Why don’t architects try to use design as a means for solving the worlds problems? Why isn’t anyone trying to pursue solutions that will help our fellow beings? Are Architects scared of a challenge? How would one even start to solve a problem like the slums in Mumbai?
You’re currently reading “Gustavo B,” an entry on Leb's All-Night Cafe
1.31.11 / 5am
The first question assumes that design is somehow capable of “solving the world’s problems”. I’m not so sure of that. A few decades ago people had boundless faith in science, and since then we’ve seen that it can create as many problems as it can solve, and perhaps more. The same goes with architecture, or any other design field.
Aside from the fact that architects are trying to solve many problems, with http://openarchitecturenetwork.org/ only one example, design, at least of the architectural variety, is probably ill-equipped to “solve” problems such as world hunger, rainforest destruction, warming of the oceans, and countless others.
Finally, there’s the inconvenient fact that design is only the beginning – the hard work is actually implementing whatever good ideas may be generated, and that depends on marketing and management than anything architectural.
2.1.11 / 1am
cygielski: You seem intelligent, but your thinking is all in terms of known stereotypes. Following this kind of conventional thinking, we end up at the conventional wisdom, which is that architects can do very little.
But what if we think of architects not as professionals with a pre-determined role to play in existing social processes, but as free-thinkers with broad knowledge of contemporary conditions and problems, who are capable of taking the initiative and contributing ideas beyond the conventional limits of their profession? ‘Taking the initiative’ is a key phrase, rather than waiting for a ‘client’ to call them about the problems you mention, and others that they see for themselves. Most of these very difficult problems don’t have clients, anyway. Any architect has social agency, and that agency requires them to step into the leadership vacuum such problems create, and address the problems directly. Architects are educated, skilled, and empowered.
2.1.11 / 11pm
Slums exist whereever humans squat and produce waste for the next group of squatters to use as shelter. Late at night in the world’s cities thousands of tons of waste from squats are removed as garbage and debris, transported to middens near and far, a lot dribbled onto city streets and into lungs and onto 7-icnh heels of party goers to be coughed and puked and shat as foundation and building blocks for the next processing humanoids avidly slicing cancerous tissue for reycling by germs and alfalfa plants into beefsteak and yogurt. Slums are highly designed sans venal planners and much to be emulated in situ but not for vapid tourism of NGO preservationists, curators and idolators being purveyed by Ford and Rockefeller and ilk. Assay and design your own slummy squat before escaping to the photogenic. Bear in mind that your filthy waste will be manna from heaven for the inheritor indifferent to your best aspiration.
2.2.11 / 4pm
Your comment clarifies the human foodchain, for sure. If we can bring it back to architecture, would you say that the more architects design for building, the better? New construction produces plenty of wasted materials and left over scraps for the squatters to use in shantytowns. And then there’s the huge bonanza of waste from the buildings torn down to make way for new ones that architects design for their profit-seeking clients. Is this your response to a question (above) obviously asked with the idea that architects are not helping the poor much right now?
2.24.11 / 10pm
Agreed, but this waste is not intended for for the poor. Waste is transformed in what might be said a more creative way than what architects are providing.
John’s words maybe poetic but I’m not grasping the content beyond the disagreement with his perceived failing process of helping the poor. There is much positive happening but for the time we are focused with mopping up rather than shutting off the water and that is why we are failing the poor.
Gustavo, I think, is painting architects with broad strokes. I suspect his position comes from the press clippings of St-architects and not the unknown infantry. Looking around at the local level you should find many people doing the work deserving more praise. Sadly we live in a world devoted to the dramatic and sensational. Those who should get the accolades instead are seen as villains sometimes.
There are many organizations that architects are involved in. The easy, Architects Without Boarders, Habitat for Humanity and many community design centers. There are university programs (Auburn, UW, UT) sending students and professionals into impoverished parts of the world and architects breaking from the practical norms challenging standardized business models (5 cent architecture). Even Lebbeus (ST-architect?) has traveled into the “slum lands.” Others, like Micheal Pyatok and Stanley Tigerman have devoted their practice to helping the impoverished rather than high design clients. So, things are happening they are just not happening between the covers of glossy magazines and found in theoretical publications.
2.3.11 / 7pm
Architects can certainly help in solving the worlds problems through good design. At the very least, we need to do no harm.
The problem of poverty and poor living conditions needs to be addressed by a much larger group of people. It would be good to have architects at the table to help do their part in improving the situation.
As architects, we like to think that we can affect politics and social change in the world, but we can only create a built world that supports it.
2.7.11 / 12am
Leb, I’d say ideas, no matter how cutting-edge, are pretty useless tools for solving the world’s problems if they’re not implemented.
Architects are good at making pretty things, sometimes they’re great at creating incredible atmospheres, functional environments, etc. But they’ve never been very good at substantially changing the world or solving any of its really serious problems.
So as much as architects have the power to alter our everyday reality, it is mainly through the form and quality of the built environment. To change anything outside of that, they would have to substantively stop being architects and take up politics, social work, or even business. Free-thinking would be no obstacle in any of these, but it would no longer be architectural thinking.
In summary, as Stephen has pointed out, architects can contribute to solving the world’s problems, but as architects they are limited to a supporting role.
2.11.11 / 3pm
Architects are first stewards of the natural and built environments. It’s well established that the decisions architects make and influence are responsible for upwards of 40% of the energy used in the United States alone – it’s by far the most obvious and immediate means of influence on society. Moving away from this significant role for a moment, it seems that there are essentially two camps of architects practicing today – those who view their practice as solitary acts and those who use architecture as vehicles to engage broader issues on a social level. There is absolutely room and necessity for both. In thinking of the latter, our work as architects can either facilitate thought and dialogue, or conversely can subvert it. What does an organization, or state, communicate about itself to its employees or it’s civilians through the structures it inhabits? Can an architect create an architecture that while serving its program, act in defiance of the meta-program to the user of that structure? I would say absolutely, and in some cases, is our responsibility. Those willing to take up the mantle of engaging societal issues best serve it through the medium they best converse in.
2.25.11 / 1am
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