There is a tension within social architecture between aims and actions. Emerging in response to the increasingly anti-social nature of the urban, some claim the aim of social architecture is to challenge and build beyond various contemporary urban crises. This aim, however, is at odds with the primarily small scale and contextually grounded nature social architecture operates on. Some proponents avoid this tension by arguing that their aim is to materially improve the communities they are engaged with, however this has been critiqued as limiting social architecture’s potential. Within this paper, I advance previous critiques that have been made of social architecture through an examination of literature fields both inside and outside of architecture, and through a yearlong fieldwork study. Firstly, I explore the definition of the phrase in its use both by proponents and detractors of the movement. Secondly, I situate social architecture's emergence within architecture and use this to further the critiques of the tension between its aims and actions through the lens of reification. Thirdly the fieldwork serves as a contextual basis to manifest these critiques. Finally, with the aims of social architecture brought into question, the paper speculates upon what social architecture’s aim could be. This paper furthers the critiques of social architecture while suggesting that, through reframing its aim, social architecture could be used to demonstrate that alternatives to the present moment are possible.

The concept of ‘publicness’ addresses the intersection between people and their physical surroundings, and the ways in which they affect each other in an ongoing process. This point of relational exchange is the core concept behind ‘Public Space in European Social Housing’ (PuSH), a three-year HERA-funded project conducted by a transnational, multidisciplinary team of researchers. Large-scale modernist postwar housing estates, often used for social, cooperative, or mass rental housing, tend to be problematised as places of segregation and disintegration in European cities. Yet they are potentially also primary sites for integration between people of different cultural origins and social backgrounds. By investigating publicness in relation to social housing, including cooperative housing and mass rental housing estates, PuSH aims to better understand how cultural encounters happen, and ultimately to reflect on how integration can be better sustained. In this paper, we take a relational conception of publicness as our point of departure to explore the differentiations and intersections between sites and modes of public life in relation to our approach and the social housing estates we investigate. Moreover, we present our conceptual contribution to the concept of publicness, both theoretically and methodologically using multidisciplinary theories and methodologies, and four analytical categories: heritage, practices/policies, democracy, informality, and moreover exhibitions are used as a research tool. This paper is a collaborative output whereby different researchers on the project present their theoretical developments and positions, identify the analytical categories and theoretical vocabularies on which they daw, and reflect on potential ways in which these concepts can be operationalised, and on the synergies that may develop between them. Taken together, our approach offers significant interpretations of publicness in relation to questions of public space, and tackles some of the most pronounced tensions in discussions of public space.

Singapore’s city-making strategies are seen by many Asia Pacific cities as a model to achieve today’s desired ‘world-class city’ status. They represent a source of innovation to design alternative configurations and rethink established norms of urban and social standards. This article looks at the urban landscape of the city of Singapore through infrastructural systems instead of individual design masterpieces, focusing on the urban corridor defined by the connection of Changi Airport, East Coast Parkway (ECP), and Marina Bay as a single urban entity, unified by a visual and experiential choreography. At a time of intense global competition in the aviation industry, Changi has deployed new strategies to sustain its reputation as an innovative transportation hub. The leg between Changi Airport and Marina Bay is an integral part of Singapore, experienced by the majority of its annual visitors arriving in the city-state. The 19-kilometre route, a major infrastructural project begun in the 1970s and still in progress, is a highly landscaped and scenic artery of the island, through which the airport has injected its hyper-urbanism into the city. While conveying the history of the developments of the Corridor, we consider the soft power strategies used by the city state to develop a form of transnational elite urbanism based on leisure and recreation, where urban planning, design, and green infrastructure play a key role. We reflect on the global and local dimension of Singapore, discussing how the ECP corridor reveals only one side of the city’s double character.

On the one hand, this article critically analyses the rhetorical use of landscaping ingrained in the Corridor to attract foreign investment and tourism, where the artificialisation of green interventions has overwritten the presence of the native vegetation and morphology. On the other hand, we reflect on the less evident but nonetheless split that the Corridor has generated between the city’s southern residential areas and foreshore. While cutting through the urban tissue of part of the island seamlessly and without interruption, the Corridor does in fact separate out substantial residential areas, turning Singapore successful green strategies into a form of urban injustice. The twofold nature of the corridor – at the same time, that of the ‘connector’ and ‘divider’ – thus reflects Singapore’s intrinsic ambiguity: its manifestation of global ambitions set against its local realities. This article unpacks the planning mechanisms used to design this development, including the land reclamation powers of the state and the government land sales programme. It also discusses the strategies and choices underpinning the urban sequence of the ECP’s infrastructural nodes, from the Jewel (2019) to the Conservatories (2012). Drawing on official documentation from Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), field research, and using a multidisciplinary lens, this article interpolates architectural and planning studies with insights gleaned by onsite investigation.

