Responses to Week 2 assigned reading

Professional Practice

George Barnett Johnston

“Architecture educators need to reach out of the classroom into the world, and their gesture needs to be reciprocated by practitioners who come into the schools and bring the schools into their offices.” This I believe is the summary of the matter. Architecture is a learned discipline and there is only so much that can be taught in the classrooms, where boundaries sometimes exist between theory and practice. There are contexts in which professional practice can be taught in schools in areas of law, economics, management and such but when it comes to addressing the inter-disciplinary relationships in the field of construction, client protocols, project delivery and execution, brainstorming and managing emergencies and crises on the job, a lot of the knowledge that will be applicable won’t be what was learned in the classroom. Rather it would be from being in situations where the architect confronts such issues in reality and learn from those experiences, having the guidance of experienced hands teach them “performance-oriented, culturally inflected and ethically motivated professionalism.”

Community Engagement

Anthony W Schuman

The way architecture as a vocation has evolved over the years is remarkable and if one looks closely enough parallels can be drawn between developments in architecture and economic and political happenings. This is a testament to how architecture engages the society on every level, whether consciously or subconsciously. With the Russian revolution, the working class became fore front and architects designed houses, schools and social facilities around this sect. Moving from designing for the masses without engaging them in the 40’s and 50’s to being involved in community service. The move to social responsibility and involvement coincided with the civil rights movement sweeping the nations at the time. With the Reagan administration, there was a dwindling of funding and support for community development assistance and once again theoretical preoccupations dominate the architecture world, less practical involvement and more lectures. Bill Clinton’s administration with an interest in community engagement saw a revival with architecture student ready to do ‘real’ projects. Real projects that are transformative to the community and beneficial to the students as well.

Programs like the design/build, Design corps, the Pratt center, Rural Studio, Public Architecture, Architecture for Humanity and a host of others have undertaken community projects geared toward public welfare. They have sort of become the conscience of the vocation, seeking to redirect our priorities, addressing how architecture can provide solutions to humanitarian crises and ease suffering. Community engagement and betterment should be fused with architecture’s traditional focus on physical design. The best kind of community engagement is the kind that survives and thrives after the project is done and all the volunteers and designers have left.

100 years of Humanitarian Design

Kate Stohr

September 11 attacks, the Tsunami devastation, Hurricane Katrina, earthquakes, wars and violence. These are disasters that have impacted housing a great deal rendering countless people homeless but it has also provided an avenue for designers to participate in relief efforts and emergency sheltering. While the government, policy makers and NGo’s have made efforts to relocate the displaced and provide a means for them to start over, slums keep springing up everywhere because the agencies are not able to address the needs of everyone affected by disasters or reach them effectively. There still seems to be a disconnect between the worlds of relief and development and the world of architecture and design. What needs to be addressed is the role of the architect in disaster management and relief, how to foster better collaboration between the aid groups and the design community. More architects and design professionals have to become more socially attuned, reach out of their comfort zones to the communities that desperately need their intervention.