SOCIOARC Exercises
"...we have derived a series of exercises that can be used to work in the space between architecture and sociology. We present here a different proposition for what is enough for each field to know, for what is required to build an essential understanding of this convergence. The exercises presented in this chapter bring together architectural and sociological methods to allow for more comprehensive investigation of the world. This provides a method for making the social a part of the design problem from the beginning, and for carrying it through to the final design product by altering the initial conception of the site and the design problem.
We put these exercises together in order to bring alive our proposed SOCIOARC approach, and to move it from a theoretical framework to a do-able strategy.
Together, the exercises ahead provide a practical curriculum to learn, develop, consider, and practice the many moving elements of a SOCIOARC process. They work to train the imaginations of the SOCIOARC student and future practitioner, drawing on the elements that can help develop capacities to erode the boundaries between disciplinary trainings and productively cross into our collaborator’s disciplines.
Instead of being prescriptive they challenge the practitioner to incorporate a wider array of techniques and operations into their research and design practices, in order to more fully engage with a social built environment.
These exercises could be modified and refined by instructors to be used for specific design problems or studios. They can be used in introductory courses such as an introductory design seminar, design studio, or social science seminar, to begin to train the imaginations of students to work the SOCIOARC convergence. On top of training practitioners, the exercises can be used in a number of classes.
The SOCIOARC exercises do not have to be limited to the formal classroom. These techniques can be used by all.
While the exercises can serve an important pedagogical function in sociological and architectural training, we encourage their use by any party engaged in design or research community projects that center the built environment. The exercises might be used by designers in professional practice or by policy-makers or urban planners, for community-engaged or participatory design strategies. They can also be used in multiple applied research fields seeking to better understand and measure the relationship between people and their spatial context. They can also be used in facilitated workshops that are geared towards making people more aware of how the built environment is produced and the social consequences of its form. They might also be used by individuals who are deeply invested in the built environments in which they live and would like to explore or understand their world in a different way. We encourage governments, non-governmental organizations, non-profit institutions, private sector groups, and communities to use our SOCIOARC spiral, and the exercises we share, for new forms of collaboration. Communities may decide to bring these exercises to architects, developers, researchers, or government officials participating with them in projects that produce or impact the built environment, and vice-versa. In similar fashion to LEED training for green and sustainable building, in combination these exercises amount to a SOCIOARC training for socially just architecture.