Responsible Architecture

Most of you probably missed Andy Smith and David Fox's presentation at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. I for one feel perfectly fine ensconced in sunny California, as opposed to dreary Boston this winter, but I would have liked to have heard what they had to say. The announcement for their talk struck a cord with me, as I am sure it would with most architects:

“Architects as Stooges for the Business of Greed” emerges from the notion that the practice of architecture has become so marginalized in contemporary culture that the gatekeepers of the built environment, the new “architects”, are the wealthy and their bankers: architects have simply become those who do their bidding. Quoting Sambo Mockbee: “We have become lapdogs of the rich.” It doesn't take a rocket scientist to make the leap to conjuring up images of McMansions.

What we should really be thinking about, though, are Case Study houses, and what they did for the average American.



Or, maybe to jump even further, we should be re-conjuring up the ideals of High Modernism, where there was a belief running through the veins of architects that what they were doing could change the lives of people - think Corbu's Salvation Army.



Smith and Fox's lecture was sponsored, in part, by SOCA, the GSD student-run organization for social change and activism. David Fox's work is associated with a University of Tennessee program titled UPSIDE : Urban Program in Sustainable Design Education, which is a direct outgrowth of Sam Mockbee's program Rural Studio at Auburn University.



While many architects are engaged in transforming dreams of wealthy clients into three dimensions, many others, actually, are actively engaged in trying to make the greater world a better place. Work Architecture Company, a firm in New York, is working with Edible Schoolyards, an organization founded by Alice Waters of Chez Panisse fame, to bring her program to an inner-city school, PS 216.



Many of you may, or may not, know that Edible Schoolyards got its start here in the Bay Area, at Berkeley's Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School and has traveled as far away as Yale. It's a great idea, despite its detractors. Even in a dreary winter - New York, Boston, or otherwise.



Architects can make a difference. Andy Smith and David Fox can rest easy.

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