The question is not whether architecture shapes society, but how. Architecture’s determinative power works in part through its symbolic forms, including its volumes, colors, spatial divisions and configurations, the materials selected, as well as its visible functions. But ghettoes, camps, and slaughterhouses are not symbols in need of interpretation. In my view, any approach that solely focuses on the aesthetics of the built environment is inadequate, as is any approach that reduces architecture as a symbolic system to intended meanings.
This is the case for the architecture of entire cities, but also for any child’s bedroom. Here is why: As we all learned during the Covid-19 crisis, whether you caught the virus or not was a question of physical reality, not of communicative codes or social acceptance. The question of how many people can be present where and at what distance—and not become infected—is, above all, an architectural one; the subsequent question of how many people must, in turn, be present where and at what distance for the preservation of personal freedom and democratic policymaking is likewise an architectural one. This is why I suggest that architecture should not only include works by architects with a diploma, but everything that structures the environment humans live in.
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