ‘The Language of
Design Imperialism’, Change Observer, May 29, 2010,
http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/feature/the-language-of-design-imperialism/14718/.
[15] Popova, op.
cit.
[16] Quilian
Riano, ‘Humanitarianism and
Humility’, Design Agency, August 8,
2010, http://www.dsgnagnc.org/search/label/Humanitarianism.
[17] Gong Szeto,
July 12, 2010
(4:05p.m.), comment on Susan S. Szenasy, ‘Why Bruce Nussbaum Needs
Emily
Pilloton’, Metropolismag.com, July 12,
2010,
http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/20100712/why-bruce-nussbaum-needs-emily-pilloton.
[18] Szeto’s
comment here parallels a
comment made by a Rural Studio instructor about the 20K project they
have going
on: ‘20-K houses are Band-Aids. They're Band-Aids on like a
head wound, like a serious head wound, which is not the answer.’ Gong Szeto,
comment on
Susan S. Szenasy, ‘Why Bruce Nussbaum Needs Emily Pilloton’,
[19] Gong Szeto,
comment on Susan S.
Szenasy, ‘Why Bruce Nussbaum Needs Emily Pilloton’,
[20] Latour, Reassembling the Social, 131.
[21] Latour, op.
cit.
[22] The
quotations without references in
the following ethnographic snapshots were from personal interviews.
[23] Samuel
Mockbee, ‘The Rural Studio’, Samuel
Mockbee.net, 1998, viewed on 05-26-11,
http://samuelmockbee.net/work/writings/the-rural-studio/.
[24] Dean, Andrea
Oppenheimer and Timothy
Hursley, Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and
an Architecture of Decency, New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 2002, 145.
[25] Suzanne
LaBarre, ‘Life After Sambo’,
Metropolis Magazine, July 22, 2009,
http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20090722/life-after-sambo.
[26] Of course,
the Rural Studio has a
history of working with HERO, a non-profit in Newbern. However, the
Rural
Studio has remained autonomous from HERO and even developed friction
with the
organization because HERO has concentrated on providing housing, such
as
Habitat houses, whether or not appealing to high architectural
aesthetic
quality.
[27] Architecture
for Humanity, May 23, 2011,
http://architectureforhumanity.org/about.
[28] Sinclair,
Cameron, Stohr, Kate and
Architecture for Humanity, Design Like
You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises. New
York:
Metropolis Books, 2006, 2.
[29] Sinclair and
Stohr, Design Like You Give A Damn, 12.
[30] I have
disguised the identity of
this local chapter. This chapter website has been removed from the
internet as
of 05-26-11. AFH also removed the group from their ‘active chapter
list.’
Active Chapter list,
http://chapters.architectureforhumanity.org/chapters,
05-26-11.
[31] Paul
Dimaggio and Walter W. Powell, ‘The Iron Cage
Revisited: Institutional
Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 48,
No. 2, (Apr., 1983): 47-160.
[32] Margaret
Crawford, ‘Can Architects Be Socially Responsible?’ in Diane
Ghirardo (ed.) Out of Site: A Social Criticism of Architecture,
Seattle:
Bay Press, 1991, 31.
[33] Sergio
Palleroni and Christina
Eichbaum Merkelbach, Studio at Large:
Architecture in Service of Global Communities, Seattle: University
of
Washington Press, 2004. ‘Deeper Shades of Green’, PBS-DesignE2,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJX7ejAKsTg
&feature=channel, (2-24-10).
[34] P.O.D.E.R.
in Spanish means Power
and stands for People in Defense of Mother Earth and her Resources.
[35] Slavoj
Zizek, ‘Architectural
Parallax: Spandrels and other Phenomena of Class Struggle’, May 26,
2011,
http://www.lacan.com/essays/?page_id=218, 05-26-11, 2.
[36] Walter
Benjamin, Illuminations:
Essays and Reflections, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, New
York:
Schocken Books, 2007, 255.
[37] Robert
Gutman, ‘Architects and
Power: The Natural Market for Architecture’, Progressive
Architecture 73,
no. 12, (1992): 39–41; Gary
Stevens, The Favored Circle: The Social Foundations
of Architectural Distinction, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1998, 86;
Paul
Jones, ‘Putting Architecture in
its Social Place: A Cultural Political
Economy of Architecture’ Urban Studies November
2009, vol. 46, no. 12: 2519-2536.
[38] Margit
Mayer, ‘Social Movements in
the (Post-) Neoliberal City’, London: Bedford Press, 2010, 42.
[39] G. William
Domhoff, ‘Wealth, Income,
Power’, Who Rules America? May 26,
2011, http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html. The
other
three ‘historical antagonisms’ are the
ecological catastrophe, the privatization of intellectual property, and
the
privatization of biogenetics. Slavoj Žižek,
‘How to Begin from the Beginning’, New Left Review,
57, May-June, 2009.
[40] David Harvey,
‘The Right to the City’, New Left Review, Sept/Oct
2008.
[41] Harvey, ‘The
Right to the City’, 37.
[42] Erik
Swyngedouw, ‘The Antinomies of the Postpolitical City: In Search of a Democratic
Politics of
Environmental Production’, International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), 2009: 609.
[43] Mustafa Dikeç, ‘Space,
politics, and the political’, Environment and Planning D: Society
and Space
2005, volume 23: 183.
[44] Dan Pitera,
‘[Mis]-directed Residue:
Appropriation of Alternative Public Space’, James
Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City: Research Proposal, viewed
online
May 26, 2011, arch.udmercy.edu/dc/pdf/AltPublicSpace.pdf.
[45] Dan Pitera,
‘Architecture Held
Suspect: Notes on Design and Collaboration.’ OZ: Beyond
Aesthetics. Manhattan: Kansas State University, 2006, 41.
Emphasis added.
[46] Pitera, op.
cit.
[47] Pitera, op.
cit. Emphasis added.
[48] Pitera. op.
cit.
[49] Dan Pitera,
‘[Mis]-directed Residue’,
1.
[50] Thomas A.
Dutton, ‘Engaging the
School of Social Life: A Pedagogy Against Oppression’, Activist
Architecture: A Field Guide
to Community-Based Practice,
(unpublished: 2008).
[51] Dutton and
Mann, ‘Modernism,
Postmodernism, and Architecture’s Social Project’, 20.
[52] Thomas A
Dutton, Lian Hurst Mann, ‘Modernism,
Postmodernism, and Architecture’s Social Project’, Reconstructing
Architecture: Critical Discourses and Social Practices,
University of Minnesota Press, 1996, 1.
[53] Marcelo
Lopes de Souza, ‘Which Right
to Which City? In defence of political-strategic clarity’, Interface:
a journal for and about social movements, Volume 2 (1),
(May 2010): 323
[54] Marcelo
Lopes de Souza, ‘Which Right
to Which City?’ 330.
[55]Latour, Reassembling the Social, 131.
[56] Cornel West
also writes that an alternative practice must not ‘result
in a mere turning of the tables.’ Thomas
A Dutton, ‘The Hidden Curriculum and the Design Studio: Toward a
Critical
Studio Pedagogy’, 178; C. Greig Crysler, ‘Critical Pedagogy and
Architectural
Education’, Journal of Architectural Education, Vol. 48, No. 4,
(May,
1995): 208-217.
[57] Cornel West,
‘Race and
Architecture’, The Cornel West Reader,
New York: Civitas Books, 1999, 456.
[58] Slavoj
Zizek, ‘Architectural
Parallax’, 8.