Bringing it all Back Home: Providing Design Aid in Our Own Backyard

Awareness of international crises and the opening of global marketplaceshave captured the attention of contemporary practitioners. Large firmsinvest increasing amounts of resources and effort to managing global opportunities,but given the state of the economy, some are finding that suchlabors are not paying off. Furthermore, the common model of architecturalpractice is predicated upon a very limited client base. Architects create newopportunities by diversifying their definition of who can be a client, and howa different skill set can both increase their professional prosperity and bringdesign services to overlooked local stakeholders.Similarly, international crises – be they tsunamis, earthquakes, or floods – capturethe attention of socially-aware design professionals. These instances oftenbring out the best in design practitioners, but just as frequently result indesign interventions which, while well-intended, range from misguided to patronizing.Designers who practice humanitarian architecture on a global scalemust negotiate obstacles such as language barriers, inadequate understandingof local practices, and an overly-heroic sense of hubris. Meanwhile, many ofour local communities – some in our own backyards – suffer from less dramaticyet equally dire conditions of decay, poverty, and neglect.Are traditional models of architectural practice still viable in cities miredin physical, psychological, and economic crisis? What are the reasonablelimits of architectural involvement in such contexts? Are students beingeducated in a manner that allows them to maximize the public benefits oftheir talents? To accept these challenges is to accept the need for a newmodel that allows for the possibility of new interpretations of professionalpractice, outcomes and deliverables.This paper outlines the philosophical underpinnings and activities of practitionerswho are breaking from previously-accepted models of global,professional, and humanitarian practices. Examples include ‘storefrontarchitects’, who aim to bring professional design services to clients whopreviously believed this a luxury reserved for only wealthy individuals andcorporations, and Seattle architect John Morefield, who changed his practiceby offering “architecture for five cents”. Discussion includes the workof Public Architecture, which was launched when John Peterson decided to‘create his own design competition’ by presenting an unsolicited proposal toimprove public green space in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. The transitionof Atlanta-based Mad Housers from ‘guerilla activists’ to ‘legitimate’service providers underscores the opportunities for architects to fulfill theirfiduciary responsibility within a matrix of social and professional sanction.The paper concludes with an introduction to a graduate level design studiooffered at a Midwestern university. By exploring alternative practiceprinciples such as clientless and unsolicited architectural interventions thecourse requirements shift student skill development from ‘problem solving’to ‘problem seeking’, attempting to engage students in a dialogue regardingthe social, political, and cultural obligations of the design professional.Special focus is placed upon cultivating student abilities in critically readingtheir environment from both the physical and social perspective, as wellas upon expanding their definitions of ‘architectural’ interventions, seekingto impact sustainable change at the individual and neighborhood scale.

Volume Editors
Martha Thorne & Xavier Costa

ISBN
978-0-935502-83-1