Author: Simon Elmer

Q. ‘Social and environmental issues really matter to me. I want to have real influence but, as an architect, I don’t. A. ‘Many architects contact me expressing a similar sentiment. Our profession tends to attract and develop idealists, and that can make some of our work little more rewarding than working on a factory production … Continue reading For a Socialist Architecture 1. Part 1: Social Principles

I want to begin with the diagram with which we ended Part 1 of this presentation, which illustrates the connections between the social, the environmental and the economic dimensions of architecture. The terms ‘ecology’, meaning the study of the relationship between organisms and the environment, and ‘economy’, meaning household management, both derive from the same … Continue reading For a Socialist Architecture 3. Part 2: Economic Practices

‘Where did this entire financial phantasmagoria come from? Quite simply, from the way people who could just not afford them were forced into buying nice new houses because they were seduced into taking out miraculous loans. Their promises to repay the loans were then sold on, after having been mixed up with securitisations whose composition … Continue reading For a Socialist Architecture 3. Part 1: Economic Principles

This presentation follows on from Part 1, that looked at the environmental principles of a socialist architecture. In our first presentation in this series we talked about the agents of a socialist architecture: those who pay for it, those who inhabit it, those who use it, those who design it, those who build it, those … Continue reading For a Socialist Architecture 2. Part 2. Environmental Practices