Social Architecture: a Thesis for a Design Revolution
The word architecture often describes the arrangement of organizations and systems. Architecture is not just about building it is a process of communication and social development and exchange. The social and architectural need to be considered in relation to how they interrelate. Architecture does not exist within a vacuum in society it is permeable membrane that interacts and intermeshes with other aspects of society. Architecture if it seeks to inspire humanity must not be a top-down affair led by a despotic if not charismatic autocratic class of architectural elites. It requires a community that is aware of the need for both innovation and self-regulation.
Conventional social architectures depend on large modern institutions that develop sophisticated technologies and methodologies to weaken and degrade the individual through the alienating complexity of modern life. The modern approach itself encourages the cultivation of the problem-matrix. It is a way to live off the individuals in society in much the same way a parasite sucks the blood or nectar of its host. The inflexibility of conventional social architectures to the free and evolving flow of information in world that is inevitably changing is to a large degree explained by the convoluted intentions of these systems. This explains why their ability to explain and deal with the world is declining.
To build an enlightened aesthetic requires an enlightened and thoughtful group of people who are encouraged to question the leading authorities of that community. What is emerging to replace this is the Gaia consciousness. More generically, we call this a holistic frame of reference or an integrated approach to collecting, processing and managing information. This integrated approach will be necessary for us to adequately understand and manage the complexity of human/planetary interactions.
The word architecture is increasingly used to describe the arrangement of organizations and systems. Architecture is not just about building it is a process of communication and social development, and that we cannot simply see it as issue of aesthetics and design, just as we cannot see technology or science as value free when the people that create these technologies have values, aspirations, needs and egos.
The root of the problem is that money and power have become the ends to the means, instead of a means to an ends of a more fulfilling human existence for all of humanity. Throughout civilized history it has been that those who have been most ambitious in society have also been those with the greatest egos. Demagoguery and self-righteousness has been necessary to upward political mobility. The traditional view of politics is one where the politically ambitious must rise to the occasion and communicate a message that they increasingly become divorced from as nourish their hungry egos upon the lush forage of notability and prominence. The media is dominated by the messengers who most usually have no message, but only deftly and cleverly manipulate images to sway the dimly lit public consciousness.
Large modern institutions develop sophisticated technologies and methodologies to create social architectures that actually weaken and degrade the individual through the alienating complexity of modern life.
The ability of modern institutions to explain what is happening in the world is declining. Gaia consciousness or more generically, a holistic frame of reference is necessary in order that we may adequately understand human/planetary interactions. Social architecture is the idea that the social and architectural need to be considered in relation to how they interrelate.
Mainstream society is still in the grips of the euphoria of classical economics--the real "liberals" who run our society--who have gleefully and foolishly ushered in an age where economic growth is seen as a panacea to all our social, economic and political problems.
Industrial capitalism while appearing quite successful has a downside that is minimized by a social structure that exists in denial of inconvenient truths that many powerful people would rather not see discussed in public. Usually those without power are most aware of the relationships that underlie the problems of society.
Through the “ritual of addiction” we bind ourselves to the material world, precluding a deeper understanding of life. Modern systems with their mechanistic reductionism seek to encompass our consciousness with a deprived and dismal perspective of the world that suits the needs of those who believe that “business as usual” is the best way to sustain civilization.
The post-industrial age represents the culmination, and eventually the revolutionary reversal of these unsustainable economic, political and social trends that have been the result of the industrial revolution and breakneck pace of change. Scientists, metaphysicians, environmentalists and social activists have formed an antithesis to this prevailing modern world view, coming together with a powerful realization: we have to respect the organic life processes on the planet. Human activities cannot completely and modify and dislocate the natural systems and organisms upon which the whole great system of life on earth depends, without serious adverse consequences. With the realization of ecology we become conscious of a carrying capacity with relates to a limit that an externalized human economy can grow within Gaia. More significantly with this paradigm shift we change the way that we speak of and relate to phenomena.
A New Age of Perception
Human perceptions and habits sustain prevailing patterns of behavior and social trends that are outmoded (David Wann Deep Design p10). Design is still based on industrial modes of perception. The way in which science and technology are applied in the built environment operates in denial of the impact of natural systems on human reality and visa versa. As long as we continue to seek to master nature, and use the heavy-handed approach to finding solutions, we will continue to create more problems than we solve.
