Activist Architecture

Activist Architecture is an edited volume bringing together some of the most creative minds working in the world of community design and socially engaged practice. It asserts that community design centers and other socially engaged practices expand the influence built environmental professions have on culture and society. These practices work under the premise that designers should expand their clientele, where they work, and the types of projects they engage. This does not mean that design centers exclude people who typically build or hire an architect, urban designer, landscape architect, or planner. Design centers include more people, more programs, and more geographies in the process. They are advocates for people who are typically left out of design and place-making decisions. Design centers widen the undertaking beyond some people to include all (or more) people. While looking back over the past 50+ years, Activist Architecture positions the philosophy and practice of community design centers for today and tomorrow. The editors of Activist Architecture put together both a "why-to" and "how-to" guide for establishing and operating a community design center.

This social history and community study documents the events surrounding the attempt by community members, activists, and VISTA architects to resist the planned construction of a community college in the neighborhood of Uptown. The planner and architect are seldom envisioned as advocates for the urban poor. However, during the 1960s, New Left planners and architects began working with marginalized groups in cities to design alternatives to urban renewal projects. This was part of a national advocacy planning movement that was taking shape in urban areas like Chicago. Inspired by critics of the Rational-comprehensive model of planning, advocacy planners opposed the imposition of projects on neighborhoods often with no collaboration from residents. One example of this resistance was Hank Williams Village—a multi-purpose housing and commercial redevelopment project modeled after a southern town. The Village was an attempt to prevent the displacement of thousands of southern whites by the planned construction of a community college in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. While the plan for the Village failed to win support of the local urban renewal board, the work performed by the young VISTA architects became instrumental in their subsequent career trajectories and thus served as formative personal and professional experience.

Founded in Los Angeles in 1998, GRAFT is a global architectural practice which now maintains branches in Berlin and Beijing. The international practice, which is involved in architectural, urban, and product design – as well as branding – is known for its experimental and interdisciplinary designs as well as for its strong social commitment. The publication will document only projects characteristic of this social responsibility – it portrays architecture as an active tool for driving, in a global context, the development of places worth living in. One key project is the Solar Kiosk developed in 2012, a high-output, solar-based unit which is already used by many communities in Sub-Saharan Africa to secure their power supply.

One could read the collection of essays herein as a political voice to architecture and the architecture profession, constantly gnawing away at the disciplinary, only to find favor in the imaginative, intellectually interesting and the creative. Beyond embodying a collection of thought on architecture and its discipline, the present collection of essays also serves as a not-so-veiled political program for the possibility of architecture.

The Routledge Companion for Architecture Design and Practice provides an overview of established and emerging trends in architecture practice. Contributions of the latest research from international experts examine external forces applied to the practice and discipline of architecture. Each chapter contains up-to-date and relevant information about select aspects of architecture, and the changes this information will have on the future of the profession. The Companion contains thirty-five chapters, divided into seven parts: Theoretical Stances, Technology, Sustainability, Behavorism, Urbanism, Professional Practice and Society. Topics include: Evidence-Based Design, Performativity, Designing for Net Zero Energy, The Substance of Light in Design, Social Equity and Ethics for Sustainable Architecture, Universal Design, Design Psychology, Architecture, Branding and the Politics of Identity, The Role of BIM in Green Architecture, Public Health and the Design Process, Affordable Housing, Disaster Preparation and Mitigation, Diversity and many more. Each chapter follows the running theme of examining external forces applied to the practice and discipline of architecture in order to uncover the evolving theoretical tenets of what constitutes today’s architectural profession, and the tools that will be required of the future architect. This book considers architecture’s interdisciplinary nature, and addresses its current and evolving perspectives related to social, economic, environmental, technological, and globalization trends. These challenges are central to the future direction of architecture and as such this Companion will serve as an invaluable reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students, existing practitioners and future architects.

Informed by recent research into the viability of a 'steady state' economy, this book sets an agenda for addressing the designer's paradox of sustainable consumption.

This book contains a set of essays on the teaching of Architecture and Urbanism, written by university professors and researchers from several countries. It argues that the teaching of architecture and urbanism is in a state of crisis; architecture seems unable to respond to current problems, and urbanism seems incapable of fulfilling the needs of a more balanced society and its built environment, including the human right to housing. The book comprises historical analyses, systematization of concepts, manifestos, and social evaluations, and, above all, an alignment of new objectives, curricular plans, and pedagogical methodologies.