A critique of the new 'social architecture' debate: Moving beyond localism, developmentalism and aesthetics
A critique of the new ‘social architecture’ debate
Nina Gribat & Sandra Meireis
To cite this article: Nina Gribat & Sandra Meireis (2017) A critique of the new ‘social architecture’ debate, City, 21:6, 779-788, DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2017.1412199
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2017.1412199
Published online: 25 Jan 2018.
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A critique of the new ‘social architecture’ debate
Moving beyond localism, developmentalism and aesthetics
Nina Gribat and Sandra Meireis
In recent years, a new ‘social architecture’ debate has emerged within the discipline of architecture. This debate is based on proclamations of a crisis of architecture and design. It calls on architects to adopt a more ‘people-centred’ approach and give up their reliance on an ever more exclusive market. The debate is founded on a range of selected architectural projects, which are thought to epitomise this new social architecture: improving the living conditions of marginalised parts of the population all around the world. In this paper, we critique some of the claims of the social architecture debate by bringing them into dialogue with different fields of literature from urban and planning studies and also from within architecture. Firstly, we examine the founding idea of the debate that small interventions can have wider social effects; secondly, we analyse how the debate establishes its claims to a global scope; thirdly, we explore the central role aesthetics plays in the debate. Our aim is to not only reveal some of the shortcomings of the social architecture debate, but to indicate directions of how it could be developed further in a more reflective manner, for instance, in giving up the fixations on projects and on the power of architects to change the world.
Key words: social architecture, architecture, design, makeshift urbanism, developmentalism, localism, aesthetics
- Introduction
In recent years, the emergence of a new ‘social architecture’ has been celebrated in several high-profile exhibitions such as ‘Small Scale, Big Change’ at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), NYC in 2010
and building are not congruent with the claims in the examined debate.
The new social architecture debate rests on a perceived crisis of the design professions—a widespread loss of relevance—which is mainly portrayed as homemade: 'architecture [...] has placed itself too much in the service of economic and political interests and has had too little regard for social concerns' (Lepik 2010, 12); '[d]esigners have let these market forces alone determine [...] the shape of all our design professions' (Bell 2008, 15). The resulting 'exclusivity complex' (Feireiss 2011) of architecture is epitomised by the rise of so-called 'starchitects' (Lepik 2011) and an increasing detachment from social concerns (cf. Sklair 2006). The social architecture debate proposes that architects should use their expertise and build for vulnerable and marginalised groups of society, rather than offering their services to an ever more exclusive market. Inherent in this is the belief that architects can 'do good' and improve living conditions by merely designing and building good projects for the right kinds of people. This in itself is a rather limiting and naive assumption, which has been critiqued outside and inside of architecture for decades (e.g. Rudofsky 1964; Turner 1972; Scott 1998; Awan, Schneider, and Till 2011).
The claims to the social in the emerging debate are largely based on a selection of rather small-scale architecture projects (Architecture for Humanity 2006, 2012; Smith 2007, 2011; Lepik 2010, 2011, 2013a; Feireiss 2011): '[The projects] offer a redefining of the architect's role in and responsibility to society' (Lepik 2010, 12); '[they] create a new picture of architectural thinking that considers its own consequences' (Feireiss 2011, 19). The selected projects include a variety of educational and cultural institutions, urban infrastructures and a few housing projects. They are all designed by professionals, typically young architects, who are mainly from, or at least trained in, the Global North. Most of the users are marginalised individuals or communities in different parts of the world, yet predominantly in the Global South.
What makes the selected projects 'social' is not precisely defined in this emerging debate; however, several aspects can be identified (Lepik 2010; Feireiss 2011; ARCH+211/212 2013; Laufen Manifesto 2013):
- in terms of the design process, participatory approaches are favoured in which the future users are asked to contribute to the design process;
- regarding the use of materials/construction, the projects mostly rely on local materials and (neo-vernacular) methods of construction that are considered sustainable and that allow for the involvement, training or employment of local people as (often low-skilled) builders;
- concerning design/aesthetics, this preference for local materials and neo-vernacular construction methods translates into an endorsement of sensible, down-to-earth and seemingly more authentic approaches.
In the new social architecture debate, fleeting references are made to debates from the 1960s to 1970s (ARCH+211/212 2013) such as on self-help housing (Turner 1972, 1976), advocacy planning (Davidoff 1965) or vernacular building traditions (Fathy 1973). However, the social architecture debate does not respond to the intricacies of the arguments in these older debates, or to the critiques that have been developed subsequently (e.g. van Ballegooljen and Rocco 2013) such as the distinctions of lay and expert approaches to design and building or the idealisation of self-help versus state intervention/development aid. Rather, such fleeting references are used to lend authority to the new social architecture debate.
