Research project in collaboration with the students of the Escola da Cidade, University of Architecture, São Paulo (in progress).

Arquitetura para quem?

The research examines the reproduction of systems of discrimination (class, gender, race) through the built environment. 

The contribution of the research to the architecture discipline is threefold: First, it expands debates on “othering” and the exclusion or erasure of specific spaces, histories, and cultures in architecture. Among other themes, the authors analyze displacement due to urban developments and intersectional discrimination. Second, Architecture for whom? investigates the role of architecture practice as it intersects with trajectories of social justice. It calls for a discipline that learns from contingency and failures, rather than relying on control and stability. It foregrounds the potentials and limits of tools for a critical practice of architecture, ranging from ethnographic methods for designers to activist interventions, to socially engaged design. Third, the research analyzes the potential of transformative pedagogy of architecture. It also investigates asymmetries in the production of knowledge in architecture by involving authors from the global South, in conversation with others from the global North.