Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism

Bryan Bell and Katie Wakeford, editors

2008. Metropolis Books. 287 pp. $34.95

There are at least two paths to this book. One is to begin as an architect, and wonder why your profession serves only a small (usually elite) percentage of the population, and how to enlarge that share. The other is to begin as a humanitarian, and wonder how architects can do more to alleviate suffering and injustice.

Co-editor Bryan Bell takes the first route in his preface: “Good design has the potential to benefit many more people than it currently does. … But currently the opportunity to create a built environment is reserved only for the very few, the elite, the highest income bracket served to excess by market forces. Designers have let these market forces alone determine whom we serve, what issues we address, and the shape of all our design professions: architecture, landscape architecture, graphic design, industrial design, planning, and interior design.” {15}

Contributor Thomas Fisher, dean of the University of Minnesota College of Design, takes the second route in his foreword: “The United States is becoming divided, like many developing countries, into small number of the super-rich and the majority, whose relatively stagnant incomes place the American dream permanently beyond their reach. However socially and politically divisive that gap may be in the United States, it doesn’t come close to the extremes of wealth and impoverishment or the depths of desperation experienced by billions of people elsewhere in the world. … we may soon find that we have too many architects skilled at designing museums and mansions and too few able to work with indigent people and communities in need of basic housing, sanitation, and security.” {10} (Note that you can’t get off the hook by arguing that Fisher overstates the direness of the situation. His premise could be false without invalidating his conclusion that there’s all kinds of important work not being done.)

A century or so ago, there was a movement in architecture and allied fields that had among its goals change for the oppressed masses. “The modern movement conceived of progress and technological advancement as tools to be employed in the service of social equality,” write José L. S. Gámez and Susan Rogers in their introduction. “Modernist architects strove to create ‘universal’ spaces — rational, orderly, and accessible — that would give opportunity and freedom to everyone.” But “mainstream modernism as represented by the International Style was regarded as increasingly disconnected from the everyday social world.” And especially after the episodes of urban renewal and public housing, “the fruits of modernity seemed to have rotted on the vine.” What exactly went wrong is another long story, although in their opinion modernism was undone not by its internal problems so much as by capitalism and bureaucracy. {19, 20}

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Within this general framework, editors Bell and Wakeford have collected thirty admirably concise accounts under eight headings: “Social, Economic, and Environmental Design”; “Participatory Design”; “Public-Interest Architecture”; “Asset-Based Approaches”; “Housing for the 98%”; “Prefabricating Affordability”; “Meshing with Market Forces”; and finally, “The Transformative Power of Architectural Education.” A few expound theory; most describe specific projects; any one might have the inspiring or instructive nugget you’re looking for. (And you’ll have to look, because the book sadly lacks an index.) The focus is determinedly international, including Zagreb, Sonora, and two remote villages in Taiwan, as well as Charlottesville, Atlanta, San Diego, and Oakland.

Almost every chapter has a fascinating tale or new idea, making it difficult to single any one out. Barbara B. Wilson describes the Social, Economic, and Environmental Design (SEED) Network, which offers support and communication among practitioners while hoping to create a LEED-like certification system. (Speaking of being undone by capitalism and bureaucracy, perhaps they could improve on it!) {28} Amanda Hendler-Voss and Seth Hendler-Voss describe an “asset-based” community design program in the Shiloh neighborhood of Asheville, North Carolina, which produced a bus shelter that also served as a landmark and park gateway. {124} If you think that’s a small accomplishment, read the whole thing.

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How does one marry community organizing and architectural practice? Maybe the answer is the same as to the old chestnut about porcupines mating: “very carefully.” Advocacy books of this kind often whitewash the day-to-day problems and dilemmas. By contrast, the accounts in Expanding Architecture are disarmingly honest.

Russell Katz (whose activist quest led him to became a developer) reports that he maintained rigorous openness in his work on a green building with 52 apartments and two retail spaces near a transit station. As each design phase was completed, “I put a copy of the progress prints in the local library” and spoke anywhere he was invited. “The policy of openness was hard to maintain, but it paid great dividends. …Sometimes I received extremely negative feedback and was harshly challenged. But interesting things happened as a result of those challenges — for one, the design got better. As an architecture student I faced some tough juries, but those paled in comparison to a skeptical community group or an angry neighbor.” {223-4}

One classic problem is that the people don’t always want what professional designers want them to want. When indigenous T’au villagers were able to rebuild their own houses, writes Jeffrey Hou,

“Against the project team’s recommendations, the homes were constructed almost entirely out of reinforced concrete…. Each building was an attempt to be taller than the next. Outdoor spaces are almost nonexistent, given the large size of the new buildings. There is a seeming lack of hierarchy and coherence among the buildings and building elements, and no particular relationship exists between the dwellings and the larger landscape. … Though visually quite different from the traditional houses, the new buildings still represent the residents’ cultural identity.” {82}

This is not just an issue in cultures exotic to the US. Ryan Gravel recalls visiting Savannah, Georgia, with a friend:

“We were standing on the street near one of James Oglethorpe’s famous squares when she said to me, ‘Does Savannah have a real city?’ I didn’t know how to respond. After all, Savannah’s urban plan makes it one of the most ‘real’ cities in America. She could tell that I didn’t understand, so she rephrased her question: ‘I mean, does Savannah have a mall?’” {141} (No word on the current status of their friendship!)

And even those who arguably should know better, don’t. Gregory Herman of the University of Arkansas and his students “designed, fabricated, and installed operable cedar shutters for all windows” in a prefabricated house in Fayetteville, Arkansas. “After we were finished with the project, a field person privately hired by the modular manufacturer’s representatives returned to the house and permanently fastened the shutters to the cladding of the house. … These very visible changes were like wounds in the design….” {198}

The design disconnect takes different forms in different situations. Kathleen Dorgan (Dorgan Architecture & Planning) and Deane Evans (New Jersey Institute of Technology) note that affordable-housing developers “simply don’t believe that good design is achievable on their restricted budgets. Furthermore, many tend to be much more comfortable working with pro formas, service agreements, land deals, and financing arrangements … [than with] the design side of a project.” Architects, they add, have a corresponding characteristic weakness: cost management. “The capacity of architects to understand and manage costs, never their strong suit, appears to have little prospect of improving in the future,” yet it is crucial in the “unforgiving specialty of affordable housing.” {154, 156}

The authors and editors recognize that expanding architecture involves more than just battling the outrages of organized capitalism and organized bureaucracy. On one hand, architects know things that non-architects don’t. On the other hand, expertise is not a license to rule. There is no simple formula or general rule to resolve this tension, but the recipe includes a lot of interaction, persistence, and flexibility. The successes do seem to have one thing in common: everyone gets changed.

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