“Do everything possible to obtain commissions only from the most important people, who are generous and true lovers of the arts. For your work loses its value when done for persons of low social rank.” – Leon Battista Alberti, L’Architettura, Book IX, chap XI, p.864, 1485
When I came across this quote recently, it stopped me in my tracks. I mean, I knew that architecture was elitist, only afforded by the wealthy few, but I hadn’t appreciated quite how hard-wired this attitude was to the discipline, as to be stated so baldly in one of the foundational texts. ‘Ah! But this was 500 years ago!’ I hear you cry, ‘Things have changed!’ But I’m not so sure.
Architecture remains a luxury item, a grand design, a creative art discussed only in the lifestyle pages, out of reach of the rest of us. Architecture’s potential to lift people up, to create opportunity, to be democratic and inclusive is all but overlooked. With this blog, I’m going to try to answer the question: What would an architecture for all look like?
I don’t know the answer, so the only way there is to take a discursive path. I’ll be posting working thoughts, sketches, book reviews (I plan to revisit the classics: Jacobs, Mumford, Howard, Scott Brown), conversations, interviews, projects and references. I’ll also link to relevant bits I’ve written elsewhere.
The goal is to try to understand the edges of the architecture profession as it is currently defined, to acknowledge these limitations, and to propose how we might expand the discipline, using new tools and strategies, to address a wider constituency.
I have some hunches on where to begin: what’s happening on the fringes? On the edges? That’s not in the magazines? Outside of the urban centres? Suburbia is key, I think. The grand terrain where so many people in the West live, and yet that which is largely overlooked by the design professional. What are the mechanisms for working at this scale? What are the business models beyond the private practice? What are the kinds of questions we need to ask, to address the scale of this challenge? What role can design play in helping to create economic, social and environmental sustainability? And how can we possibly achieve this for all?
I would love to hear from you if you have any suggestions, you can contact me here.
And please subscribe below. I hope you can come along for the ride.
Rory Hyde