Our explorations in this paper are based on bringing the relatively new debate in architecture into dialogue with three wide and sometimes disparate fields of literature in urban and planning studies as well as in architecture: firstly, we discuss the central claim on which the emergence of a new social architecture is based: that small-scale urban interventions can contribute to wider social change. We
use literature that explores possibilities for urban social change in current conditions of urban neo-liberalisation and austerity urbanism including recent arguments regarding the ambivalences of participatory interventions, the possibilities of makeshift urbanisation and of seeking small-scale alternatives to capitalist urbanisation. Secondly, we examine how rapid urbanisation and informal urban growth are portrayed as contributing to architecture’s loss of relevance in the social architecture debate. We show that in this context the projects are thought to symbolise development, whereas wider power relations remain unaddressed. We use critiques of developmentalism to understand the problems relating to representations of rapid urbanisation, poverty and urban upgrading in the social architecture debate. Thirdly, we turn to explore how questions of design and aesthetics are addressed in the debate using literature from architecture that asks whether design should limit itself to form-giving practices. Our argument questions whether projects are the right currency to make claims to the social in the social architecture debate. We highlight the need for a more radical rethinking of architectural practices in such debates to either address the social more fully or not make such wide claims.
- Small scale—big change: towards a new localism of social change?
The relatively small scale of the chosen projects is one of the defining features in the social architecture debate. The issue of scale seems pivotal as it is considered to mark a departure from the early modern period in which architects produced comprehensive design and planning approaches to build a new and improved society (Lepik 2011). In contrast, the projects of the social architecture debate aim, ‘to change spatially defined situations through tangible architectural means and plans, irrespective of political conditions. Compared with their historical predecessors, these new approaches prove to be more pragmatic than programmatic (Lepik 2013b, 8; emphasis added). Despite the proclaimed ‘pragmatism’, wider effects are still envisaged. In the description of The Red Location Museum of Struggle, a South African example, this becomes clear: despite not being able to solve poverty and other overarching problems the museum is still envisaged to eventually ‘improve living conditions for all residents’ (Lepik 2010, 16).
In the urban studies literature, the question of how social change can be achieved has been discussed controversially, in particular with reference to the potentials of small-scale interventions or activities on the local scale in contexts of urban neo-liberalisation (e.g. Mayer 2009; Long 2013). Different approaches can be distinguished, ranging from highlighting the local as a potential ‘trap’ (Purcell 2006) to emphasising it as a tangible sphere to bring about social change, for instance, in employing horizontal practices of ‘deep democracy’ (Appadurai 2001). In the context of neo-liberalisation the ambivalences connected to community participation in public service provision have been accentuated. Processes of outsourcing state service provision to civil society can, for instance, undermine emancipatory ideals of participation such as potentials for self-determination (Rosol 2012). Participatory design runs the risk of being similarly complicit with neo-liberalisation (Krivy and Kaminer 2013). These ambivalences of endorsing local approaches to social change are not discussed in the social architecture debate. Unless the conditions of the production and the effects of social architecture projects are examined more closely, it is difficult to properly assess their emancipatory possibilities.
Despite these ambivalences, it has been pointed out that urban interventions, even if temporally limited and rather small in scale, can exploit the cracks of mainstream patterns of urban development and contribute to a ‘makeshift urbanism’ (Tonkiss 2013). In this context the value and the possibilities of
experimentation (indeterminacy and open-endedness) are underlined, whereas tangible social effects remain far from clear:
"These makeshift urban strategies have less to do with countering austerity urbanism via a "frontal politics of transformation" (Peck 2012, 652). [...] Rather, they are concerned with the politics and practice of such incursions in material space, the possibilities they open up and the forms of sociality they might entail." (Tonkiss 2013, 313)
Similarly, another strand of debate focusing on interventions that seek alternative pathways to development shows how relatively small interventions on the local scale can have certain immediate positive effects, which may contribute to rethinking wider social relations and offer new ways of imagining and practising post-capitalist futures (Gibson-Graham 2006; Gibson-Graham, Cameron, and Healy 2013). Rather than emphasising experimentation and imagination, the social architecture debate is all too sure about the positive effects of its selected projects and thus forecloses further explorations of their planned or unplanned effects.
