Architecture: The Importance to Society

Spend some time observing how architecture reflects culture, and you’ll get the sense

that it’s less of a profession and more of a world-view, a lens with which to interpret all

of your surroundings. As such, it lends itself to so many visually creative mediums that

call for the conceptualizing of space—graphic design, video production, film, etc.

The inherently public nature of architecture means that the work architects do is akin to

sociology and psychology; setting the stage for social behaviors and interior reactions.

Who is encouraged to enter into a space or community, and who is dissuaded? How are

people made to feel in given context? Why does a prison feel different from a library?

And should it? The shape and function of public space is arrived at by political means,

so by extension, architects are de facto politicians.

Defining architecture only in terms of other professions does it a disservice, and there’s

a body of knowledge within architecture that’s separated from the practical concerns of

building, and it’s completely speculative, avant-garde, and radically critical of the way

the world works. Looking at the built world critically, instead of considering it a set of

established and ironclad traditions, reveals that architecture is an entirely synthetic,

human creation. It can take nearly any shape we want it to. Patterns we see everywhere

(like peaked roof connotations of home, or the majestic columns in an old bank) don’t

spring from definitive wisdom about how things should look, although their repetition

seems to hint at ultimate consensus. They’re actually the result of idiosyncratic

accumulations of cultural values, the materials available, economics, and geographic

location and climate. Most all of these factors are mutable, so while architecture evolves
slowly compared to other artistic mediums, it still evolves. Architecture is futurism, and

each time it offers a critique that suggests new ways to live, work, or play, it becomes a

feat of world-building that makes it hard to distinguish from science fiction.

And that’s quickly moving on from being a privilege to becoming mandatory, given that

buildings and the built environment are the single largest source of carbon emissions

driving catastrophic climate change. Climate change is a design problem, and

any Green New Deal meant to tackle it will need legions of architects to take up the

cause. This will mean both increasing production of buildings that require little to no

fossil fuels to run, and dealing with the already swelling ramifications of not having done

so in the past, like continually flooded coastal cities and the constant siege of

hurricanes. And culturally, the new political and economic structures required to

organize these revolutionary reforms will need expression in fresh architecture; another

revolution to be catalogued in built form. Architecture is inherently interested in the

future, and architects are trained to envision the world not as it is, but as it could be.