For a Dialogical Architecture

This generation of young architects is facing an unprecedented number of crises in multiple spheres. From the economic (crushing student loan debt coupled with flat wage growth) to the environmental (inheriting a planet that has roughly 10 years to correct its current course towards inhabitability) to the social (stagnant change in level of diversity in the profession) to the technological (a complete inversion of the methods of drawing production within the past 15 years), no recent generation has encountered as much turbulence entering the profession of architecture. Look towards the public domain and one is sure to confront a way that architecture is likely complicit in, absent from, or ignorant to the problems facing it. Such is the nature of a discipline that affects nearly every person on the planet, daily. 

Though important to rally against these large, systemic problems, and scrutinize our role in them, the discipline of architecture should first examine itself, through a collective conversation, before confronting the many ills of contemporary society. A survey of those participating in architecture today will find agreement in the fact that the issues are many and complex, with as many hypothetical solutions to match; concurrently, there is a growing appetite for reexamination of our discipline in such turbulent times. However, any movement based on real social change will acknowledge that such change does not occur with those on top imposing ideas on those below (i.e. maintaining the status quo), but rather from collaboration with those affected by those very problems; in other words, the changes many of us are seeking for architecture must come from the bottom up. How can a discipline hope to address existential issues if it continues to perpetuate many of them itself?

Perhaps we should aspire to be more indifferent to buildings, and less so to architecture. Though the building is the last stage in the process of our labor, and the most visceral result of it, it is not the thing that we actually produce. This distinction is important because it identifies the inherent gap between the architect and the building; as such, we are not the ones making the building, eliciting an inherent alienation in the practice of architecture. Even so, many continue to only debate object-oriented design approaches, operating through what sociologist Tim Ingold refers to as the hylomorphic model of thinking. This fixation is understandable, as it is what many of us were taught, explicitly or implicitly: design first, no matter what. It is a proper foundation, and it is arguably important for the discipline to include some practitioners who value such principals above others. It is also important, though, to recognize that they continue to pursue things at the expense of the practice of architecture. Unfortunately, the focus of the discipline’s critical attention, scholarship, and precedents skews disproportionately in the hylomorphic direction, while neglecting the many other issues it also has influence over. Perhaps it is time for a redistribution of such critical attention.

The reality in practice is that for most firms, projects exists with, and because of, a team of individuals who are employed to help make these designs possible. Subsequently, a firm has a fixed amount of bandwidth, which can be used in the tantalizing pursuit of perfect design, or alternatively, can be allocated to address practice itself. Instead of paying interns, or at the very least paying their employees living wages with real benefits, or exploring ways to make their businesses more profitable so that they can do all of the above, many of today’s eminent practitioners instead leverage their workers to continue their self-fulfilling exploration of objects, which often knows no boundaries and perpetuates without any justification. These economic issues are indeed complex, wrapped up in larger structural problems of capital and policy . However, while it is easy to point towards larger systemic economic forces, many firms continue an obsessive, design-first approach, neglecting to start the conversation regarding how they can address economic concerns of their workers, an issue that is in fact entirely within their domain. If architecture firms were more desirable places of work, for example, with the compensation and benefits to match, in conjunction with realistic expectations of the discipline’s influence (and increased access to that influence), more individuals, from more varied backgrounds, would inevitably participate. Instead, the profession remains stagnant, recycling the same meritocratic tendencies.

Ultimately, the answer to creating better buildings, increasing economic value, and creating more inclusive practices doesn’t lie in debating the best approach to design, or how to categorize existing trends amongst the elite practitioners, or spending indefinite time on the “never finished” design process (an unfortunately common source of capital drain amongst architecture firms); at the very least, we have had plenty of this, and the results are grim. Rather, the discipline must be broadened, both in terms of its audience and its participants. One such expansive approach was developed by teacher and activist Paulo Freire, who spent his career advocating for an instructional method he referred to as the “dialogical model.” In his seminal text, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire argues that the oppressed poor, the focus of his life’s work, are never given an initial opportunity to assess their own situations in order to bring about change because of traditional power structures that are interested in maintaining such power through exploitation. 

Though architects are not an exploited class, at least in the terms that Freire uses, there is a strong hierarchical power structure embedded in the discipline. Much of this is derivative of the fact that the knowledge required to oversee the process of designing a building is complex, a mastery of which takes years (a trend which is only proliferating with technological developments). Expertise in this context is rightfully acknowledged and respected in such hierarchies, and it is crucial to the life of a practice. What is lacking, however, is the participation of younger architectural workers in the decisions that affect their daily being. Though they do not have the same knowledge as those in senior positions, workers' participation in the production process, the making of the actual thing that architects are responsible for, drawings, is undervalued.

