Research Catalog

Title

Spatializing justice : building blocks / Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman.

Author

Cruz, Teddy

Publication

• Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2022]
• Berlin : Hatje Cantz Verlag GmbH
• ©2022

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Forman, Fonna

Description

144 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

• "In an era of declining public commitment, 'Spatializing Justice' reconnects design experimentation with social responsibility. With thirty short, manifesto-like texts - building blocks for a new kind of architecture - 'Spatializing Justice' offers a practical handbook for confronting social and economic inequality and uneven growth in cities today. Cruz and Forman advocate for expanded modes of practice through which architects and urbanists can design counter-spatial strategies, new political and economic processes, and new modalities of activism and sociability. 'Spatializing Justice' is dedicated to the memory of Michael Sorkin. This book is the first in a two volume series : 'Spatializing Justice : Building Blocks' ; 'Socializing Architecture : Top-Down / Bottom-Up'."--taken from back cover.
• "Our research-based practice, Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, is an unconventional partnership between a political theorist and an architect. Merging research, practice and pedagogy, our office is based inside a public research university, the University of California, San Diego. Against the dystopic backdrop of the border region - and risking professional suicide as architects - we came to understand that spatializing justice demands not only a focus on buildings, but a fundamental reorganization of social and economic relations. We concluded at some point that exposing the drivers of inequality and challenging exclusionary urban policies that undermine spatial justice is a generative ground for a more experimental architecture. We believe that a new political economy of urbanization, and a new design intelligence, can emerge from within peripheral zones of regional contestation like ours (and that transformational creativity is less likely to arise from within sites of stability and economic power). We believe that a new generation of architects and urban designers can anticipate new ways of thinking and doing, demand a new collective imagination with spatial implications, and steward a reorganization of public priorities and investment. 'Spatializing Justice : Building Blocks' outlines the commitments of our embedded research-based practice at the US-Mexico border. The Building Blocks position justice as a spatial concept, conceived dialectically as bottom-up urban power that recognizes, resists and counters the harms, degradations and exploitations of exclusionary top-down power - discriminatory urban regulation, the rule of law, and the entrenched conventions, social norms and biases that sustain these institutions. In other words, we articulate justice as a collective power from below to reclaim the city as a democratic and inclusive field. We believe that design can mediate conflicts between law and urban justice, between the top-down and the bottom-up, to spatialize collective rights to the city. Each Building Block occupies two spreads across four pages and contains three elements : a 'Provocation', a 'Referent', and the 'Building Block' itself. The first page begins with a 'Provocation' that describes an urban problematic that demands coordinated action from below. It is intended to provoke imaginative strategies to transcend it. The second page continues with a 'Referent', a brief description of an empirical case study, a story or an anecdote, a historical or contemporary example. Sometimes the Referent is a systemic failure, sometimes an untapped opportunity, sometimes a brilliant example of success, sometimes an unrequited urban fantasy. Spread across the third and fourth pages is the 'Building Block' itself, which performs as an operational diagram for action. Sometimes the Building Block elaborates a process from within our design practice ; sometimes it contains a speculative pathway, or translates an anecdote of bottom-up praxis through which we extrapolate a set of procedures. The Building Block is always visualized through a table or a process-based diagram that prioritizes concepts and prompts new ways of thinking and doing. It demonstrates our belief that diagrams are not merely descriptive devices for visualizing data, but projective tools that perform the information they contain and anticipate a course of action. In this sense, the Building Blocks are strategies for social, institutional and spatial transformation."--adapted from Building Blocks : An Introduction, pages 13 and 15-16.

Alternative Title

Building blocks

Subject

• Urban renewal
• City planning > Moral and ethical aspects
• Architecture and society
• POLITICAL SCIENCE / History & Theory

