17) The truth in architecture.

Architecture has traditionally been understood as a constructive discipline. Actually, we may think more appropriately of architecture as reconstructive. There is always distortion, contamination, and change within architecture. It offers a place we can go to effect change in the world. Or somebody else can go there and bring change. Anytime. Any person. When people move in, they bring a new life to the space. In some sense, design becomes an ongoing layering process that always opposes the status quo: it takes “this is what it is” and asks “why could it not be this?” The act of inhabiting is influenced by various factors including perception, imagination, semantics, and beliefs, amongst others.

There is not just one player in architecture; the stakeholders are many. Is architecture about the place or is it about the people? Architecture compels us to seek the truth. There is always a definite link between the architecture of a place and the character of the community that has settled there.

On the other hand, overestimating architecture’s capacity to “create” distorts our perception of what a community actually wants and will benefit from.

Architecture does not work like a video recording of human lives, rather as a reconstructive memory suggested in the absence of other data; it is up to us to fill in the gaps and to make more sense of the space. The “creation” paradigm focuses the action on those who “create,” without much thought given to those who receive. It assumes that those coming to “create” always have the right idea, the right approach, and the right tools. The complexity that relates to the urban environment is the same complexity that relates to us.

And when we say “us,” “our” or “we,” we have to reach out a bit. There are multiple groups called “we” here. What is our stand here? The fabric of reality emerges from our human interactions. No single group should get to decide the destiny of any other. Many projects nowadays reveal how architecture is crucial to dealing with changes in everybody’s life and situations. Technology is changing architecture faster than ever, bringing with it brand-new dwelling ideas, while our most pers istent troubles—like discrimination and the negation of human rights—haven’t been addressed.

If we plant the idea of human rights into the design of future dwellings, we may create space for new discoveries. We are more and more grasping the relevant variable of design. Buildings are prototype ideas about how the space of living, working, and sharing could engage us. There is no end to man-made problems and seemingly no way to stop man-made environmental transformations, but neither is there an end to human vision. Cities are built by successive generations of urban dwellers, each building on top of each other’s ideas. The stories we tell ourselves about the places we live in matters. Even more the way we participate in each other’s stories.