[Re]Thinking + [Re]Defining

The question of the role and/or definition of architecture is one that I have been consistently pondering throughout this class (and bringing up multiple times), because every week our readings consistently bring me back to this subject. This week, another layer was added onto this question; what are the extents and limitations of architecture? How far can we go into solving many of the important issues abounding in the world today with architecture?

With the examination of the city as a space of conflict, the opinion that architecture is NOT the solution to everything might make perfectly logical sense; it is hard to imagine how architecture, as a building, can solve any issues of public conflict.

I, however, would argue that architecture can begin to solve these problems – just not as a simple stand-alone building. Teddy Cruz makes a very poignant statement in his TED talk: “The future of cities today depends less on buildings and, in fact, depends more on the fundamental reorganization of socioeconomic relations. The best ideas in the shaping the city in the future will not come from enclaves of economic power and abundance, but in fact from sectors of conflict and scarcity, from which an urgent imagination can really inspire us to rethink urban growth today.”

Cruz’s example of the clearly divided Mexico-US border at Tijuana and San Diego is a fascinating way of looking at how architecture can address urban conflicts - not in the sense of a beautiful, perfectly designed building, but as a an informal process of urbanization. It is this informal, creative intelligence that Cruz attributes to the migrant Mexican communities on both sides of the border that allows them to shape and define their own urban spaces and living conditions. Why could this not be considered architecture, and as such, why can it not become the solution to some of these issues of conflict such as those in the slums of Tijuana?

As a reversal of this thought, I would turn to the theory of New Urbanism. To me, New Urbanism is doing the opposite of what Cruz is arguing; it is trying to create conflict-free urban density through architecture as a building and not, as Cruz says, through the “reorganization of socioeconomic relations”. Perhaps that is why it fails at its attempt to create diverse urban utopias – it is seeking to solve issues by resorting to ‘tried-and-true’ methods, and not by rethinking what could be achieved and what problems could be answered by the redefinition of architecture.