Monthly Archives: June 2009

“The Architectural Bat-Signal: Exploring the Relationship between Justice and Design”

“Design is changing existing situations into preferred ones.” Herbert Simon With most of the population lacking a voice in the design process, who is speaking for them?  Without the interests of the marginalized represented in architecture, those very communities continue to lose their depth, character and integrity. “How can we quantify ‘justice’ in terms of [...]

“Communication Through Inquiry”

Essay by Sean Donahue [ Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism ] “…the discipline of graphic design is not singularly defined by the form its artifacts have taken in the past.” Designers have the opportunity to “Do Something, NOW” by envisioning new contexts for societal contribution.  Graphic design has the capacity to form, understand, and communicate [...]

“An Architecture of Change”

Essay by José Gamez + Susan Rogers [ Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism ] Architecture can’t save the world, but it can mobilize it. “Hope coincides with an increasingly critical perception of the concrete conditions of reality.  Society reveals itself as something unfinished, not as something inexorably given; it becomes a challenge rather than a [...]

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Allow events to change you | You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them. Forget about good | Good is a known quantity. Good [...]