Implacing Architecture into the Practice of Placemaking

L YNDA H. SCHNEEKLOTH AND ROBERT G. SHIBLEY, State University of New York at Buffalo

To place architecture beyond expert culture into the practice of place- different about a resituated practice? What would happen to expert
making is an attempt to make the profession and discipline a more relevant, knowledge? What problems would ensue for current practitioners?
responsible, complex, and contradictory practice. The proposed relocation
moves the practice of architecture into the borders between modern and
And what would we gain/lose by reframing our collective work?
postmodern theories of knowledge and social/cultural practices that re- The first question, however, that must be asked is simply,
quire, but do not privilege expert knowledges. One aspect of this relocation why might we do this? Mitang has one response: to lead “the pro-
is the requirement of more open and collaborative processes that can cre-
ate profound opportunities for democratic action and the celebration of ev-
fession to a future of greater relevance and responsibility.” 2 His
eryday life. work with Boyer in their investigation of the education and prac-
tice of architecture speaks of the “architecture community’s long
history of failure to connect itself firmly to the larger concerns con-
fronting families, business, schools, communities, and society.” 3
Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.
Our standpoint in this article is that this failure is an artifact of the
—George Bernard Shaw
existing practices of our expert cultures. Further, we will argue that
moving beyond expert culture is not about the destruction of expert
SHIFTING ARCHITECTURE BEYOND EXPERT CULTURE WOULD REQUIRE US
knowledges and practice, but rather about repositioning and situ-
to love, or at least tolerate, complexity and contradiction by deny-
ating them in a larger context of placemaking, that is, in the every-
ing architectural expertise a privileged status in the discourse of
day practice of making and transforming the world.
making. This dislocation does not in any way diminish expert re-
We have argued elsewhere that we live in a culture that has
sponsibility, for as Venturi says, complexity and contradiction do
lost its ability to make places because we denigrate the work that
not mean one must tolerate “the incoherence or arbitrariness of in-
maintains our daily lives and value only extraordinary acts of build-
competent architecture.” 1 Even as we explore a move beyond expert
ing, an activity that we delegate to experts.4 We no longer celebrate
culture, we affirm the power of architecture to make substantial
what have become mundane acts of daily life that support our
contributions to the messy vitality of everyday life in service of the
dwelling.5 Renovating an ordinary building, keeping the house
promise of lives well lived.
clean, fixing the porch, maintaining our streets, and taking out the
This special issue of the Journal of Architectural Education not
garbage (locally and regionally) have all become technical, rational
only raises many critical questions for the current practice and dis-
acts rather than essential, poetic ones. Concurrently, we have re-
cipline of architecture, it also expresses several tacit assumptions.
moved ourselves from the practice of making new places, purchas-
One is that the profession of architecture is embedded in an expert
ing quality rather than participating in making it.
culture, a child of modernity and the discourses of science, art, and
Among those who now have responsibility for our places are
politics. Further, it assumes that architecture might benefit from an
architects, planners, building tradespeople, facility managers, inte-
investigation of what might lie beyond the accepted model of pro-
rior designers, engineers, public workers, and landscape architects.
fessionalism reflected in the language of the “expert.” Are there, for
We are all justly proud of the important work we do and, to a large
example, fragments of our current practices that don’t quite fit, or
extent, are unmindful of the way in which our work disables the
ruptures in our professional and academic lives that, if excavated,
very people and places we serve. 6 The expert appropriation of
might reveal alternative forms and locations for the practice of ar-
placemaking “denies the potential for people to take control over
chitecture? There is also an element of faith in this issue; it is truly
events and circumstances that take place in their lives.”7
possible, and often desirable, to engage in the practice and discipline
In order to avoid the disabling aspects of our collective pro-
of architecture beyond expert culture.
fessional work, we are arguing that architectural practices move be-
This intriguing set of implicit propositions is worthy of an ex-
yond expert culture into the complex realm of borders. Borders
tended debate among professionals, academics, and students of archi-
between modern and postmodern thought in politics, aesthetics,
tecture. We wish to take up this challenge to explore what a paradigm
and science are places for dialogue about previously accepted truths.
of architectural practice might be if it were situated beyond expert
Border conversations simultaneously confirm and interrogate the
culture. The questions that must be addressed include: Where are we
potential significance and appropriateness of our expert practices for
now? Are we totally located within expert discourses? What would be
those affected by them, and they open a space in which to discuss
Journal of Architectural Education, pp. 130–140 the social and cultural construction of meaning. If we acknowledge
© 2000 ACSA, Inc. the real complexities and contradictions inherent in each site of in-

February 2000 JAE 53/3 130

tervention, seeing differences and similarities, we would be required
to continually negotiate meaning and position—including where
we as “experts” are located. In such a practice there is no safe ground
because no standpoint is free from interrogation by alternative con-
structions of knowledge and power. Crossing borders and dancing
in the in-between with the constituents of place locates our exper-
tise relationally, connects it to specific situations, and sustains the
placemakers’ potential to contribute to the inclusive, democratic,
and civic projects of the twenty-first century. This act would place
architecture in the center of critical social and cultural struggles.
In border territories architects confront and engage what
Giroux labels the “multiple references that constitute different cul-
tural codes, experiences and languages.” 8 Knowledges are ex-
changed, such as knowledges and talents inherent within the
constituents of place, expert artis tic talents, expert historical
knowledges, and expert scientific knowledges. With this exchange
comes reciprocal learning, the power to act, and the potential for
populations to take control over the circumstances of place in their
lives. Working in place creates the site of Giroux’s border pedagogy,
a countertext that invites a fuller understanding of complexity and
contradiction in architecture. 9
This article proposes that we, as individual architects and as
a practice, move beyond expert models to relocate and embed ar-
chitecture— implace it—within a broader human endeavor that we
call placemaking. This practice is explored in relationship to current
paradigms and definitions of architectural practice, followed by a
discussion of the implications for the resettling of architecture in
placemaking that examines what it means professionally as a form
of practice and as a mode of learning. We include an exploration of
the possible gains and possible losses of a move beyond expert cul-
ture. Finally, we explore the role of architecture embedded in
placemaking as a contributor to the multiple practices of dwelling
and to the evolution of local and global democratic projects.
