Triangles illustrating the relationship between architecture, sociology, and community partners pulling in different directions, with an equilateral triangle (bottom) representing the relationship in a dynamic balance. Diagrams by Ben Barsotti Scott.

We can think of the possible relationship between architecture, sociology, and the community as a triangle whose vertices can be stretched in different directions.  Seeing the world in a divided way will result in projects that do not negotiate the interests of all parties and do not engage with community values. For example, skewing too far in the architecture direction might result in an award-winning building and design that looks beautiful but doesn’t meet people’s social needs or that even contributes to urban inequalities. Simply meeting issues of equity and justice, central to sociology, may result in a building that is too technocratic and functional. This kind of design solution may not provide beauty or delight, due to a lack of consideration of aesthetics or community values.

Meeting the needs and wants of the community without concern for social impacts or aesthetics might result in further inequality, or spaces that are beautiful for the occupants but unwelcoming, or even unfriendly, from the street. Such projects will meet the self-interests of the citizen or a community at the detriment to the whole city, and may ignore the relationship between the material world and symbolic elements that cultivate a sense of belonging. Community-dominant designs might include beautiful gated communities or other spaces of privilege. And community design in spaces of decreased power might also yield spaces that produce inequity anew.

In contrast, the SOCIOARC place (represented by the equilateral triangle) negotiates between the community, the architect and the sociologist. It is in dialogue with what people hold to be symbolically important for them, and it honors the connection between social life and the built environment. The result will not always be a perfectly equilateral triangle. Depending on the project and the place, the needs and results will be different. But to achieve the good, all parties will continually pull the result somewhere closer to the middle, not abandoning it to the far reaches of one pole or the other.