Redefining Humanitarian Architecture with Complexity in Mind: Moving Toward a New Practice

Humanitarian architecture has become a mainstay inthe social practice of architecture and has had an overallpositive influence on design teaching. However, thefield of humanitarian design has a tendency to oversimplifygrowing issues of social and environmentaljustice. The field of humanitarian architecture suggeststo students that design can solve systemic problems,but fails to define the complexity of the systems theseproblems exist within. Rather than emphasizing criticalanalysis and deconstruction, it emphasizes trendingdesign vocabulary. This paper establishes the basisof humanitarian architecture, the definition, and thekey concepts that define the practice of humanitarianarchitecture, and it uses the concepts of ‘craft’ and‘replicability’ to analyze the practice within complexsystems. This analysis of the field makes the argumentthat incremental facilitation and deep communityengagement is necessary for a successful humanitarianarchitecture. And in order to achieve success, anew school of humanitarian architecture needs to bedeveloped that develops students and practitionerswho are prepared to work within complexity, employingpraxis.

Volume Editors
Luis Francisco Rico-Gutierrez & Martha Thorne

ISBN
978-1-944214-08-1