Training Architects as Activists: Social Sustainably in the Studio

Abstract

This paper discusses the application of social sustainability to architecture through a second-year graduate architecture studio focused on urban buildings. I designed the Urban Design Studio in such a way that future faculty could choose assignments between five socially sustainable equity issues: housing, food insecurity, transportation equity, access to opportunities, and environmental health. This supports the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) graduate curriculum by focusing on sustainable practices, including activism in architecture. Using the built environment as a platform, the students learn to promote equity, especially in the urban environment. The students research on equity topics, adopt a position on a selected issue, and begin to develop a site, program, and building form around their issue. Architecture has a unique ability to influence social sustainability through equity, especially if we shift our design practices to support disenfranchised populations. Buildings can provide more than social markers. They can create locations that empower local communities. The question is, how do we teach a process that instills this as foundational to quality design? My studio’s process not only establishes a foundational knowledge of building within an urban context, but also provides a firm grounding of activism as central to architectural practice.