A critique of the new ‘social architecture’ debate

In recent years, a new ‘social architecture’ debate has emerged within the discipline of architecture. This debate is based on proclamations of a crisis of architecture and design. It calls on architects to adopt a more ‘people-centred’ approach and give up their reliance on an ever more exclusive market. The debate is founded on a range of selected architectural projects, which are thought to epitomise this new social architecture: improving the living conditions of marginalised parts of the population all around the world. In this paper, we critique some of the claims of the social architecture debate by bringing them into dialogue with different fields of literature from urban and planning studies and also from within architecture. Firstly, we examine the founding idea of the debate that small interventions can have wider social effects; secondly, we analyse how the debate establishes its claims to a global scope; thirdly, we explore the central role aesthetics plays in the debate. Our aim is to not only reveal some of the shortcomings of the social architecture debate, but to indicate directions of how it could be developed further in a more reflective manner, for instance, in giving up the fixations on projects and on the power of architects to change the world.