Working from the Person to the Building
I was very excited to see Sam Mockbee on the reading list. In the Design for Social Justice Studio last year, we read an interview by him in preparation for the work we did in that studio. In that interview, Mockbee said to be a citizen architect you must be able to “service a community’s physical and social needs.” The clear acknowledgement of social needs in the context of design is incredibly important distinction.
This idea is reiterated in the Rural Studio article at the end when he says:
"'Love your neighbor as yourself.' This is the most important thing because nothing else matters. In doing so, an architect will act on a foundation which can be built upon. Go above and beyond the call of a "smoothly functioning conscience"; help those who aren't likely to help you in return, and do so even if nobody is watching."
To achieve a citizen based architecture, one must be willing to have a truly empathetic conversation with the community. A community knows there needs, their struggles, and their dreams. Architects should strive to want to extract these elements and turn them into architecture, essentially working from the person to the building. Too often, I’m afraid, architects tend to work from the building to person and therefore must resort to post-rationalizing their intentions, decisions, and aesthetics.
This idea is reiterated in the Rural Studio article at the end when he says:
"'Love your neighbor as yourself.' This is the most important thing because nothing else matters. In doing so, an architect will act on a foundation which can be built upon. Go above and beyond the call of a "smoothly functioning conscience"; help those who aren't likely to help you in return, and do so even if nobody is watching."
To achieve a citizen based architecture, one must be willing to have a truly empathetic conversation with the community. A community knows there needs, their struggles, and their dreams. Architects should strive to want to extract these elements and turn them into architecture, essentially working from the person to the building. Too often, I’m afraid, architects tend to work from the building to person and therefore must resort to post-rationalizing their intentions, decisions, and aesthetics.
I like that you bring up working from "the person to the building" instead of working from the "building to the person." Often we really do just work from the building to the person, designing "for the person" without truly understanding what their needs really are. I love the push to "love your neighbor as yourself."
ReplyDeleteI think its a nice idea that everyone should get a personalized architecture, but it seems incredibly unrealistic when talking about the severe lack of adequate living we see for these communities.
ReplyDeleteThis idea of working from person to building is something that I completely agree with. Especially in healthcare, it is very important for us to understand critical adjacencies and work flows for staff efficiency and patient safety. This can only be fully understood when talking to the users because they know their process better than we do. It is at that point when we know how they work where we can offer up new solutions or options to possibly change and better the space.
ReplyDeleteI've never really thought about it before, but after reading this post it does seem there are a good bit of architects that first think about the design of the building without considering the people who will be occupying the building. I think it is very important for architects to first learn more about the people they are designing the project for and understanding their needs and then going back to the drawing board and designing the building by what they learned from the community.
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