11) When an architecture project is evicting or displacing, “the truth of its architecture is temporarily unavailable.”

Why do so many architectural projects build a fragile social edifice based on disdain for rights, rather than a building that incorporates a critical viewpoint? Although we acknowledge development to be necessary and beneficial, all development is bound to displace something or someone. It may be the flora and fauna of the natural environment; it may be the cultural heritage of a people; it may be the people themselves.

One of the tragic and yet regular consequences of urban transformation is forced displacement. Displacement is a threat to the peace; it gradually expands into violent conflicts, human-rights abuses, proliferation of violence, and ultimately terrorism. In the context of a changing geopolitical community, displacement is tied to aspects of human security—the challenges of climate change, poverty, illness, economic under-development, and interdependence.

One of the reasons why displacement is so commonplace may be due to the feelings of many architects about their profession. This can be translated into a belief that ‘my building is worth more than the rights of people.’ Such thinking is “corrosive” of our sense of justice and our democracy, because it has disastrous consequences, particularly for the most vulnerable. It’s also terribly narcissistic.

Architecture can easily become ‘me space,’ a place for individualism, for people’s nascent and by now overwhelming urge to claim space for themselves, and to claim that space from others, from society and from the state by emphasizing privacy over communalism and denying strangers access to the community and its resources.

I associate architecture without human rights at its core to psychopathy. Architecture without human rights is cold and uncaring. This kind of architecture results in antisocial and sometimes very violent acts against humanity. Think of the dictator Ceaucescu in Romania razing many city blocks and displacing hundreds of residents in order to build his monstrosity of grandiose architecture, the so-called “House of the Republic.” When an architectural project ends up evicting or displacing people in this way, “the truth of its architecture is temporarily unavailable.”

This is post-architecture, its borders blurred between racism and indifference. It happens through a selective clearance approach, in the demolition of neighborhoods. Forced evictions can have catastrophic effects, particularly for people already living in poverty. The evicted do not just lose their homes and possessions, they also lose their livelihoods, their social networks, and the basic services they rely on for survival. They struggle to find clean water, food, and toilets. They struggle to find work and schools for their children. And they struggle to rebuild their shattered lives, often with no help or support from the governments that uprooted them.

What does architecture mean in the context of such transformation, great social changes, ethnic conflicts, urban inequalities, environmental threats, and economic problems? The answer is a widespread sense that much of what we have built can’t be tolerated, because at the root of the human-rights concept is the idea that all people should be able to live with dignity. Accepting eviction, or rights deprivation, or outright rights denial as inevitable, or acceptable if it gets things done faster, is horrifying, and how many of us would want to live in a world where that’s the norm?