Upon closer examination, what appears as a new localism in the social architecture debate (or a more pragmatic than programmatic approach) eclipses the conditions of its production and the evaluation of its effects. It appears vital to develop an understanding of both in order to assess whether and how small-scale architecture projects can contribute to, or ameliorate, current tendencies of growing urban inequalities. This is particularly pressing when taking into consideration the contingencies of urban development in current conditions of neoliberalisation and globalisation.
- Think global—build social: towards an architectural developmentalism?
In the new social architecture debate, references to 'the global' are used, on the one hand, as a threatening horizon of rapid urbanisation processes against which architecture is increasingly seen to lose significance. On the other hand, the debate makes claims to the global as this is the expected scope in which the new social architectures are envisaged to operate (see ARCH+ 211/212: 'think global—build social'). Both ways in which the global is mobilised appear problematic when considering postcolonial urban studies literature.
In a context of marginalisation, characterised by informal urbanisation or evolving mega-cities, new social architecture projects are mobilised as visible signs of development. To show how social architecture can be relevant in such contexts, the selection of projects contains a range of architectural and infrastructural interventions such as the Metrocable in Caracas, which provide access to the informal settlements on a hillside with a ski cabin. The social architecture debate claims that these projects have been developed locally and are context-sensitive. Yet, because they are part of the social architecture debate, they have to be at the same time legible and understandable universally—particularly in terms of their intended effects. The 'underserved' context (characterised by chaos, lack of attraction and deterioration) represents an antidote to the architectural project (characterised by order, beauty, improvement) (cf. Jones 2011). We argue that this framing of the new social architecture debate follows a developmentalist logic, in which architectural projects, conceived and built by experts, are considered to ameliorate the inadequacies of the informal and largely self-built urban context.
In urban and planning theory there is a growing critique of uncritically transferring North-Western urban and planning theories to urban contexts in the Global South (Yiftachel 2006; Watson 2009, 2013; Parnell and Robinson 2012). 'Developmentalism' (Robinson 2002) refers to the tendencies in urban studies to derive theoretical propositions from a rather limited range of cities (largely from the Global North) and to develop assumptions regarding the conditions and
dynamics in all other cities. Critical urban and planning studies literature suggests that ‘provincialising’ (Chakrabarty 2000) both the assumptions regarding the urban context and the possibilities to intervene can lead to more adequate understandings of the differences in urban development as well as the adequate means and procedures of intervention. This may entail learning much more about the actual spatialisations of poverty through detailed case studies (Arabindoo 2011).
In relation to the social architecture debate, this need for differentiation puts into question the rather uniform representation of projects, which bear great similarities despite their different urban contexts. In addition, this may also entail critically examining the power relations that are at work in participatory development (or design) processes (Kothari 2001), which are the basis of the selected architecture projects. This applies to the role of knowledge and expertise, the decision-making processes and assumptions regarding development. Ultimately, it concerns questions regarding the rights and assumed capacities for self-determination of the urban poor (Mohan 2001; Satterthwaite and Mitlin 2004). In the social architecture debate, architects and designers remain in a powerful position, even if they are asked to move a bit closer to the people they serve. Furthermore, in this debate (and in other well-meaning interventions to help the urban poor), there is a tendency to conflate rapid and informal urbanisation with poverty and poor physical quality of housing and the characteristics of people living there (cf. Varley 2013). It has been demonstrated that urban upgrading schemes that focus solely on physical aspects run the risk of displacing the very poor because other issues that may cause poverty are not addressed (Gilbert 2007, 2011). This puts the aim of the social architecture debate to eventually improve living conditions for all through building into question.
The social architecture debate, despite emphasising the local and social appears to be underpinned by a rather universal approach to design and architecture as well as context. The debate does not address the questions of who intervenes where, with which means and under which conditions (for a critique of design-build approaches, cf. Owen, this issue). Differences of urban development or social relations are not taken into consideration and neither are the working conditions of architects, or their clients (be they individuals or communities). It is taken for granted that well-designed, beautiful buildings ‘do good’—without questioning what appears as well-designed to whom, under which conditions and in which context.
- Beauty as a marker for development: towards an aesthetics of improvement?
Aesthetics plays a central role in the social architecture debate:
‘Socially engaged architecture is not concerned merely with fulfilling functional demands, but aspirates to a high aesthetic level as well, for beautiful design is a value that is positively received by all human beings and contributes to lasting improvement in self-esteem.’ (Lepik 2011, 14)
Aesthetics and beauty are conceived as a means for identification and to instil pride, but whether and how this actually works is not part of the debate (exception: Feireiss 2011). Different cultural ideas about aesthetics are not addressed. As a result, aesthetics appears as a universal value. To achieve a ‘high aesthetic level’, there are—seemingly—no dramatic changes needed in design practices. Architects and designers just need to recognise and adhere to the inherently good roots of their practice and design technically sound, beautiful and socially relevant buildings.
