Who do we create architecture for, and why?

Abstract

This chapter links current architectural thinking and practices to the Capitalocene’s extreme profit-seeking nature, causing the current societal and planetary crises. This has led to additional embodied injustices, such as the extraction and consumption of natural resources at an unprecedented scale, the exploitation and exclusion of people and other living forms, and damaging and polluting land, water, and air close by and far away. For centuries, the architecture produced in the Capitalocene has been a product of architects’ internal values that were both influenced but also endorsed by these exclusionary and exploitative norms, typically for the benefit of the few, not the many or nature. The current crises urgently question these normalised architectural values, practices and thinking. Instead of exploitative practices, we need restorative actions that embrace and integrate principles of radical inclusivity, biophilia, and topophilia into our architectural values, thinking, and design processes. How this might be done is illustrated through a case study that embraces empathy, inclusivity and solidarity with all living beings and nature.