Does Anyone (Actually) Care About The Everyday?

In reading Habraken's "Questions That Will Not Go Away", I could not help but think of the rather "anti-everyday" building that has proliferated in the intervening 20 years since its publishing. In particular, the neoliberal development that has supported starchitects, according to Douglas Spencer, directly rejects Habraken's call for change. It seems that the solution we've adopted must be tied directly to a matter of production.

Habraken talks about the need to define new "skills and methods". This assumes, however, that our profession has any interest in its own legitimate ability to make better physical environments for everyday people. I don't think it does. Architecture, as Habraken notes, was a profession born from a desire to display the productive capacity of the ruling class. Despite attempts to show meaningful change at small scale, architects - in the US at least - still must tie their worth to their economic productivity. It is more profitable to design a Louis Vuitton store, and it requires less imagination.

Even in school, we spend more time perfecting graphic representation than truly understanding how space is made - in reality. It's easier. It fulfills an ever-shortening attention span. And someday, it may be all we need to do.