If architecture is going to nudge, cajole, and inspire a community to challenge the status quo into making responsible changes, it will take the subversive leadership of academics and practitioners who keep reminding students of the profession’s responsibilities.
Interpretation
Architecture can inspire communities to drive positive change through responsible design and leadership.
This quote emphasizes the vital role that architecture plays in motivating communities to re-evaluate and improve their circumstances. Samuel Mockbee advocates for the necessity of strong leadership from both educators and practitioners in the field, who are responsible for instilling in students an awareness of their ethical duties as architects to affect social change.
In practice
In a talk on sustainable design, one might say, 'As Samuel Mockbee noted, architecture should challenge the status quo and inspire our communities.'
Architects mostly work for privileged people, people who have money and power. Power and money are invisible, so people hire us to visualize their power and money by making monumental architecture. I love to make monuments, too, but I thought perhaps we can use our experience and knowledge more for the general public, even for those who have lost their houses in natural disasters.
People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both liberating and alarming.
Architects design buildings; that's what we do, so we have to go with the flow; and, even though I'm still an old Leftie, global capitalism does have its good side. It's broken down barriers - the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union - it's raised a lot of people up economically, and for architects, it has meant that we can work around the world.
It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.
Modernist buildings exclude dialogue, and the void that they create around themselves is not a public space but a desertification
A greater focus on design in all new homes would make the best use of land, create homes and public spaces, and reinforce the structures of urban life.
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