The limits of social architecture: the tension between aims and actions

Extract

There is a tension within social architecture between aims and actions. Emerging in response to the increasingly anti-social nature of the urban, some claim the aim of social architecture is to challenge and build beyond various contemporary urban crises. This aim, however, is at odds with the primarily small scale and contextually grounded nature social architecture operates on. Some proponents avoid this tension by arguing that their aim is to materially improve the communities they are engaged with, however this has been critiqued as limiting social architecture’s potential. Within this paper, I advance previous critiques that have been made of social architecture through an examination of literature fields both inside and outside of architecture, and through a yearlong fieldwork study. Firstly, I explore the definition of the phrase in its use both by proponents and detractors of the movement. Secondly, I situate social architecture's emergence within architecture and use this to further the critiques of the tension between its aims and actions through the lens of reification. Thirdly the fieldwork serves as a contextual basis to manifest these critiques. Finally, with the aims of social architecture brought into question, the paper speculates upon what social architecture’s aim could be. This paper furthers the critiques of social architecture while suggesting that, through reframing its aim, social architecture could be used to demonstrate that alternatives to the present moment are possible.