References to the possibilities of neo-vernacular approaches in this context can be particularly troubling: social architects who are largely from a Global North context are travelling to marginalised communities,
mostly in the Global South to improve living conditions by advising local communities to rediscover old/vernacular building techniques. Old/vernacular building techniques allow for a large share of self-building and are often more ecologically sustainable because they rely on local materials. In addition, they produce a particular aesthetic of the local, which—to some degree—epitomises the intended social effects of the new social architecture. Based on their looks, there can be no doubt that these projects 'do good' (for a deeper exploration of the conflation of ecological and social claims in neo-vernacular architecture, cf. Grubbauer, this issue).
Having examined the centrality of the project and a focus on associating design with form-giving practices, it is surprising, then, to find that the social architecture debate calls for a change of design practice: architects should no longer consider themselves just as designers of buildings, but as 'moderators of change' (Lepik 2011). How exactly this shift to 'moderating change' is imagined to work and what it really entails remain unclear, in particular if the project continues to be so central to this debate, working as a container for all intended outcomes and as a visible marker for change.
In the architecture and design literature, there have been different critiques of the fixation of design on visibility, form-giving and aesthetics. These critiques entail calls for a more radical rethinking of architecture and design practices: it has been critiqued that designers tend to assess the world according to objects instead of problems (Burckhardt [1980]2012a), which eventually exempts them from the responsibility to take care of wider contexts. Instead, designers should focus on 'socio-design', which equally considers the role of people, the political process and objects (Burckhardt [1983]2012b). In addition, the failure of architects to learn from their buildings, once they are in use, has been noted (Brand 1994). This entails research on social processes following the erection of the building, which can lead to improvements of the initial design. The project-fixation of design and architecture is questioned, as demands for design to become a more process-oriented task were formulated. More recently such approaches of broadening architectural and design practices beyond form-giving have been captured by the notion of 'spatial agency' (Schneider and Till 2009; Awan, Schneider, and Till 2011), which foregrounds the possibilities of architects to work transformatively, going beyond the discursive of merely critiquing current conditions.
- Conclusions: social design beyond visibility and aesthetics
In recent years, several architecture exhibitions and publications have given new impetus to the discussion on the social responsibility of architects. The exhibitions and publications are all based on a selection of architecture projects and a narrative, which establishes the claim for a new social architecture. In this paper we have focused on examining the new social architecture debate and how architecture projects are mobilised in it to substantiate its claims. We have neither analysed individual architecture projects nor did we consider specific architects' intentions or practices because the messy actualities and effects of designing and building are not congruent with the claims of the debate.
The new social architecture debate is based on a perceived crisis of architecture focusing too much on upmarket economic/political interests. The proponents of a new social architecture demand that instead of serving a small elite, architects should improve the living conditions of those who are currently marginalised following a 'people-centred' approach. In this paper, we have shown that despite such claims for a new and more social practice, the new social architecture debate remains largely locked into classical forms of architecture representation: it focuses on a selection of architectural
projects, which epitomises all intended benefits. The design process, in this context, is largely limited to form-finding. The expert authoritative figure of the architect remains unquestioned. Participation serves to clarify the designer's brief and as a means to include local people in the construction process. Wider issues such as social, ecological, economical and cultural relations are largely eclipsed from the new social architecture debate. The conditions of the production of the selected projects, including their (often precarious) financing, remain unaddressed as do their actual effects.
Our examination of urban studies literature on whether and to what extent small-scale local interventions can have wider social effects has shown that under current conditions of urban neo-liberalisation and austerity urbanism there are great ambivalences between complicity and emancipation in participatory development or design projects (cf. Kriviy and Kaminer 2013; Bialski et al. 2015). The examined literature seems to suggest that a lack of clear positioning without consideration of the current conditions of urbanisation is unhelpful. Yet, we have shown that interventions can follow an experimental approach which foregrounds the open-endedness of urban development and emphasises potentials for testing new forms of sociality in a local and rather small-scale context. For the proponents of the social architecture debate, it may make more sense to claim less in terms of the expected wider social effects than to fail substantiating these claims.
