4.0
Architectures of Spatial Justice
ByPublisher Description
A field-defining work that demonstrates how architects are breaking with professional conventions to advance spatial justice and design more equitable buildings and cities.
As state violence, the pandemic, and environmental collapse have exposed systemic inequities, architects and urbanists have been pushed to confront how their actions contribute to racism and climate crisis—and how they can effect change. Establishing an ethics of spatial justice to lead architecture forward, Dana Cuff shows why the discipline requires critical examination—in relation to not only buildings and the capital required to realize them but privilege, power, aesthetics, and sociality. That is, it requires a reevaluation of architecture’s fundamental tenets.
Organized around projects and topics, Architectures of Spatial Justice is a compelling blend of theory, history, and applied practice that focuses on two foundational conditions of architecture: its relation to the public and its dependence on capital. The book draws on studies of architectural projects from around the world, with instructive case studies from Chile, Mexico, Japan, and the United States that focus in particular on urban centers, where architecture is most directly engaged with social justice issues.
Emerging from more than two decades of the author’s own project-based research, Architectures of Spatial Justice examines ethically driven practices that break with professional conventions to correct long-standing inequities in the built environment, uncovering architecture’s limits—and its potential.
As state violence, the pandemic, and environmental collapse have exposed systemic inequities, architects and urbanists have been pushed to confront how their actions contribute to racism and climate crisis—and how they can effect change. Establishing an ethics of spatial justice to lead architecture forward, Dana Cuff shows why the discipline requires critical examination—in relation to not only buildings and the capital required to realize them but privilege, power, aesthetics, and sociality. That is, it requires a reevaluation of architecture’s fundamental tenets.
Organized around projects and topics, Architectures of Spatial Justice is a compelling blend of theory, history, and applied practice that focuses on two foundational conditions of architecture: its relation to the public and its dependence on capital. The book draws on studies of architectural projects from around the world, with instructive case studies from Chile, Mexico, Japan, and the United States that focus in particular on urban centers, where architecture is most directly engaged with social justice issues.
Emerging from more than two decades of the author’s own project-based research, Architectures of Spatial Justice examines ethically driven practices that break with professional conventions to correct long-standing inequities in the built environment, uncovering architecture’s limits—and its potential.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesArchitectures of Spatial Justice Reviews
4.0
“good and i think cuff is pretty clear-eyed about architecture's limited ability to produce radical change within itself. it's clearly dependent on larger systems and flows of capital, which is the whole problem; it's mainly reserved for the rich, at least in its most traditional form. however, i had a good thought reading this that if social movements and organizing provide the necessary "base" for revolutionary society, architecture can build out a superstructure of joy (lol coining that phrase) and delight for what a better world can be like: crazy post-modern community centers, pools with twirly slides, 8 story libraries, etc. i don't know much about architecture but cuff definitely expanded on what architecture can even mean (it doesn't have to be built!), and i found a lot of the more powerful stuff examining the relationship between client and architect.
book was also nice because there were so many case studies! but also a weakness: the incremental half-houses in Chile and a lot of the UCLA CityLAB stuff felt pretty limited in scope. i guess the strength of her theory didn't always realize itself super clearly in the case studies presented. for instance, ADU laws in California will probably lead to new forms of landlordism and a further unequal political economy -- expanding tenancy perhaps, but also modes to accumulate off of poor people.
alas! the pictures were awesome.”
About Dana Cuff
Dana Cuff is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design and Director and Founder of cityLAB at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is also the leader of the Urban Humanities Initiative. She is the author of Architecture: The Story of Practice and The Provisional City: Los Angeles Stories of Architecture and Urbanism (both published by the MIT Press).
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