Contents

From the Body to Democracy - For Michael Sorkin -- Building Blocks : An Introduction -- Building Blocks. 01. Confront Inequality. Provocation : Inequality is the summoner ; Referent : Where is our battle diagram? ; Building Block : Naming the drivers of inequality -- 02. Construct the Political. Provocation : Neutrality is complicity ; Referent : Return Duchamp's urinal to the bathroom! ; Building Block : A map of detours -- 03. Recuperate Institutional Memory. Provocation : Where is the New Deal? ; Referent : American Dream [crossed out] nightmare? ; Building Block : Saez-Piketty redux -- 04. Decolonize Knowledge. Provocation : Visualizing urban histories of racial injustice ; Referent : Cumulative impacts of racism, redlining, disinvestment and climate change ; Building Block : Epistemic justice in design : Co-producing knowledge -- 05. Radicalize the Local. Provocation : From ambiguity to specificity ; Referent : A critical proximity ; Building Block : Mandala of local power -- 06. Visualize Urban Conflict. Provocation : Urban conflict is our creative tool ; Referent : Architectures of dissensus ; Building Block : 60 linear miles of urban conflict -- 07. Transgress Borders. Provocation : The wall exists only to be transgressed ; Referent : Chronology of an invasion ; Building Block : Deborder : Urbanizations beyond the property line -- 08. Reimagine Jurisdiction. Provocation : The conflict between the natural and the political ; Referent : Dumb sovereignty : Nation against nature ; Building Block : Micro-basins as neighborhoods -- 09. Complicate Autonomy. Provocation : Challenging self-referentiality ; Referent : Autonomy and the metropolitan battlefield ; Building Block : Relational architectures -- 10. Temporalize Infrastructure. Provocation : Infrastructure is a verb ; Referent : The instant market ; Building Block : Socializing infrastructural urbanism -- 11. Translate the Informal. Provocation : The informal as praxis ; Referent : Scaffolds for things to happen ; Building Block : Informal algorithms -- 12. Perform Citizenship. Provocation : Immigrant civitas ; Referent : Citizen-architects ; Building Block : Mapping "nonconformity" -- 13. Socialize Density. Provocation : Recalculating density ; Referent : Challenging selfish sprawl : McMansion retrofitted ; Building Block : Density = # of social exchanges per area -- 14. Rethink Ownership. Provocation : Challenging the "Ownership Society" ; Referent : Retooling co-ownership ; Building Block : Owning the means of production -- 15. Resist Privatization. Provocation : Reject the privatization of everything ; Referent : The democratization of surplus value ; Building Block : Designing new social-economic coalitions -- 16. Demand Generative Zoning. Provocation : The apartheid of everyday life ; Referent : Visual prompts for an anticipatory zoning ; Building Block : Piercing blanket zoning -- 17. Mobilize Neighborhoods as Political Units. Provocation : From cities of consumption to neighborhoods of production ; Referent : The Snail Garden : A cooperative at the scale of the block ; Building Block : "Bundling" bottom-up practices -- 18. Validate Everyday Work. Provocation : Restoring the social value of labor ; Referent : Feminist architectures ; Building Block : Re-collectivizing the kitchen -- 19. Intervene in the Developer's Proforma. Provocation : Appropriating the knowledge of the developer ; Referent : Activating the hidden value of "sweat equity" ; Building Block : Socializing the developer's proforma : Bundling sweat equity -- 20. Co-develop with Communities. Provocation : Developing the city with "others" ; Referent : What do we do while waiting for the urban revolution to arrive? ; Building Block : Protocols for shared urbanization -- 21. Transform Housing Beyond "Units". Provocation : In conditions of poverty, "units" cannot exist on their own ; Referent : Pruitt-Igoe was not evil ; Building Block : Embedding social housing in infrastructures of support -- 22. Transcend Hospitality. Provocation : From hospitality to inclusion ; Referent : The right to migrate, the right to remain, the right to return ; Building Block : From ephemeral habitation to incremental permanency -- 23. Democratize Access. Provocation : Unwalling space ; Referent : She sat where she did not belong ; Building Block : Designing the rights of entry -- 24. Activate Public Space. Provocation : Public space constructs citizen culture ; Referent : Spatializing citizenship in Medellin ; Building Block : Designing spaces and protocols together -- 25. Curate New Urban Pedagogies. Provocation : Increasing public knowledge : Problematizing advocacy planning ; Referent : Bogotá's "citizenship cards" ; Building Block : Designing community processes -- 26. Civicize Platforms. Provocation : Challenging the algorithmic regime ; Referent : The tragedy of the commons redux ; Building Block : Reclaiming the digital commons -- 27. Design Mediation. Provocation : Designing interface ; Referent : It is not about "what" we represent, but "who" we represent ; Building Block : Designing mediation -- 28. Talk to the Enemy [crossed out] Adversary. Provocation : Enough preaching to the choir ; Referent : Border-drain-crossing ; Building Block : An architecture of dialogue -- 29. Problematize "Sustainability". Provocation : Sustainability begins with civically engaged politics ; Referent : Sustainable Hummer? ; Building Block : Bending the curve -- 30. Retool Ourselves. Provocation : Intervening in our own practices ; Referent : Diagramming practice : 5Ws + HOW ; Building Block : The Practice Diagram -- Notes -- Colophon.

Call Number

HT170

ISBN

• 9780262544535
• 0262544539
• 9780262372046 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

40031448880

OCLC

• on1285052167
• 1285052167
• SCSB-14345856

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries