Justin McGuirk
Selected writing 2005 – 2015
  • About
  • Category
  • Title
  • Publication
  • Year
  • Architecture
  • Activist architects
  • Al Jazeera
  • 2014
Justin McGuirk
Selected writing 2005 – 2015
  • Activist architects

It is remarkable how the tone of architecture culture has changed in only a few years. In the heady days of the 2000s, architects were in furious competition to produce “iconic” buildings for a global market. Virtuosi such as Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster kept the media fed with fabulous images of museums and corporate headquarters, earning the moniker “starchitects”. But after the financial crash of 2008, it became clear that the social value of so much of that starchitecture was nil. And there was a correction, to borrow a stock market term, in the architect’s image.

Architecture schools such as the Angewandte in Vienna – once hotbeds of “parametric” shape-making – suddenly started opening departments of “social design”. This U-turn has been reflected in the media, which is now far more attuned to social architecture. Al Jazeera’s series Rebel Architects, for example, looks at the work of six practitioners who might be called “activist architects”. Activist architects often work in slums or disadvantaged communities, with minimal budgets and in conditions of desperate need. An obvious dialectic presents itself, but this is not a tale of starchitect versus activist. For in an ideal world neither of these characters would exist.

Both are products of neoliberalism. It’s just that they operate at different extremes of the social spectrum: one serving capital and the other aiding those disenfranchised by it. Activists step in where the state has abdicated its responsibility and where the market sees too little profit. But given the scale of the problems facing cities as we speak, they have their work cut out.

Urban inequality is one of the great challenges of the century. Most urban growth is taking place in the developing world, and it is mostly not being supported by governments or facilitated by architects. Slum-dwellers build more housing every year than all of the governments and developers put together. UN Habitat estimates that by 2030 two billion people will be living in “informal”, self-built communities. Without the necessary infrastructure – transport, running water and decent sanitation – we’re looking at the proliferation of ghettoes on a vast scale.

Can a handful of socially conscientious architects even begin to address that situation? No, this will require political will. But there are plenty of examples of architects prodding the politicians into action.

Latin America offers an unparalleled case study in how such strategies work, and how they came to be necessary. In the second half the 20th century, South and Central America experienced mass urbanisation on a scale the world had not yet seen. Initially, governments turned to modernist planning and mass housing schemes. But they couldn’t build megablocks fast enough, and in the late 1970s the neoliberal ideology trickling down from the United States persuaded them to let the market do its thing. By the end of the 1980s, the result of such laissez-faire policies was clear: an absolute explosion of slums.

It wasn’t until the late 1990s that architects returned to the problem of the urban poor, reprising design as a tool of politics. Often, they had strategic solutions but needed to lobby the politicians to realise them – which is what makes them activist architects. One of the more famous of these interventions is the “half houses” designed by the Chilean practice Elemental in Chile. The premise here was ruthlessly logical: without enough money to build everyone in the community a house, the practice built everyone half a house. Thus when the residents had saved enough money they would expand into the empty gaps between the buildings. It was a pragmatic and participative solution.

But in the case of sprawling slums there are often far more urgent issues than housing. Transport is one of the essential tools for bridging the distance – both physical and psychological – between the formal and the informal city. In Caracas, the architecture practice Urban-Think Tank lobbied the Chavez government into building a cable car up to the hillside barrio of San Agustín. The journey to the top of that hill, which once took an hour on foot, now takes just 15 minutes.

This kind of architecture requires an expanded skill set – arguably, a whole new outlook. For one thing, architects working in poor communities have to be extroverts. They have to get to know the communities they want to work in, understand their needs and make them participants in the process.

However, in celebrating activist architects we must not lose site of one crucial issue: scale. The problems facing the 21st-century city are on a scale that cannot even begin to be addressed by architects on their own. Despite all the talk of “urban acupuncture” – the idea that small, local interventions can stimulate change – it needs to be implemented at a relevant scale. One school or gymnasium inserted in a barrio can make a difference to a community, but it takes a whole network of them to lift the character of a city.

This is best illustrated by what happened in Medellin, Colombia, in the first decade of this century. In the 1990s, at the mercy its warring drug cartels, Medellin was the murder capital of the world. Here, a civic movement led by the mayor used architecture and public space to transform the city. But it happened through the concerted efforts of politicians, architects and the business community, and it was backed up with investment in transport and education. Barrios that were once considered no-go zones were connected by cable cars, and seeded with schools, libraries and parks.

The lesson of Medellin is that it takes serious political will to address urban inequality. So often the privations suffered by the poor are infrastructural – they suffer more from the lack of transport or sanitation or education than they do from the quality of their homes. Architects can harness the energies of grass-roots community building, but self-organisation has its limits – a community can build themselves homes but they can’t build themselves a transport network. Bottom-up impulses need to be connected to top-down infrastructural investment.

Though architects are well placed to be the mediators, they cannot merely operate as rogue loners or “rebels”. Nor can they be charity workers, doing bits of pro bono work on the side. This is as true in the developed world, which faces rather different urban challenges. One thinks of the millions of Americans who were evicted in the foreclosures that followed the crash, or the housing crisis in London, or the austerity-hit cities of southern Europe.

Again, it comes down to political commitment. Recall that in the 1950s the largest architecture practice in the world was not some corporate behemoth or starchitect’s office but the London County Council Architects’ Department, a public service full of talented but mostly anonymous architects building social housing and amenities. It turns out that the market simply cannot provide what the LCC once did, and, with the best will in the world, neither can activist architects. Yet they have a valuable role to play in reorienting the profession. They remind us that architecture is a social act and they provide the exemplars that prove to governments that change is within their grasp. In an ideal world activist architects would not have to exist but, since the world is far from ideal, we need them badly.

 

 

Justin McGuirk
Selected writing 2005 – 2015
  • Category
  • Title
  • Publication
  • Year
  • Architecture Activist architects Al Jazeera 2014
  • Architecture Djenné’s mud mosque Icon 2010
  • Architecture Honeywell, I’m home! e-flux journal 2015
  • Architecture Maison Dom-ino Dezeen 2014
  • Architecture PREVI, Lima Domus 2011
  • Architecture Revolutionary housing in Argentina Domus 2011
  • Architecture Robin Hood Gardens SQM 2014
  • Architecture The Base, Chocó Nuevotopias 2013
  • Architecture The High Line Icon 2009
  • Architecture Walter Benjamin puts activists to shame? Here 2013
  • Cities Beirut Icon 2006
  • Cities DIY cities (the limitations) Uncube 2014
  • Cities Edge City (São Paulo) Strelka Press 2012
  • Cities How radical is Radical Urbanism? Catalogue 2015
  • Cities Istanbul Icon 2010
  • Cities Jenin Icon 2005
  • Cities Life on the edge Moscow Urban Forum 2013
  • Cities Seoul Condé Nast Traveller 2012
  • Cities Shenzhen Icon 2008
  • Cities Unreal estate (London) Domus 2012
  • Cities Urban commons The Guardian 2015
  • Design Adventure gear The Guardian 2010
  • Design Beneath the street, the wilderness: Occupy and Bear Grylls Here 2012
  • Design Craft fetishism The Guardian 2011
  • Design Craft fetishism: From objects to things Disegno 2012
  • Design Design and the Right Domus 2013
  • Design Design and violence Dezeen 2013
  • Design Dreaming of year zero Bio 50 2014
  • Design Fabbers, dabblers and microstars Icon 2009
  • Design London riots The Guardian 2011
  • Design Luxury watch culture The Guardian 2010
  • Design Milan’s PR economy The Guardian 2011
  • Design On William Gibson on design Dezeen 2014
  • Design Open design Dezeen 2014
  • Design Samsung vs Apple Domus 2013
  • Design The internet of broken things Dezeen 2014
  • Design The post-spectacular economy Van Abbemuseum 2011
  • Design Ultramundane Domus 2013
  • People Alejandro Aravena Icon 2009
  • People Do Ho Suh Icon 2008
  • People Enzo Mari Icon 2009
  • People Ettore Sottsass Icon 2007
  • People Francis Kere Icon 2010
  • People Richard Sapper Domus 2013
  • Reviews Cool Tools by Kevin Kelly Dezeen 2014
  • Reviews Hearts of the City by Herbert Muschamp Icon 2010
  • Reviews Latin America in Construction at MoMA Architectural Record 2015
  • Reviews Mad Max: Fury Road Dezeen 2015
  • Reviews Max Bill Icon 2010
  • Reviews Philips shaver Icon 2008
  • Reviews Postmodernism at the V&A The Guardian 2010
  • Reviews Rebel Cities by David Harvey Art Review 2012
  • Reviews The Craftsman by Richard Sennett Icon 2008
  • Reviews The Historical Museum, Sarajevo The Guardian 2011
  • Reviews Together by Richard Sennett Art Review 2012
Justin McGuirk
Selected writing 2005 – 2015
  • Architecture
  • Activist architects
  • Al Jazeera
  • 2014
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It is remarkable how the tone of architecture culture has changed in only a few years. In the heady days of the 2000s, architects were in furious competition to produce “iconic” buildings for a global market. Virtuosi such as Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster kept the media fed with fabulous images of museums and corporate headquarters, earning the moniker “starchitects”. But after the financial crash of 2008, it became clear that the social value of so much of that starchitecture was nil. And there was a correction, to borrow a stock market term, in the architect’s image.

Architecture schools such as the Angewandte in Vienna – once hotbeds of “parametric” shape-making – suddenly started opening departments of “social design”. This U-turn has been reflected in the media, which is now far more attuned to social architecture. Al Jazeera’s series Rebel Architects, for example, looks at the work of six practitioners who might be called “activist architects”. Activist architects often work in slums or disadvantaged communities, with minimal budgets and in conditions of desperate need. An obvious dialectic presents itself, but this is not a tale of starchitect versus activist. For in an ideal world neither of these characters would exist.

Both are products of neoliberalism. It’s just that they operate at different extremes of the social spectrum: one serving capital and the other aiding those disenfranchised by it. Activists step in where the state has abdicated its responsibility and where the market sees too little profit. But given the scale of the problems facing cities as we speak, they have their work cut out.

Urban inequality is one of the great challenges of the century. Most urban growth is taking place in the developing world, and it is mostly not being supported by governments or facilitated by architects. Slum-dwellers build more housing every year than all of the governments and developers put together. UN Habitat estimates that by 2030 two billion people will be living in “informal”, self-built communities. Without the necessary infrastructure – transport, running water and decent sanitation – we’re looking at the proliferation of ghettoes on a vast scale.

Can a handful of socially conscientious architects even begin to address that situation? No, this will require political will. But there are plenty of examples of architects prodding the politicians into action.

Latin America offers an unparalleled case study in how such strategies work, and how they came to be necessary. In the second half the 20th century, South and Central America experienced mass urbanisation on a scale the world had not yet seen. Initially, governments turned to modernist planning and mass housing schemes. But they couldn’t build megablocks fast enough, and in the late 1970s the neoliberal ideology trickling down from the United States persuaded them to let the market do its thing. By the end of the 1980s, the result of such laissez-faire policies was clear: an absolute explosion of slums.

It wasn’t until the late 1990s that architects returned to the problem of the urban poor, reprising design as a tool of politics. Often, they had strategic solutions but needed to lobby the politicians to realise them – which is what makes them activist architects. One of the more famous of these interventions is the “half houses” designed by the Chilean practice Elemental in Chile. The premise here was ruthlessly logical: without enough money to build everyone in the community a house, the practice built everyone half a house. Thus when the residents had saved enough money they would expand into the empty gaps between the buildings. It was a pragmatic and participative solution.

But in the case of sprawling slums there are often far more urgent issues than housing. Transport is one of the essential tools for bridging the distance – both physical and psychological – between the formal and the informal city. In Caracas, the architecture practice Urban-Think Tank lobbied the Chavez government into building a cable car up to the hillside barrio of San Agustín. The journey to the top of that hill, which once took an hour on foot, now takes just 15 minutes.

This kind of architecture requires an expanded skill set – arguably, a whole new outlook. For one thing, architects working in poor communities have to be extroverts. They have to get to know the communities they want to work in, understand their needs and make them participants in the process.

However, in celebrating activist architects we must not lose site of one crucial issue: scale. The problems facing the 21st-century city are on a scale that cannot even begin to be addressed by architects on their own. Despite all the talk of “urban acupuncture” – the idea that small, local interventions can stimulate change – it needs to be implemented at a relevant scale. One school or gymnasium inserted in a barrio can make a difference to a community, but it takes a whole network of them to lift the character of a city.

This is best illustrated by what happened in Medellin, Colombia, in the first decade of this century. In the 1990s, at the mercy its warring drug cartels, Medellin was the murder capital of the world. Here, a civic movement led by the mayor used architecture and public space to transform the city. But it happened through the concerted efforts of politicians, architects and the business community, and it was backed up with investment in transport and education. Barrios that were once considered no-go zones were connected by cable cars, and seeded with schools, libraries and parks.

The lesson of Medellin is that it takes serious political will to address urban inequality. So often the privations suffered by the poor are infrastructural – they suffer more from the lack of transport or sanitation or education than they do from the quality of their homes. Architects can harness the energies of grass-roots community building, but self-organisation has its limits – a community can build themselves homes but they can’t build themselves a transport network. Bottom-up impulses need to be connected to top-down infrastructural investment.

Though architects are well placed to be the mediators, they cannot merely operate as rogue loners or “rebels”. Nor can they be charity workers, doing bits of pro bono work on the side. This is as true in the developed world, which faces rather different urban challenges. One thinks of the millions of Americans who were evicted in the foreclosures that followed the crash, or the housing crisis in London, or the austerity-hit cities of southern Europe.

Again, it comes down to political commitment. Recall that in the 1950s the largest architecture practice in the world was not some corporate behemoth or starchitect’s office but the London County Council Architects’ Department, a public service full of talented but mostly anonymous architects building social housing and amenities. It turns out that the market simply cannot provide what the LCC once did, and, with the best will in the world, neither can activist architects. Yet they have a valuable role to play in reorienting the profession. They remind us that architecture is a social act and they provide the exemplars that prove to governments that change is within their grasp. In an ideal world activist architects would not have to exist but, since the world is far from ideal, we need them badly.

 

 

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