Opportunities in Spatial Justice

"I don't believe architecture is about making a better world. To me architecture is something that challenges people, challenges what they want, challenges their ideas of what comfort is, challenges their perspective on how they could live."

This quote by Peter Eisenman really stood out to me in the Citizen Architect film trailer. People always ask, "why architecture?" and usually I give them a quick elevator speech with an underlying message of wanting to help others and make the world a better place. But this quote by Eisenman made me rethink my answer; it speaks not about why people choose architecture as a profession but about the importance of architecture and its place in the greater context. 

The readings this week focus on redefining the way we think about scarcity and justice. Both ideas challenge architects to think critically about defining the problem, understanding it, and thinking creativity in order to solve it. With scarcity, Till calls for, "a different kind of activity in which the creativity of the designer is focused not on objects but on the processes that precede and follow the making of objects." With spacial justice, Soja states that it, "is not a substitute or alternative to social, economic, or other forms of justice but rather a way of looking at justice from a critical spatial perspective." The two ideas are synonymous in my mind. How can we use our background to better design spacial justice? As Till poignantly wrote, we need to think about scarcities, "as opportunities rather than obstacles...shift the attention from having less to using design ingenuity to redefine the project." 

I think a good example of these ideas can be seen in Sam Mockbee's Rural Studio. He started a movement in education that dealt with the issues of spatial injustice and creative ingenuity when dealing with scarcities. Mockbee believed that, "critical thought requires looking beyond architecture towards an enhanced understanding of the whole to which it belongs." When looking at the Rural Studio projects, we see simple yet complex designs that are local to the region and aim to address the economic injustice in the Deep South. Students address the poverty, political and economic background, environment, and geography of their site and then work with the resources and "scarcities" to develop a beautiful project that serves the community. 

 

 

So, looking back to Eisenman's quote, I think it summarizes the ideas for this week perfectly. It focuses on the challenges associated with being an architect and how the profession can elevate itself and challenge the world. All of the readings and films this week speak about pushing the limits of creative thinking and other such skills we learn throughout our education. Architects need to be nimble in their ideas and active in their communities. By acting upon these notions, we can challenge how decisions are made, how spacial justice is perceived, and how we can redefine scarcity and austerity.