<open-architecture-network>Architecture or Revolution. “Revolution can be
avoided.”( Le Corbusier, Vers une Architecture, 1923). Le Corbusier had it all
wrong. One billion people live in abject poverty. Four billion live in fragile but
growing economies. One in seven people live in slum settlements. By 2020 it will
be one in three. We don’t need to choose between architecture or revolution.
What we need is an architectural revolution.</open-architecture-network>
<Cesar>I don’t think sustainable change happens very quickly. I strongly disa-
gree with the idea of an architectural revolution, there is nothing like a revolution
happening in architecture yet, and an other western idealised industrial revolution
with its imperialist violence and absurd cortège of dogmas is the last thing I wish
for our planet. To my sense, the urge resides in a clever local negotiations and
progressive undercover subversion of existing structures.</Cesar>
<Usman>My essay was called “Death of the Architect”, in a sense the wider
project is to knock down this quite privileged bourgeois figure.</Usman>
<Cesar>So if it is not the role of the architect to decide but all the participants
together, what is the posture that people should have, in order to go toward a par-
ticipative architecture?</Cesar>
<Maxime>I don’t think it is for the people to have such a posture. In a sense it is
very pretentious for someone to say “I’m not an architect, I am going to find an
architect and tell him : “I want to do a participative architecture, let’s work togeth-
er”. This is the architect’s role to do so, not to the people. The architects needs to
push away their decisional leadership ego and understand what the people want
to have built. You build for people, you need them.</Maxime>