Placemaking so conceived becomes a site of critical practice and
pedagogy, extending the value and potential of the field’s contribu-
tion to cultural production. 10
Part One: Architecture and Placemaking
I think that men [sic] have no right to profess themselves architects hast-
ily, without having climbed from boyhood the steps of these studies and
thus, nursed by knowledge of many arts and sciences, having reached the
heights of the holy ground of architecture.11
—Vitruvius
131
It is difficult to discuss the possibility of a resituated practice of ar-
chitecture because virtually all of the debates about architecture are
framed within paradigms of expert culture. The very definition of
personal success in the profession demands independence from the
web of relationships that, we argue, are essential for the making of
successful places. Professionals seek to increase their market share
and value to clients by setting their expertise apart from their col-
leagues both within discreet domains as well as among other design-
related domains. Signature architects, scholars, and design culture
leaders in the academy seek to hold their leadership edge and inde-
pendence as the avant-garde in the field with increasingly self-ref-
erential artistic operations and moves in the production of theory
and buildings.12 Senior scholars and practitioners in historical, so-
cially responsible, and technical arenas of our fragmented practice
consistently seek the next insight that will set them apart. Our own
most legitimate pursuit of individual professional excellence works
in opposition to realizing the full potential of architecture as a hu-
man and social practice devoted to critical cultural production.
The history that places architecture within expert culture goes
to the very roots of architecture. Vitruvius sets architecture on “holy
ground” and limits the profession to only those priests who have
studied broadly in the arts and sciences. While there has been a rest-
less shifting of the “holy ground” on which we stand and a gradual
narrowing of the studies required, there is little debate about the
secularized holy ground as a space apart.
To be sure, the creation of an increasingly narrow, highly
specialized, and hierarchical profession of architecture can be de-
fended. It is a product of the rise of professionalism during the in-
dustrial revolution and the increased complexity involved in the
production of contemporary buildings. The process of designing
and constructin g many modern buildings invite s several
subspecializations, all of which must be coordinated in the inevi-
table collaborative act of construction. Even as architectural prac-
tice has been more and more implaced into the practice of team
construction and collaborative professional work, practitioners in all
domains of architecture discuss which aspects of our trade are more
central and hence should lead all others.
This question of “the core” is the location for the most heated
debates in the field. What, if we return to Vitruvius, is central or
more “holy”? Architects who inhabit the professional, corporate
world argue for a position of “reality,” an uncritical acceptance of
the status quo and current relations of power. They offer a form of
professionism that calls for discrete task specialization with clear
lines of command and control in the production of buildings. Oth-
ers such as Darrel Crilley, argue that we have ghettoized architec-
Schneekloth and Shibley
ture, “narrowing the concerns ‘proper’ to architectural discourse to
the formalistic and symbolic.”13 In either the corporate or formal/
artistic standpoint, questions about the social and political purposes
of any architectural act are viewed as irrelevant. Those who dwell
in the domain of history, technology, the social sciences, and even
practice often report that they are viewed as marginal and destined
to serve the “design core.” In spite of these inner conflicts, each sub-
culture would argue that it is the synthetic mix of knowledges and
responsibilities that has been architecture’s stock in trade for cen-
turies. It is this synthetic mix that is our profession’s espoused theory,
that which we tell ourselves is important. 14
However, a reading of the reward system in the practice of
architecture—an examination of our theory in use—would suggest
that we have made a decision on what is most important. A brief
analysis of the winners of design competitions and awards pro-
grams, and of participation in studio reviews, indicates the Crilley’s
critique is valid.15 We do value and reward architecture as if it were
a cultural art usually presented as an isolated and beautiful artifact.
Those who are major players in this privileged position, “the design
culture,” are comprised of academics and signature firms.16 This
group of talented and disciplined architects profess a postmodern
philosophy in which the meaning vested in any gesture or word is
always open to debate and is dependent on dialogue in order for it
to become situated or placed in a project. Yet the space for uncer-
tainty is narrow, often limited to an artistic or formal discourse.
Further, the distance between an aspiration for a social construction
of meaning in poststructuralist thought and the concurrent aspira-
tion to lead with artistic conceit independent of such socially, tech-
nically, or historically responsible construction is enormous. To
place one’s work within a postmodern discourse, yet deny or
trivialize the issues that might be central to other voices in the pro-
fession, is a contradiction. It is one example of the way in which
conflict among legitimate claims for status at the core of the pro-
fession serves to sustain the fragmentation of the practice.
Conflict and struggles within a field are fruitful; they serve to
clarify and refresh any discourse. But they can also be destructive to
the broader aims of a profession in its professed service to society.
One way to replace or at least gather the competing texts of subcul-
tures within architecture is to situate architecture itself in a larger
context as a cultural practice in addition to being a cultural art. This
proposal is not a radical concept in the field; in fact, it is one of the
prevalent positions within the architectural enterprise arguing for a
more central location in the debate, an inclusive rather than exclu-
sive strategy. Boyer and Mitgang’s Building Community: A New Fu-
ture for Architectural Education and Practice by the Carnegie
February 2000 JAE 53/3
Foundation offers a cohesive but not totalizing aspiration for col-
laborative practice and an accounting to a larger social construction
of place. Boyer and Mitgang report that educators and practitioners
believe that the core of architectural education is “learning to design
within constraints, collaborative learning, and refining knowledge
through the reflective act of design.”17 All of these core elements are
not subspecializations of the existing fragmented field struggling for
supremacy, but rather are discursive practices intended to construct
knowledge and test its legitimacy and efficacy in practice.
Speaking for the faculty and professionals included in their
investigation, Boyer and Mitgang tell us, “The nobility of architec-
ture has always rested on the idea that it is a social art—whose pur-
poses include, yet transcend the building of building s.” 18 In
searching for a way to discuss this transcendent character of the
field, we propose that architecture, rather than being a discrete prac-
tice and/or discipline, is intimately related to many adjacent prac-
tices such as engineering , facility manag ement, landscape
architecture, planning, and so on.
Our proposal is to gather these adjacent practices, including
architecture, and implace them within placemaking beyond any one
professional domain. We argue that this wider and more complex
practice can facilitate querencia, the Spanish word that “refers to a
place on the ground where one feels secure, a place from which one’s
strength of character is drawn.” 19 Querencia embodies the sensibility
of placemaking—having and loving a place not because it is abstractly
or universally understood as unique or even supportive, but because
it is yours. It is intimate and known, cared for and argued about.