This paper discusses spatial agency practice within a living lab in Hong Kong. Lab members work in Tai O Village, a historic fishing settlement receiving increased attention due to remnant vernacular housing there. The article presents historical and policy context for ongoing casework conducted with stakeholders in Tai O. It presents Tai O’s history in brief, recent policy developments, and inherent conflicts arising from the interaction of the two. The third section of the article describes informal settlement land tenure conflicts as historical phenomena in Hong Kong. The paper follows this case-specific discussion with global literature review of selected regularisation and settlement upgrading efforts from around the world. These reviews present the article’s thesis that third sector and design-led efforts are critically applicable methods to address informal settlement conflicts that remain due to colonial legacy policies and political inertia. The final section of the article presents ongoing living lab research and initiatives, including collaborative monitoring projects and strategic development proposals. Each living lab initiative presented elaborates the article’s thesis on the interaction between architecture, research, and governance to negotiate complex development transitions. The article contributes to architectural scholarship by summarising unique interactions between history, policy, economics, and demography that engendered the development situation in Tai O. Further, it reflects upon response development methods through architectural science and spatial agency practice, including the role of architectural representation products and discursive distinctions at boundaries between architectural practice and spatial agency practice.

Climate breakdown demands new ways of thinking, new ways of relating to other human and non-human beings, and therefore new ways of approaching the future. Approaches to the future that adequately account for the climate need to be sufficiently far-reaching to avoid quick-fix solutionism, and sufficiently grounded to avoid unbounded flights of visionary fancy. The climate crisis is a gritty, contested situation that cannot be approached through one means alone. If architecture and spatial practice realise their inherent interdisciplinary potential, they could contribute to forming new modes of spatial relation that have profoundly social and climatic implications. The reverse is equally true: the social, economic, and environmental shifts required will bring new spatial formations which require new spatial practices. This essay explores how futures may be thought of in terms more appropriate to climate. Architects and spatial practitioners are capable of effecting social and ecological change despite their historical implication in the structures and practices of the extractive capitalist system within which they operate. The different projects and practices studied here, from the 1960s to the present, offer ways of thinking about the future that have spatial consequences in the built environment but reach into wider socio-political and ecological realms. What we can take from these practices and projects are lessons in how systemic change must guide design for the future, and how new spatial relations can support this change rather than circumscribe its parameters. As the various practitioners described in this essay prove, subverting systems from within is possible. And from that subversive first step, critical, imaginative, and projective steps can follow.

The article demonstrates that the Ger Plug-In, a housing prototype that combines the traditional Mongolian nomadic dwelling, or ger, with new construction, is a viable sustainable and affordable housing product that addresses urgent issues that have arisen from the growth of Ulaanbaatar’s ger districts. These settlements have no water supply, sewers or centralised heating, and households use coal and coke briquettes to heat their homes. The prototype provides the ger with electrical heating,, sanitation systems and improved thermal insulation. The pilot project was constructed in 2017 and on-site field measurements together with numerical simulation have been used to calculate its Energy Use Intensity (EUI). By using both quantitative and qualitative methods, the results show that the Ger Plug-In meets the EUI criteria to be eligible for green mortgages provided by the Green Climate Fund. Household surveys were conducted to ascertain the financial capacity of residents. By proving its qualification for low interest rate mortgages and by evidencing its market demand, the objective is to demonstrate that the product can have scalable impact for the 840,000residents living in the ger districts.

Emilio Pérez Piñero represents the paradigm of the architect inventor of the twentieth century. His extraordinary mind developed through a series of special circumstances in the early stages of his life, and further, through his own disciplined dedication, he was able to produce a wealth of work of a richness and complexity that go beyond innovation and problem solving. Invention in Pérez Piñero’s work was the result of a masterly mathematical command and a highly developed three-dimensional vision, which enabled him to see possible solutions that had been considered impossible before him. His geodesic domes are true structural landmarks and his folding reticulated structures, in which dynamic folding mechanisms are designed so as to reach equilibrium when fully stretched at the point at which they become static structures, are the culmination of a body of work that has no comparison in the panorama of the architecture of the time.

Archio interviewed by Dhruv Sookhoo and Ava Lynam

Kyle Buchanan and Mellis Haward, directors of architectural practice Archio, reflect on their experience developing a toolkit of practices that facilitate co-design of community-led housing.

In this interview, Buchanan and Haward examine the participatory approaches that Archio adopts to negotiate the delivery of enhanced housing outcomes [1]. They describe building trust with residents by interpreting their lived experiences and aspirations through architectural knowledge and practices. Discussion focuses on the co-production of design artefacts as tools that enable community stakeholders to negotiate shared ambitions for their neighbourhood within community-based development and regulatory processes (e.g. development management).

In 2016, Archio was invited by London Community Land Trust and Citizens UK to compete for the opportunity to design and deliver eleven affordable homes on a disused garage site at Brasted Close, in Lewisham, London [2]. Unusually, a “Pick an Architect” workshop was held on the development site, where the public was able to evaluate prospective architectural teams for their ability to engage future residents and neighbouring communities in the collective examination of fundamental socio-spatial aspects of the project. Archio’s successful approach at the pioneering community land trust at Brasted Close anticipated their development of a toolkit of practices that emphasise collaboration during community-led development of affordable housing. These design tools were refine through use across a series of later commissions including a co-housing project at Angel Yard, Norwich and a resident-led estate regeneration scheme at Astley Estate, Southwark.

The use of bio-based construction materials in Haiti could help the construction sector to transition, from non-seismic unreinforced masonry structures towards materials that can reverse catastrophic deforestation, promote ecological regeneration, and help save the soil. Architecture has a role to play in this vision, by creating new designs and incentivising clients to invest in new materials.