Freire’s dialogical model is one defined primarily through dialogue, not imposition. Rather than impressing an understanding of reality from an authority above (what Freire refers to as the “banking model”), the dialogical model fosters the authoring of reality through conversation, which is defined by the very people speaking: 

“The students-no longer docile listeners-are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re-considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own. The role of the problem-posing educator is to create, together with the students..”

In other words, it is those conversing who define their problems and subsequent solutions. Once a dialogical model has been co-established, the participants will have the ability to see their situation in new terms, as Freiere notes:

“Whereas the banking model directly or indirectly reinforces [people’s] fatalistic perception of their situation, the problem-posing method presents this very situation to them as a problem. As the situation becomes the object of their cognition, the naive or magical perception which produced their fatalism gives way to perception which is able to perceive itself even as it perceives reality, and can thus be critically objective about their reality.”

Though developed in the context of education, the implications of the dialogical model carry through to other contexts in which structures of power, intentionally or not, stymie participation from those at the bottom, i.e. traditional workplaces comprised of workers and owners/managers.

Architecture’s first response to Paulo Freire’s dialogical model should first be to bring more people, from more diverse backgrounds and perspectives, into the discipline. According to NCARB’s latest reports on the state of the profession, “2 in 5 new architects are women and less than 1 in 5 indentify as a racial or ethinic minority.” Though the demographic numbers are slightly less depressing for those earlier in their careers, the numbers still reflect a high barrier of entry to licensure (both legalistically and economically), which, in our current system, is a prerequisite for positions of leadership and power. Even so, if more are included in the nascent stages of the discipline, there will at least exist greater potential for others to reach these positions of power, laying the groundwork for spaces of change. Conversely, if an intentional broadening of the discipline is not undertaken, the forces of meritocracy will continue to winnow the composition of the profession, reflecting only those of similar advantaged backgrounds and educations.

Second, workers should begin to understand their power in embracing a dialogical model in their workplaces. Though a less explicit solution, worker-generated conversation can lay the essential ground-work for broader, systemic changes, especially changes that are directly pertinent to their situations (i.e., self-authored). Such conversations might range from the informal, like the creation of intentional spaces outside of the bounds of work (happy-hours, summer Friday’s, etc.) to the formal, such as workers developing strategies to participate in structuring the office (defining the hours and compensation of their work). In the day-to-day grind of the office, it seems inevitable that there is little to no time to reconsider the nature of the work of architecture itself. However, an investment in time and space for the contemplation of the work can pay dividends, both in terms of the internal operations of the office, but also for the service that the office is providing. This self-reflection, critically important for any business and for architecture firms, will definitively result in a more holistic design process. In other words, content workers design better buildings. 

A third response, though more disruptive, and subsequently more potent, would be a broad shift to cooperative models of firm ownership. Some firms currently offer profit-sharing plans, an economic strategy that can encourage increased employee participation. While more financially generous, this sort of money-sharing encourages employees to work harder at their predefined tasks, but not to participate in decision making and practice building. In a cooperatively owned practice, rather than spending bandwidth to create space for a conversation with those in leadership, workers would by default have a seat at the table, providing an arena to, in Friere’s words, “author their reality.” This format also encourages participation from younger team members, many of whom would bring a welcome diversity in thinking to decision making. Though decision making would be shared, managers should not feel threatened; if anything, the distribution of responsibility would alleviate many of the burdensome decisions that must be made day-to-day, in addition to the production of new ideas otherwise not considered. In environments such as these, workers would feel unfettered in expressing their thoughts and opinions, joining managers in the authoring of the architecture of the office.

Until the profession of architecture fosters deeper engagement from those currently at the bottom of its ranks, the status quo will remain intact, further entrenching our inability to address the larger problems the profession is attempting to engage in. Though architecture is still an esteemed profession, one that provides a relatively fulfilling career, it is unfortunately a profession that is also increasingly out of reach for a larger number of people. Equally problematic is the trajectory of exclusion apparent in the demographic composition of licensed architects and managers, a course that is certain to perpetuate architecture’s inaccessibility to a broader public.  In order to see change now, the discipline cannot afford to wait for young workers to become licensed, or risk alienating a majority of the country’s most historically diverse generation. Because of the enormity of the problems our contemporary world faces, all voices need to be represented in the act of developing solutions; these problems are too complex and far reaching for the current minority to solve alone. In order for our discipline to fully participate in addressing these broader, systemic problems, we must begin by fostering an expansion of inclusiveness within our own ranks, defining our practices not through celebrity and hierarchy, but through people and collective engagement.