Placemaking as a daily activity and social practice creates the oppor-
tunity for querencia: “Placemaking is the way all of us as human be-
ings transform the places in which we find ourselves into places in
which we live. It includes building and tearing buildings down, cul-
tivating the land and planting gardens, cleaning the kitchen and re-
arranging the office, making neighborhoods and mowing lawns,
taking over buildings and understanding cities. It is a fundamental
human activity that is sometimes almost invisible and sometimes dra-
matic. Placemaking consists both of daily acts of renovating, main-
taining, and representing the places that sustain us, and of special,
celebratory one-time events such as designing a new church building
or moving into a new facility. It can be done with the support of oth-
ers or it can be an act of defiance in the face of power.”20
Although the term place is often used as a location for
memory or nostalgia and therefore interpreted as a stable concept,
we stress its constructive and contingent power.21 Place, both as a
concept and as a discrete space on the earth, is a contested terrain.
Placemaking, the act of creating and maintaining places, is active,
132
conflicted cultural work that allows for multiple standpoints and
momentary meanings that facilitate or hinder daily life.
As Casey argues, there are many ways to dwell, from “staying
put” to a nomadic wandering that includes aboriginal life spaces
and postmodern tourism. 22 As different as these modes of inhabi-
tation are, each moves through the abstraction of interchangeable
spaces into the reading of specific locations on the earth, places that
are engaged, disputed, respected, and even loved as the root of
querencia reflects. The idea of place has been subsumed under space
in modernity; particular places of dwelling have disappeared into
the limitless and unbounded notions of space and time. The erasure
of place as an idea, as an activity, and as discrete locations on the
earth, has had an enormous impact on western cultures. We have
confused space and place, forgetting that places, unlike spaces, are
not interchangeable and discardable. We have not understood the
importance of places to other cultures, invading and transforming
the spaces of their inhabitation for our purposes. And yet, even with
the place-resistant worlds of modernity—cities, suburbs, malls, agri-
businesses—we still experience the condition of humans working to
make a place for themselves on the earth, transforming specific lo-
calities into particular, inhabited regions in which to live, work, and
play. Furthermore, we do this not only as individuals, but as groups
of people. In other words, placemaking is not just about the rela-
tionship of people to their places; it also creates relationships among
people in places: “The power a place such as a mere room possesses
determines not only where I am in the limited sense of cartographic
location but how I am together with others (i.e., how I commingle
and communicate with them) and even who we shall become to-
gether . . . implacement is as social as it is personal.”23
Conceptualizing placemaking as an activity beyond, but not
exclusive of, the expert cultures in architecture allows us to identify
common aims with a larger public to which architecture and other
expert cultures related to building must account. Placemakers,
whether professional architects, neighbors trying to control traffic
on their street, or indigenous farmers planting a new field, construct
collective aims that are relational, situational, and inclusive. A re-
located architecture becomes a part of a larger practice of place. It
enables the communal practice of creating beloved places that also
enrich the basis for knowledge and our ability to situate knowledge
in place while opening spaces for multiple and contested meanings.
Stated simply, architecture seen as a larger cultural enterprise
implaces the expertise of the design culture, the architecture profes-
sion culture, and the culture of design-related professions within a
composite culture of placemaking.24 In this larger context, design,
practice, and allied professional standing in the production of places
133
are subservient to those processes that enable loving and sustainable
relationships among people and between people and the places they
inhabit. As Mitang proposed, a resituated practice of architecture
would lead “the profession to a future of greater relevance and responsi-
bility,” a goal to which many in the profession and discipline aspire.25
Part Two: Challenges to Knowledge(s) and Practice
A class of experts is inevitably so removed from common interests as to
become a class with private interests and private knowledge, which in
social matters is not knowledge at all.26
—John Dewey
The common implacement of architecture within the paradigm of
expert culture is a modern practice even though architecture itself
is very old and has contributed to the making of the world for cen-
turies. Nevertheless, the production of most of the built world has
been (and continues to be) the work of nonarchitects constructing
their everyday lives. In this sense, architecture can be construed to
be a part of the already existing practice of placemaking, even while
claims to expertise have tried to differentiate it from the common
activity of making and maintaining the world. Our proposal that
the architectural enterprise be resituated within placemaking should
not be construed to mean that our culture doesn’t need architects.
On the contrary, the design and construction of contemporary
buildings, and the preservation of our historic stock of buildings are
extremely complex tasks. The artistic, technical, and integrative
skills of architects are far more necessary than ever before in history.
Even so, we take the normative position that the making of
the world is a practice to be shared with many people within and
outside the expert culture. We acknowledge that the implacement
of the professional expert-based practice of architecture within
placemaking leaves the profession and its related disciplines in a
rather unbounded and unsettled place, one that can perhaps be best
understood from a postmodern position of multiple and even con-
trad ictory position s. From this perspectiv e we can value
architecture’s unique contribution to the making and conserving of
the world and allow that this very contribution constitutes a form
of disablement for others. The ability to embrace contradictory per-
spectives uncouples the exploration of architecture from a modern-
ist either/or position, freeing us to think about how one practice can
embrace multiple conceptualizations. 27
Placemaking locates and names a new site for our collective
work that addresses many of the critiques of expert culture. But it
Schneekloth and Shibley
does leave us with a number of dilemmas. We would like to briefly
discuss two: knowledge and practice. If we move beyond expert cul-
ture we are, in fact, questioning the nature of knowledge—who
knows and how this knowledge is engaged. Second, there is the
question of how one manages to actually do work beyond expert
culture and the risks and rewards of such work.
Knowledge(s)
All practices and professions share aims and methods of work that
frame who can practice, what constitutes legitimate knowledge, and
how this knowledge is used. During the modern project, profession-
als constituted a class of people charged with “applying” their
knowledge generated in domains outside the place at hand on “the
people” of given places. Their expert knowledge was seen as supe-
rior and given power over local decision processes, reducing the
democratic capacity of local populations. We don’t need to look any
further than our own design-related professions to critique the ap-
plication of expert knowledge and what it has done to people-in-
places. Urban renewal’s forcible displacement of many poor
communities and the ascendency of automobiles, highways, and
suburbs with the demise of public transportation are just two prac-
tices in which architects have been involved.