In addition, we juxtapose claims to the global in the new social architecture debate with postcolonial urban and planning studies discourses on differences in the Global North and South, in which power relations play a pivotal role. This juxtaposition shows that the current debate on social architecture does not only exclude such critical perspectives but tends to advocate a new architectural (and aesthetic) universalism. We argue that the debate could gain critical depth by questioning the roles of architects in relation to the intended urban development and by developing a more critical stance to the global mobilities of people, projects and aesthetics that are inherent in the debate. In relation to aesthetics, we have further shown that while there are demands for a change in design practice towards 'moderating change', aesthetics is of central concern in the social architecture debate epitomising the intended developmental and social effects. A more process-oriented design practice, however, radically expands beyond the centrality of designing buildings. In sum, there are many fruitful starting points in the architecture, planning and urban studies literatures upon which the proponents of the social architecture debate could build, all of which put into question the project-fixation of the current debate and the inherent idea that architects and their projects alone have the power to change the world.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
-
Selected exhibitions include: 'Design for the Other 90%'—Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, NYC, 2007; 'Small Scale, Big Change'—Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), NYC, 2010; 'Testify! The Consequences of Architecture'—Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI), Rotterdam, 1 July–13 November 2011; 'Think Global, Build Social!'—German Architecture Museum (DAM), Frankfurt/M., 2013; 'Aftitecture'—Technical University München, 2014; 'Architecture of Independence—African Modernism' and 'Making Africa—A Continent of Contemporary Design', both Vitra Design Museum, spring 2015.
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The debate has been largely produced by a small group of individuals and institutions based in Europe and North America. It has gained some popularity in the disciplines of design and architecture. The social architecture debate is far from being coherent, even if our examinations may suggest otherwise because of our focus on three selected and rather common issues in the debate. In practice contexts, which we do not
examine here, the tensions inherent in different understandings of social architecture employed by architects, clients and community members tend to come to the fore (Jones and Card 2011).
3 To give an idea of the diversity of projects based on which the arguments of the new social architecture debate are made, we are providing a list of the projects of the ‘Small Scale, Big Change’ Exhibition at MoMA, NYC, 2010: Primary School in Gando, Burkina Faso, designed by Dièbédé; Quinta Monroy Housing in Iquilee, Chile, designed by Elemental; Inner-City Arts in Los Angeles, designed by Michael Malzan Architecture; METI-Handmade School in Rudrapur, Bangladesh, designed by Anna Heering and Eike Rosweg; Casa Familia: Living Rooms at the Border and Senior Housing with Childcare in San Isidro, California, designed by Estudio Teddy Cruz; Housing for the Fishermen in Tyre, Lebanon, designed by Hashim Sarkis A.L.U.D.; $20K House VIII (Dave’s House) in Newbern, Alabama, designed by Rural Studio, Auburn University; Metrocable in Caracas, Venezuela, designed by Urban-Think Tank; Manguinhos Complex in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, designed by Jorge Mario Jauregui; Red Location Museum of Struggle in Port Elizabeta, South Africa, designed by Neoero Wolff Architects; Transformation of Tour Bois-le-Pretre in Paris, France, designed by Frederic Druot, Anne Lacaton and Jean Philippe Vassal [see http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/smallscalebigchange/index.html].
4 The notions of Global North and South refer to what have also been labelled ‘developed countries’ or ‘the First World’ and ‘developing countries’ or ‘the Third World’. These notions are problematic due to their implicit assumptions of homogeneity across different categories. However, Global North and South offer the least worst fit denoting differences between formerly colossal and colonial powers.
5 It is important to note that we do not assume that this uniformity adequately represents the different ways in which each of the projects was developed. The fact that these are not shown highlights those differences were of no central concern for the editors and curators.
6 There have been numerous historical starting points of challenging universal modernist aesthetics, for instance, in analysing local building techniques and self-help housing (Rudofsky 1964; Turner 1976). The social architecture debate partly builds on these historical achievements, but fails to take the aesthetic challenges a few steps further: what are the qualities of contemporary architecture without architects? What does contemporary housing by the people look like? How do these building practices challenge conventional aesthetics nowadays?
7 This resonates with historical ideas that architecture, as the built environment, has a direct effect on humans and that it can educate people (e.g. Wichert [1928]2012).
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Nina Gribat is professor of design and urbanism at the Department of Architecture, TU Darmstadt. Email: gribat@eus.tu-darmstadt.de
Sandra Meireis is a researcher for architecture theory at the Institut für Architektur at TU Berlin. Email: sandra.meireis@tu-berlin.de