Just recently, our guest professor Sergio Palleroni gave us the head’s up on this new publication titled The Architecture of Change: Building a Better World, a compilation of articles from 15 years of DESIGNER/Builder magazine that demonstrate the power of the human spirit to transform the environments in which we live. The book features a foreward by architect Michael Sorkin and captures the essence of the creative American spirit at work in underserved communities.
As described by DESIGNER/Builder:
Breaking down the stereotypes surrounding “socially engaged architecture,” this book shows who can actually impact the lives of communities. Like Bernard Rudofsky’s seminal Architecture Without Architects, it explores communal architecture produced not by specialists but by people, drawing on their common lives and experiences, who have a unique insight into their particular needs and environments. These unsung heroes are teachers and artists, immigrants and activists, grandmothers in the projects, students and planners, architects and residents of some of our poorest places. Running through their stories is a constant theme of social justice as an underlying principle of the built environment. This book is about opening one’s eyes to new ways of interpreting the world, and how to go about changing it.
As one of the first magazines to brings social justice and issues of equity to the debate over the built and human environments, the objective of DESIGNER/builder: A Journal of The Human Environment was to change how we see the world. The independent and nontraditional magazine is about architecture that serves humankind and offers an optimistic and hopeful view of attitudes, ideas, efforts, and programs that collectively begin to shape a society where everyone matters. It aims to inspire designers to create a built environment that reflects the principles and values of racial, economic, and social justice.
We’d definitely add this to our Top 10 list! For more info about The Architecture of Change, click here or buy it on Amazon.