Unlike the fields of law and medicine, the period of moder-
nity was a difficult time for architecture in the sense that we had no
bounded scientific or analytical world from which to draw the
knowledge to be applied. Architects have always freely borrowed,
employed, exploited, and situated whatever forms of knowledge and
practices they needed because the making of the world has always
required a catholic engagement in many fields: engineering, social
sciences, physics, art, and so on. In a sense, much of our knowing
resides in the spaces created among all these worlds. This borrow-
ing and integration is a part of the synthetic mix of knowledges re-
quired to make a building, to make places. The lack of a single
source of basic knowledge didn’t constrain professional work in the
world; it did, however, create a somewhat uneasy place for architec-
ture in the modern university and raised questions of its legitimacy
and value to society in general.28
The philosophies of postmodernism have created a new vali-
dation of architecture as both a discipline and a practice. The con-
dition of multiple knowledges that serves as a foundation for
architecture has been affirmed through the deconstruction of posi-
tivism; science is no longer an objective generator and arbitrator of
truth. Even though the kind of knowledge generated through the
methods and theories of science may be “better” than other
knowledges in some circumstances, they can be decidedly worse in
February 2000 JAE 53/3
others. Science is, like architecture, a practice embedded in social
and political realities that include/exclude knowledges—their cre-
ation, interpretation, transformation, and refutation.
The perspective of multiple knowledges has been liberating
for architecture. Borrowed knowledge and methods now have
standing and there is legitimization of such a practice; architects no
longer need to couch their work either in the discourse of science
or art. This process has brought energy and innovation to the ar-
chitectural enterprise, infusing the design culture in particular with
exciting new formal operations that can, legitimately, be drawn
from anywhere, including popular culture, literary texts, philoso-
phy, historical reference, and so on. It has led those more concerned
with ideas of practice—of making places—to consider techniques,
forms of participation, and ways of gathering significant insights
from users. For the most part, however, this postmodern standpoint
has not been carried far enough. We have not seriously questioned
the paradigm of expert culture in any significant way within the
architectural profession or the academy, nor have we been willing
to challenge and/or expand the idea of what constitutes knowledge
and its relationship to power.
How might a postmodern reconceptualization of knowledge,
a position we have readily adopted, challenge the paradigm of ex-
pert cultures? We suggest there are several kinds of knowledges such
as place knowledge, local knowledge, and situated knowledge that
would inform a relocated practice of architecture and supplement
what we loosely agree is architectural knowledge.
Place Knowledge Architects have always known that part of the
“body of knowledge” required in learning and practicing architec-
ture is embedded in the physical world. Our use of precedent is one
manifestation of that understanding; the historic preservation
movement is another. What postmodern theories of knowledge
have done is to recognize that the physical world is a form of knowl-
edge; buildings and places embody the accumulation of a culture’s
aspiration and learning. Material knowledge is legitimate. Again,
this is one of the ways in which the radical rethinking of positivism
has bolstered architecture. Donna Haraway goes so far as to give
subject status to the material world, extending the significance of
architecture’s necessary engagement of materiality: “I insist that so-
cial relationships include nonhumans as well as humans as socially . . .
active partners. All that is unhuman is not un-kind, outside kinship,
outside the orders of signification, excluded from trading in signs
and wonders.”29
Even though architectural knowledge includes notions of
place and material conditions, such standing has often resided in an
134
elitist conceptualization of buildings and places, evident in the type
of architectural history taught and precedents used. As a discipline
we have often denied the knowledge of common, everyday places—
notwithstanding Venturi and colleagues’ reading of the landscape
of popular culture in Learning from Las Vegas and explorations and
writings on Disneyland by scholars such as Michael Sorkin. 30 As an
academic discipline and profession, we have been enormously selec-
tive. Practice in everyday places, whether in decaying cities, aca-
demic exercises, or suburban development, most often disregards
the land, historic fabrics, and local histories. 31 Physical, material
knowledge brings another voice to the table during any architec-
tural intervention, a chorus of bricks and stones, remembered
spaces, and stories of untold lives.
Local Knowledge This term refers to the knowledges that people-
in-place have of their own lives and their own places. It is particular
and specific, and it relies on the experience of place. It is the knowl-
edge of the native, an historically silenced voice in western modern
culture: “A native is a man [sic] or creature or plant indigenous to a
limited geographical area . . . Native intelligence develops through
an unspoken or soft-spoken relationship with these interwoven
things: it evolves as the native involves himself in his region. A non-
native awakes in the morning in a body in a bed in a room in a build-
ing on a street in a country in a state in a nation. A native awakes in
the center of a little cosmos—or a big one, if his intelligence is vast—
and he wears this cosmos like a robe, senses the barely perceptible
shiftings, migrations, moods and machinations of its creatures, its
growing green things, its earth and sky.”32
Local knowledge is implaced and makes and inhabits places
even in modern cultures. Although it may be an insufficient base
upon which to construct all the kinds of architecture required in
today’s complex world, it nevertheless is the type of knowledge that
will know if a construction proposal is appropriate, if it contributes
to querencia, or if it challenges power structures for either liberatory
or repressive ends.
Local knowledges and expert knowledges are always present in
each act of construction. Yet there is often a presumed superiority
of objective, expert standpoint over subjective, native conceptions of
knowledge, of the primacy of talent over low skill levels, and of the
desirability of impartial over partial stances to decision-making. The
privileging of so-called objective knowing over subjective knowing
renders the person holding the subjective standpoint ignorant, or
worse, useless, in decision-making over the circumstances of their
own lives. Giving primacy to talent over low skill levels denies build-
ing skill levels and the potential for self-determination in the gen-
135
eral publics we would serve. As Dewey says, impartial knowledge is
no knowledge at all without reference to the always partia l
knowledges that are deeply rooted in local social and political cir-
cumstances negotiated over decades. One can also argue that impar-
tiality even in expert scientific cultures is a myth, that even science
is deeply imbedded in social and political relationships. 33
If we can no longer assume that a specific and rationalized
version of knowledge is privileged, we are left with a sense that
knowledge from everyone from everywhere is equal. We are con-
fronted with the confounding situation of total relativism, making
it almost impossible to take action. If we disregard the previously
accepted rules of evidence that have given precedent to some forms
of knowledge over others, we must accept the premise that all par-
ticipants have legitimate claims to knowledge construction. Objec-
tive and subjective languages generated from the professional
discourses of science and art are displaced from their hierarchical
position to be placed beside local knowledge.