An Integrated Approach to Sustainable Development
The realm of sustainable design, seeks to consider to all important elements within nature when constructing the built human environment. The synergistic properties of ecological design allow us to minimize resource use and the amount of space occupied and to maximize the utilization of materials and labor through the use of new methodologies, the result is wisely designed multi-use structures that do several jobs at the same time and so they do more with less. Every vital system in human society should incorporate these multi-use principles.
We must get in balance with the planetary cycle of life, if we are to survive on Earth. A sea change in the attitude of those who make the public policies is necessary to begin to realize a new age of human existence where modern technological-based systems actually begin to figure out how to use technology to really make our lives better and more full. This will also require a rethink of many of the market and money based value systems of modern society.
Indeed what informs ecological design and sustainable development is the sensitivity to the humans that are associated with every aspect of these systems. There is no absolute right or wrong, only that which is most inclined to create an optimum living space for the people who will use the space that is being designed with consideration to environmental as well as social concerns. It is good as a designer to keep an open mind and consider many different sides of any particular issue: life is a one big complex system where everything is interrelated.
The Ethos of a Benevolent Social Architecture
We have to take actions as individuals on a collective and local level to develop alternative methods that both work and can compete in the public realm against those ideas and systems that defend the status quo. A socially just architecture is not only about aesthetics but ethics also…
The Urban Effect Aesthetic and Human Potential
Paolo Soleri’s vision centers on the development of a powerful, human scale, three-dimensional architecture, which through its aesthetic and design embodies an “urban effect”. The potential of the people within that culture is more fully harnessed through the development of the urban effect. My take on this is as the city evolves the social architecture builds a cultural memory/history functioning as the interface between the cultural/social interactions and the developing built environment. The ideal and innovative vision of the ecocity begins to be reflected in the architecture, as well as in the cultural, spiritual, economic and political realms making the city a center for information, knowledge and wisdom. As the aesthetic environment communicates and reinforces the values and concepts of ecological design, industrial ecology and permaculture, what results is the urban effect learning process, which you participate in by living and interacting in the urban environment.
Visioning a Worldview for a Sustainable and Socially Just Society
In order to create a social transformation of modern society on a level that is needed to avoid an unprecedented and unmanageable ecological and social cataclysm, there has to be a process for effectively coordinating a broad-based movement for change—creating consensus (convergence) while still allowing for diversity (divergence).
The Sane Society and Social Transformation
Central to the idea of the sustainable society is the sane society. Thus since the idea of community is basic to not only efficacy but our sanity, we seek to emphasize the need to create a powerful community based spirit that acts as a magnate to both people into this movement for a sea change in how humanity deals with reality.
Personal Transformation
If we want to change the world we must first learn to change ourselves. Personal change and renewal removes us from the conditioning that we have undergone as members of the mainstream society. People have been trained to think in ways that remove us from the reality that we are part of nature and (even more of a radical of an idea) part of each other. Our actions affect each other, so we must refocus our energy to affirm those qualities that affirm life.
Sustainable habitats
The Rise of Post-Industrial, in the Form of the Sustainable Human Habitat It is only sensible that some of us, as we begin to grasp an understanding of the human reality, will struggle to create more effective ways from which to observe reality from a benevolent, compassionate, whole systems approach, minimizing human impacts by concentrating human populations within dense and compact urban areas. One way to do this might be instructing people on how to create alternative economic systems.
New Science
The responsible use of technology entails us to establish a science "that is intrinsically holistic and that addresses the needs of the people and the planet (Norman Myers Gaia Atlas of Future Worlds p174)."
Accepting the Reality that we Live in an Imperfect World
During my stay at Arcosanti my ideas have evolved, and so my vision has changed as well. I have learned much of value while I have been there, and met many people who even when I perceive them as at their worst have helped me to evolve, because it is not about what is good or bad so much as learning from the experience of living. What has been most obvious is that the greatest challenge to achieving our goals is not money or technology, but in learning how to work in an open and highly creative social and cultural environment creating new versions of community that are suitable and desirable for post-industrial human society. What I have found and what I believe with great fervor is that this collective manifestation can’t be done on a drafting table, a laboratory or in a research institute filled with fancified, self-important people it has to be done as process where the people themselves built their own system of living. What is pivotal isn’t architecture or economics or technology or politics as led by highly credentialed professionals, but in developing human scale, community oriented social systems that actually serve the people. This is what my vision of social architecture aims to achieve.