A Manifesto on Housing
by Alice Armstrong, Meghan McAllister, Heather Dunbar, Ashton Hamm & Alodie Girmann for The Architecture Lobby - Bay Area Chapter
Editor’s Note: This week, members of the Architecture Lobby argue their fellow practitioners should more broadly reconceptualize their positions as workers and citizens while also taking pragmatic steps in the immediate to reduce their role in perpetuating gentrification. Their views echo critiques (such as those made by Catherine Bauer among others) of the limits of professionalization and the need for coalitional politics. Coming in two weeks: how the proliferation of nonprofit housing professionals and abdication of state housing production has limited the development of durable tenant power.
As architects we MUST:1
Advocate for housing as a human right.
Design housing for people over profits. Educate ourselves on the financial realities of our projects and continually advocate for the value of design.
Refuse projects that permanently displace existing residents. Educate ourselves and our clients on possibilities for strategic phasing, re-housing existing residents on site, or fair equivalent buy-outs.
Proactively engage, in earnest, with local community groups. Acknowledge the reality of gentrification and work with existing communities to mitigate its negative impacts
Prioritize housing people — count the number of people housed instead of only real estate units built. Acknowledge how the unit mix might impact future demographics.
Critically examine and challenge code minimums and standard unit sizes. Accommodate new modes of living and working, alternative family units, and diverse cultural practices.
Work with local community-based and community-invested partners when possible.
In mixed-income projects, maintain equitable design standards across all unit types, and provide equal access to all amenities and shared spaces.
Meet or exceed targets outlined in the Green New Deal for Public Housing for all housing projects. Use tools early in the design process to assess and minimize life cycle energy consumption. Design for resiliency in addition to efficiency.
Conduct post-occupancy analyses that include input from both residents and property managers to better understand how design impacts social, environmental, and economic outcomes.
Advance policies which aim to reverse the effects of racially discriminatory housing practices such as redlining.
Work to repair the problems of representation within our profession. This lack of diversity exacerbates the image of architects as gentrifiers, further alienating the communities we intend to serve.
If you find yourself in a practice which actively denies or defies these points - organize your fellow workers to demand change!
As Architects, we must advocate for housing as a human right. This shouldn’t be a controversial position, but over the past two years working and researching amidst the acute housing crisis in the Bay Area, we’ve found there to be much confusion - amongst the public and architects themselves - on the role of the architect in our current housing system.
Two recent experiences highlighted this confusion and the importance of clarifying our position. At a local architecture symposium on the housing crisis, a discussion about housing policy prompted a participant to comment: “This is not our role as architects. We should leave this up to the citizens.” We found this response wholly irresponsible. Are we, as architects, not also citizens? Do we not have a duty to be involved in housing policies that impact our work and our communities?
Given this lack of clarity within our own profession, it’s no wonder there is often an amplified misunderstanding of architects in the eyes of the public. Recently, one of our chapter members found her application to a local cooperative network to be controversial due to the perception of architects as drivers of gentrification. Despite our efforts to actively engage with local progressive groups, does the narrative of architecture as only for and by the wealthy always win? How do we better engage with local communities and dismantle our association with gentrification in both practice and perception?
We started writing this manifesto as a way to answer these questions while also affirming our own agency in the face of a housing crisis that often seems outside of our control. Yet we quickly realized that if we want to claim agency as architects, we must also recognize our role in perpetuating the current status quo.
Let’s be honest: architects and adjacent design professionals are largely complicit in systemic practices that limit equitable access to housing. We struggle to connect the dots between a flawed housing market and our own project outcomes. Increasingly, we see the role of architect reduced to that of a middleperson - a benign facilitator, relinquishing knowledge and control in an effort to mitigate professional risk or litigation. The pervasive sense of professional detachment seen at conferences, in architectural publications, and even in the academy is evidence of our tendency to deny the political reality of our work. But in doing so, we quickly lose relevance in the fight for equity in the built environment - or worse, gain infamy as agents of gentrification.
The perception of architects as gentrifiers may partially be a result of conflating the roles of architects and developers, but this doesn't mean architects are completely innocent. Although we are typically not involved in decisions such as financing, determining rents, or even project location, we do influence the design and many other aspects of a project. It is our drawings, or “instruments of service,” that ultimately perpetuate the status quo, translating financial decisions into real buildings.
If we presume to make a positive contribution to society - we must define immediately actionable ways in which architects can stop being complicit and start being proactive.
This requires an expanded vision of the role of the architect throughout all phases of housing development and construction. Rejecting the assumption of architects as detached professionals and agents of gentrification - we seek to redefine architects as workers, advocates, innovators, and--most importantly--citizens. Through these roles, we can broaden our understanding of both our agency and our responsibility to enact change in the conditions of housing production.
We first call on architects to identify themselves as workers - rather than as members of an insular professional class. Standing in solidarity with workers across industries allows us to relate to those we build for and those who build for us. As architectural workers, we can also organize amongst ourselves to establish more equitable practices both within our firms (point twelve) and in the work we do for clients (point thirteen).
Although architects often see themselves as only service providers beholden to their clients, this role can be expanded to hold more power than we typically recognize. We can also be advocates for those who may not get a seat at the development table. Through community engagement (point four), programming (point eight), goal-setting (point nine), and challenging code minimums (point six) we can serve our clients while also advocating for the local community. We don’t need to relinquish all agency to the client - we can continue to shape the project and influence clients through our instruments of service.
As innovators, architects can critically examine existing systems and structures and challenge them. We have the ability to innovate new forms of project delivery,2 self-organization,3 and ultimately visions of an equitable built environment.4 We must make impactful choices as innovators and prioritize supporting local community-based and community-invested partners over large corporations whose interests and capital lie outside of the community (point seven). This means supporting and building relationships with local credit unions, public banks, local contractors and trade unions, and organizations challenging traditional land ownership models.
Finally, architects must also see themselves as citizens.Our knowledge of planning, building codes, and the development process puts us in a unique position to advocate for expanded access to housing as a fundamental human right (point one). This can look like showing up to city council and committee meetings, or getting involved with grassroots organizations committed to expanding housing access and tenants’ rights. It could also mean resisting existing insufficient policies and subsidy programs and advocating for more comprehensive policies that account for reparations (point eleven).
We can no longer accept our complicity in the current housing crisis as the reality of our diminished profession. We call upon architects and design professionals to push back. We must establish new roles for ourselves in the fight for equitable housing and leverage our influence and expertise to take action!
The Architecture Lobby is an organization of architectural workers advocating for a better profession. The Bay Area Chapter has been focused on housing.
Such as Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) or architect-led design-build.
Such as cooperative practices, unions, or cooperative networks of small practices.
Such as community land trusts, real estate cooperatives, social housing and housing cooperatives.