The uneasy and relativistic ground of knowledge in the
postmodern world is somewhat steadied when we remember that
the dualism, objectivity and subjectivity, is part of the legacy of mo-
dernity. The dualisms that divide and privilege objective over sub-
jective, talent over low skill levels, and impartial over partial
ultimately represent false choices. We can shift to a modern/
postmodern border space because postmodern knowledges make
room for many ways of knowing and are robust enough to include
the modern. This is a difficult concept to embrace for many edu-
cated into modern conceptualizations of knowledge because it
forces us to venture into the territory of borders to be located within
more than one discourse. Haraway writes about this struggle:
“I think my problem, ‘our’ problem, is how to have simulta-
neously an account of radical historical contingency of all knowl-
edge claims and knowing subjects, a critical practice for recognizing
our own ‘semiotic technologies’ for making meaning, and a no-
nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a ‘real’ world, one
that can be partially shared and that is friendly to earthwide projects
of finite freedoms, adequate material abundance, modest meaning
in suffering, and limited happiness.”34
Postmodern scholars such as Haraway call for situated and
embodied knowledges that recognize the partial vision of everyone’s
seeing and knowing, that is, to be from somewhere.35 All people
speak from a place—from local knowledge, from past experience,
from education, from professional positions. If during the process
of making places we bring each other’s knowledges into the conver-
sation and put value on each other’s legitimate voices and stand-
points, we construct new knowledge and shared meaning that
Schneekloth and Shibley
recognize the inherent contributions and limitations of each.
Clifford Geertz describes what he calls crafts of place, practices like
“sailing, gardening, politics, and poetry” to which he then adds the
practice of law and ethnography. Greetz believes these practices are
generated by local knowledge.36 Architecture is also a craft of place,
even while it draws heavily on global historical, scientific, and ar-
tistic precedent; it can and should also be generated and supple-
mented by local knowledge.
Situated Knowledge Given a postmodern reworking of knowl-
edge, one must ask, what is the role for the specialized knowledges
of experts, of architectural knowledge? To repeat, we are not offer-
ing place knowledge and local knowledge as substitutes for profes-
sional knowledge gained through education and experience. As
Haraway argues above, postmodern practices endorse attempts to
be faithful to knowledges of the world gained through scientific and
professional methodologies, but these knowledges need to be
implaced and situated within meaningful contexts. “If we recognize
that all knowing represents the truths of particular people, all with
limitations, then the work of placemaking within the dialogic space
becomes interpreting, inventing, and constructing relationships
among kinds of knowledges.”37
A placemaking practice suggests that all participants in any
construction event come together with their respective knowledges,
and collaboratively construct a world through confirming and inter-
rogating each other’s experiences. It is within this newly made and
imaginatively constructed space—a dialogic space—that proposals
for making and unmaking occur. Placemaking interventions are de-
veloped from a joint understanding of what is at stake, recognizing
what benefits will accrue to whom, and what will be lost. In this
collaboratively constructed space, knowledges of the professional, the
place, and the local people are shared, disputed, negotiated, and con-
sidered. Architects have much to contribute to the dialogue.
We offer this conceptualization of architecture not because it
is so unique. In fact, it is practiced by many professionals. It is not,
however, valued or celebrated. We lack a validation of this transla-
tion and situating work as an integral part of practice, as central to
the enterprise of cultural production through the practice of archi-
tecture. Professionals talk of engaging clients, developing programs,
user needs, and so on. There is, however, a critical difference be-
tween engaging the client and our proposal for placemaking. The
common practice takes client experiences and parameters, removes
them from their situated place, and brings them into the hierarchi-
cal world of expert cultures. Placemaking instead brings the expert
culture to the place and makes its knowledges and methods vulner-
February 2000 JAE 53/3
able to the influence of the specific circumstances of place and place
constituents. We are calling for a process that neither colonizes lo-
cal knowledges and places nor removes and appropriates them into
expert discourses. Rather, placemaking makes expert culture porous
and infuses it with the experiences, hopes, dreams, and struggles of
places and local placemakers.
A Vulnerable Practice of Architecture
The boundary conditions we have set as professions outline who is
legally responsible for what aspects of making the world. Indeed, we
have legal battles with allied professionals over which services fall
into what domains and whose knowledge is most appropriate. The
aspiration for professional boundaries reflects the political and eco-
nomic context of professionalism. These conditions exist and must
be respected even if the argument can be made that these very
boundaries, created in the name of legal accountability and the pro-
vision of better services to clients, often result in the conditions that
hinder the complex work of placemaking.
As we all know, worldmaking in discrete projects and places
does not usually divide easily into the professional puzzle. Collabo-
rating with other professional domains is now considered standard
practice. This collaboration expands the range of expert knowledge
available on each project and often includes “participation consult-
ants” who work to bring “lay knowledges” into the discussion.
When these collaborations work well it is often because profession-
als have decided to make their knowledges vulnerable to each other,
creating a dialogic space within expert culture. 38 These acts of
placemaking permit architects to be more responsible to their cli-
ents by providing more thorough and comprehensive placemaking.
Yet these practices don’t challenge expert culture, they simply ex-
pand the number of experts. Ironically, this condition often results
in a situation where there are so many professional knowledges that
the people-in-place have virtually no space in which to speak.
Moving beyond expert culture requires architects to care as
much about the process by which places are made (the means) as they
do about the product that emerges as a result of that collaboration
(the ends). This refocus opens new professional risks for an archi-
tect who attempts to step beyond expert culture into a practice of
placemaking. In order to make space for multiple knowledges,
placemaking requires collaboratively open processes. This does not
imply that everybody makes decisions about everything; there is al-
ways an act of inclusion and exclusion in making places.39 However,
the engagement in collaborative processes requires that everyone
make their beliefs and knowledges vulnerable, including profes-
sional architects. Inherent in any collaborative process is a willing-
136
ness to risk one’s own worldview and knowledge in exchange for the
ability to see the world a different way. In the process of
placemaking there is no assurance that the expert knowledge, that
is knowledge conceived outside of this context, will be accepted as
most appropriate for guiding action. In a collaborative process pro-
fessionals are literally “out-of-control” by being open to meanings
and knowledges they don’t control; it means that they have to trust
the means by which such places are created rather than relying solely
on expert education, talent, and experience.
Can competent professionals remain vulnerable and still
achieve the consistency of service to the public demanded by their
respective disciplines? What happens when others in a placemaking
event refuse to be vulnerable and does that make the architect look
foolish and incompetent? Can responsible people collaborate with
irresponsible people? These are real and very difficult questions.
Easy answers trivialize the complexity of working in the messy
world of multiple knowledges beyond expert culture.
Perhaps the only way to address these questions is to pose
them in terms of ends and means. We have suggested that the goal
of placemaking is to work with others in the transformation or con-
firmation of their daily lives to make beloved places, and that the
means is to engage in collaborative processes. If we accept this goal
and this means, then a vulnerable stance is professionally and per-
sonally responsible. This does not ensure that mistakes in judgment
will not be made, but it does mean that these errors will be rede-
fined and resituated. If the process by which we make, manage,
evaluate, and maintain places over time is rooted in positive regard
for all participants including place and self, then the process will
be healing and self-correcting . This is certainl y a new
conceptualization of professional effectiveness.
Yet we would be remiss to suggest that this process is always
appropriate; there are situations in which an expert opinion is an
appropriate response. Furthermore, you cannot require people to be
collaborative and vulnerable, and there are circumstances in which
making oneself and expert knowledges vulnerable is personally and
professionally destructive. One can imagine a situation in which an
architect must either make claims for knowledge superiority or walk
away. You would never, for example, let people make decisions that
would harm them. But these types of situations are more likely op-
portunities for learning than either/or confrontations. There are
times in which the dialogic space collapses because someone refuses
to continue to participate in spite of aspirations for collaboration. In
these situations an architect may simply have to retreat to “expert
culture” and provide professional services as required. But this can
be a tentative act and the space for collaboration left open. In any
137
event, if the limits of tolerance are reached, then we must acknowl-
edge the tension between understanding that there are limits and
understanding the necessity of unrestrained vulnerability. 40 Given
this knowledge and no clear guidelines, it may be better to embrace
the tension as a dynamic condition than to try to resolve it.
Placemaking as a resituated professional practice makes room
for uncertainties by trusting in the possibility of beloved places and
processes that include forgiveness and healing.41 These words feel
“out-of-place” in a professional discourse; their vulnerability reveals
the profound implication of an architectural practice implaced in
placemaking. To live in the borders beyond expert culture forces us
to rethink the holy ground and priesthood described by Vitruvius,
to reevaluate the secluded home of expert culture. It challenges our
notions of specialized and privileged knowledge and forces us to
practice in a manner that denies our cloak of invulnerability. It also
makes possible a renewed and more relevant practice that has the
potential to make meaningful places in a beautiful way.
Placemaking as a Democratic Project
This is my faith; consider it only a possibility.42
—Xenophanes
In this article we have developed the argument that one way for ar-
chitecture to move beyond expert culture is to implace it within the
larger cultural practice of placemaking. We subsequently discussed
some of the risks and rewards of such a move. These thoughts are
offered in support of the proposal that architecture seek a “future
of greater relevance and responsibility” by exploring how places,
and the practices by which we make them, might contribute to
larger social and cultural discourses.
Architects have the opportunity to help frame a cultural cri-
tique regarding the importance and meaning of place as a home for
human dwelling, countering the cultural yearning to run off to the
various frontiers of the new urbanism, the night, virtual reality, and
so on.43 The story of progress, or the “greener grass,” is part of the
modern project and it has come with great cost to our culture’s abil-
ity to take care of its places. One might suggest that the shifting
ground of postmodernity does not contribute to this discussion
because it would deny home as totalizing. We argue, however, that
a postmodern sensibility, always open to the uncertainty of mean-
ing, requires only that we chose the position from which we speak.
To date, the profession of architecture has, to a large degree, con-
tributed to an ageographic perspective because we have not valued
Schneekloth and Shibley
place as it might contribute to our culture’s dwelling. As a practice,
architecture has been fascinated with conceptions of space at the
expense of place, believing in modernist notions of the universal; we
have transferred our knowledge and formulas for buildings every-
where and for all people, regardless of differences among particular
places, local cultures, and specific daily practices. We have selec-
tively attended to discrete places and buildings at the expense of the
fabric of everyday life.44 To expand the complexity of our collective
practice into the domain of placemaking opens new arenas for re-
sponsible activity.
Another way that placemaking might contribute to a larger
cultural enterprise resides in the collaborative process by which places
can be made. If we open the dialogue in each placemaking activity
to multiple and contradictory knowledges, we are truly engaged in
democratic action. This activity constructs a public space, that is, “a
concrete set of learning conditions where people come together to
speak, to dialogue, to share their stories, to struggle together within
social relationships that strengthen rather than weaken the possibil-
ity for active citizenship.”45 Although we hear much about civil soci-
ety and democracy, we live in a media-saturated world in which there
are few public spaces remaining and where there is little opportunity
to learn how to be a citizen. Without the opportunities to engage in
complex and conflictual contexts, how does one learn citizenship and
agency? How do people learn to engage in community action and
develop communal goals? Democracy is a complex and fragile activ-
ity that, like architecture, must be practiced to be learned. If we wish
to move beyond the privatized conceptualization of citizen as voter
and consumer, we require sites for the practice of citizenship.
Placemaking can be such a public space.
The proposition that placemaking can contribute to a demo-
cratic project removes architecture even further from a technical
professional field into the discourse of power. But then, it has al-
ways been there. Power is central not only to the discourse of de-
mocracy, but to the conditio n of expert culture and
professionalism.46 Experts’ discourses are vested in a closed system
of power and privilege. Collaboration, an open, inclusive, and con-
flicted process, also resides within the discourse of power, but in-
sists that power is shared. Within the oppositional discourse of
modernism, sharing is a scary proposition because the dualism pro-
poses that either “I” have power or “you” do. But if we move into a
postmodern discussion, the concept of power quickly fractures into
multiple modes: power over, power to control, power with, power
for, power to act, and power to share, that is, to empower: “Power
is not only understood as something groups or individuals have;
rather, it is a social relationship between groups that determines
February 2000 JAE 53/3
access to, use of, and control over the basic material and ideologi-
cal resources in society. Fundamentally, then, empowerment is a
process aimed at consolidating, maintaining, or changing the nature
and distribution of power in a particular cultural context.” 47
The aspiration to distribute power through the practice of
placemaking, that is, to work toward a more just society, belongs to
the modern project, one that is critically deconstructed in many
postmodern texts. Even as we accept the critique that any stand-
point, even justice or democracy, is totalizing if it is not vulnerable
to negotiated and constructed meanings, we nevertheless return to
the proposition that it is possible to embrace this modern/
postmodern tension. Within the multiple and contradictory stances
of border spaces, we can both accept and challenge modernist
projects such as economic and social justice. Collaborative processes
and postmodern conceptualizations of multip le and partia l
knowledges establish a condition wherein meaning is never fixed.
And yet, all of our actions in a practice of placemaking have ethical
consequences and we do, always, choose standpoints. Within this
indeterminate, tentative, and communally constructed space, the
question remains—where do we stand: “The point is to make a dif-
ference in the world, to cast our lot for some ways of life and not
others. To do that, one must be in the action, be finite and dirty, not
transcendent and clean. Knowledge-making technologies, including
crafting subject positions and ways of inhabiting such positions,
must be made relentlessly visible and open to critical intervention.” 48
A practice of architecture implaced within the domain of
placemaking is a move beyond expert culture that does not deny the
place of expert knowledges and knowers. It is based on a belief that
people are always engaged in placemaking whether the place of cul-
tural and material construction is an idea as comprehensive as the
planet Earth or as discrete as a farmstead or urban street. We believe
that professionals can, through a space for dialogue, contribute to
the cultural production of beloved places and meaningful ways of
working. A resituated project of placemaking would make of archi-
tecture a more relevant and responsible practice through a renewed
focus on places as locations for dwelling and through collaborative
placemaking processes as sites for democratic action.
Notes
1. Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New
York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1966), p. 22.
2. Lee D. Mitang, “Saving the Soul of Architectural Education: Four Criti-
cal Challenges Face Today’s Architecture Schools,” quoted in Joseph Press “Soul-
Searching: Reflections from the Ivory Tower,” JAE 51/4 (May 98): p. 233.
138
 3. Ernest L. Boyer and Lee D. Mitgang, Building Community: A New Fu-
ture for Architecture Education and Practice (Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Founda-
tion for the Advancement of Teaching, 1996), p. xvi.
4. Lynda H. Schneekloth and Robert G. Shibley, Placemaking: The Art and
Practice of Building Communities (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1995).
5. We use the word, dwelling, relationally, to denote people-in-place. The
term is used extensively by phenomenologists such as M. Heidegger, Poetry, Lan-
guage, Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1971); E. Casey, The Fate of Place: A
Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); and R.
Mugerauer, Interpretations on Behalf of Place (New York: State University of New
York Press, 1994).
6. I. Illich, I. K. Zola, J. McKnight, J. Caplan, and H. Shaiken, Disabling
Professions (Boston: Marion Boyars, 1977).
7. Schneekloth and Shibley, Placemaking, p. 2.
8. Henry A. Giroux, “Border Pedagogy and the Politics of Modernism/
Postmodernisn,” JAE 44/2 (Feb. 1991): p. 72.
9. Henry A. Giroux and R. Simon, “Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of
Popular Culture,” Cultural Studies 2 (1988): 294–320.
10. See Henry A. Giroux, Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life (Minne-
apolis: MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1988); Henry A. Giroux, Disturbing
Pleasure: Learning Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994); Pablo Freire, Peda-
gogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, [1970]1988); and Pablo Freire, Edu-
cation for Critical Consciousness (New York: Continuum [1973] 1987) for a broader
discussion of critical pedagogy and its potential contributions to cultural production.
11. Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, Morris Hicky Morgan, trans.
(New York: Dover Publications, 1960), p. 10.
12. Thomas Vonier, ed., In Search of Design Excellence (Washington, DC:
The American Institute of Architects Services Press, 1989); Dana Cuff, Architecture:
The Story of Practice (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991); Robert Gutman, Architectural
Practice: A Critical View (New Jersey: Princeton Architectural Press, 1988); Tho-
mas A. Dutton and Lian Hurst Mann, eds., Reconstructing Architecture: Critical
Discourses and Social Practices (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press,
1996); Diane Ghirado, ed., Out of Site: A Social Criticism of Architecture (Seattle,
WA: Bay Press, 1991).
13. Darrell Crilley, quoted in Thomas A. Dutton, “Cultural Studies and
Critical Pedagogy: Cultural Pedagogy and Architecture,” in Thomas A. Dutton and
Lian Hurst Mann, eds., Reconstructing Architecture, p. 193.
14. See Chris Argyris and Donald Schon, Theory in Practice: Increasing Pro-
fessional Effectiveness (San Fransisco: Josey-Bass, 1974) for a discussion of espoused
theory and theory-in-use.
15. Those of us who teach in schools of architecture know that if there is
something we want students to learn and internalize, it must be taught as part of
the design studio. Values are conveyed through studio projects and expert/faculty
critiques of work.
16. See Cuff, Architecture: The Story of Practice, for a discussion of how the
socialization of the architect in studio “appears to sacrifice public responsiveness for
intraprofessional strength” (p. 122) and the full text for a more extensive discus-
sion of the strength of the design culture in the academy, professional practice, and
organizations that govern the profession. See also Judith Blau, Architects and Firms:
A Sociological Perspective on Architectural Practice (Cambridge, MA MIT Press,
1984) in which she describes design as a “master value” that is set apart from the
full spectrum of issues to be addressed in building.
17. Boyer and Mitgang, Building Community, p. xv.
18. Boyer and Mitgang, Building Community, p. 3.
139
19. Barry Lopez, “The Rediscovery of North America,” The Amicus Journal,
fall 1991, p. 15. Querencia comes from querer, meaning to desire, to wish, and to
love. Specifically, the word refers to the spot where the bull retreats during a bull-
fight, implying that although this space gives strength, it also contains challenge and
sometimes threat.
20. Schneekloth and Shibley, Placemaking, p. 1.
21. Heidegger speaks to the activity of place “Bauen, however, also means
at the same time to cherish and protect, to preserve and care for” although he does
not address the conflicted and contested nature of meanings and standings.
Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 47.
22. Casey, The Fate of Place.
23. Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understand-
ing of the Place-World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), p. 23.
24. The aims of placemaking do not stand independent from how they are
achieved. A process that attempts to impose a beloved space does so by rendering
the place as a commodity to be consumed or rejected as, for example, an object of
art. Art can be “beloved,” but the maker has a fundamentally different relationship
to it than the collector or spectator. Just so, a consumer of space is in a fundamen-
tally different relationship to space made than a community of placemakers to their
beloved place. The expert design of spaces that proceeds independently of larger
public aspirations for place can preclude fundamental democratic access to the con-
ditions affecting the ability to live life well.
25. Mitang, p. 233.
26. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Chicago: Swallow Press,
1927), p. 207.
27. This position of postmodernity does not require us to discard moder-
nity and its gifts. Accepting Giroux’s “border pedagogy” conception enables archi-
tectural knowledges to be part of a larger dialogue across modern and postmodern
paradigms. Architecture becomes part of a complex matrix blending modern con-
ceptions of politics, aesthetics, and science with postmodern sensibilities in the same
arenas. The only imperative is to address the resultant uncertainty of meaning in
dialogue in the course of each act of placemaking.
28. Sir John Summerson’s essay on “The Mischievous Analogy” speaks of
the modern architect as being “obsessed by a sense of inadequacy.” He traces this
back to a painful acknowledgment that architecture has been about “copying” and
to the rise of engineering. “On the one hand, the architect is beginning to feel that
more is expected of his [sic] works than nice definitions of the relation between
building and life; on the other hand, he dreads relaxing into the old self, that first
personality—the man concentrating on ART at the drawing board.” Sir John
Summerson, Heavenly Mansions and Other Essays on Architecture (New York: W.W.
Norton and Co., 1963), p. 201.
29. Donna J. Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium (New York:
Routledge, 1977), p. 8. See also the writings of James Hillman, The Blue Fire (New
York: Harper Perennial, 1989), particularly Chapters 5 through 8 and Robert
Sardello, Facing the World with Soul (New York: Harper Perennial, 1994).
30. See Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning
From Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1986) and Michael Sorkin, ed., Variation on the Theme Park (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1992).
31. See, however, Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscape as
Public History (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995) and Randolph T. Hester, Jr.,
“Sacred Structures and Everyday Life: A Return to Manteo, North Carolina,” in
David Seamon, ed., Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing (Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press, 1993).
Schneekloth and Shibley
 32 David James Duncan, Orion 15(3) (summer 1996): back cover.
33. Haraway, 1977; Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?
Thinking from Women’s Lives (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); David
Griffin, ed., The Reenchantment of Science (New York: State University of New York
Press, 1988).
34. Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in
Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspectives,” Feminist Studies 14/3 (1988):
579.
35. Lynda H. Schneekloth, “Partial Utopian Visions: Feminist Reflections
on the Field,” in I. Altman and A. Churchman, Women and the Environment (New
York: Plenum Press, 1994).
36. Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthro-
pology (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 167.
37. Schneekloth and Shibley, Placemaking, p. 199.
38. For examples of professional dialogue in public spaces, review the Rudy
Bruner Award for Excellence in the Urban Environment case histories on Boston’s
Southwest Corridor project or the rebirth of Portland Oregon, starting from the
1970s downtown planning. For example, we find engineering decisions on topics
as technically oriented as slurry wall versus other modes of construction were de-
bated in public forums and related to local knowledge and values associated with
the tolerance for construction disruptions, the economic tradeoffs, and the required
political constituencies to acquire additional resources based on local values. In
Portland, a citizen’s advisory committee worked the better part of two decades pro-
viding continuity through several political transitions, always balancing the latest
expert view of truth and propriety with broader values and knowledges embedded
in the city and its populations. See P. Langdon with R. Shibley and P. Welch, Ur-
ban Excellence (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990). See also N. Peirce and
R. Guskind, Breakthroughs: Re-creating the American City (New Brunswick, NJ:
Center for Urban Policy Research and The Bruner Foundation, 1993).
39. Schneekloth and Shibley, Placemaking. See particularly Chapter 1.
40. Jack Gibb argues persuasively that there is no real communication with-
out unrestrained vulnerability. If someone is holding “a big stick” and talks the talk
of vulnerability it will be read as a lie and the communication will be significantly
distorted. J. Gibb, “Climate for Trust Formation,” in L. P. Bradford, J. R. Gibb,
February 2000 JAE 53/3 140
and K. D. Benne, eds., T-Group Theory and Laboratory Method (New York: John
Wiley and Sons, 1964). See also Habermas on distorted communication. J.
Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, T. McCarthy, trans. (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1984).
41. [b]ell hooks argues further that to move beyond any discourse of domi-
nation—and expert cultures are a form of domination—we must engage in the
practice of love. “Without love, our efforts to liberate ourselves and our world com-
munity from oppression and exploitation are doomed” (hooks, 243). She does not
mean “love” in a romantic sense; rather, she suggests that love is an act of will, a
decision to give subject standing to others, acknowledging not only their similarity
to ourselves, but also our differences, even when painful. See bell hooks, “Love as
the Practice of Freedom,” Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (New York:
Routledge, 1992).
42. Xenophanes, Fragment 16, sixth century B .C. in John Friedmann, The
Good Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979), p. 110.
43. For a discussion of the frontier as home, see Lynda H. Schneekloth,
“The Frontier Is Our Home,” in JAE 49/4 (May 1996): 210–225.
44. For an insightful reading of this phenomena see Michael Sorkin, ed.,
1992. See also Shibley’s critique of the New Urbanism as an example of “placeless”
architecture in “The Complete New Urbanism and the Partial Practices of
Placemaking,” in Utopian Studies 9/1 (1998): 80–102.
45. Giroux, Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life, p. 100.
46. Cornel West offers thoughts on the potential importance of architec-
tural criticism within the cultural debate of democracy and oppression—if critics
would only expand their critique beyond the narrow range of concerns currently
being debated. “The political legitimacy of architecture is not a question of whether
or why buildings should be made. Rather it has to do with how authority warrants
or does not warrant the way in which buildings are made.” Cornel West, “A Note
on Race and Architecture,” Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (New
York: Routledge, 1993), p. 45.
47. S. Morgan and A. Bookman, “Rethinking Women and Politics,” in A.
Bookman and S. Morgan, eds., Women and the Politics of Empowerment (Philadel-
phia, PA: Temple University Press, 1988), p. 4.
48. Haraway, 1997, p. 36.