22) At risk of overload.

These sort of inquires drive architects in some ways toward an attempt to translate the Universal Declaration principles into more detailed guidelines.

The language of the Universal Declaration is special. Because of the philosophical concepts, and also because of all those technical inputs and suggestions that are seemingly embedded and poignant as soon as we transfer them into architectural design. But it also must allow these ideas to be practically applied into real-world disciplines such as architectural design. Universal Rights provide a cornerstone for creating real prosperity within society, but they are legal fiction if not given application. In other words, rights can signify an individual’s as well as a collective set of values.

Values are represented in all architecture and cities, and furthermore, some collective sets of beliefs are more apparent than others. A framework of enacted architecture seeks to identify, explain, and understand the interactivity of people and build form as a practical approach towards a system of values, rights, and duties.

We embed our values into architecture. That is to say, through architecture we develop the conditions of housing, education, health, work, and the economic, political, social, and cultural life of a society. Should universal rights be an architecture imperative beyond what is legally required? The world would be a much better place if architects act as if they were, and if the work of making cities requires everyone’s rights to be met. The design thinking that goes into rooms, backyards, streets, sidewalks, subways, buildings, and parks goes beyond the analysis, location and physical design of architecture; it extends into how to bring human rights into the ongoing processes of community-building. If we do want universal rights to become historical facts rather than eternal aspiration, we need to incorporate these ideals into the society of the future through our architecture.

Human rights are much broader than the absence of torture, they signify acknowledgement of equality and fairness in all the relationships of our coexistence. The rights to an adequate standard of living in terms of the health and well-being of people includes food, clothing, housing, medical care, and the necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other circumstances beyond a person’s control.

We know architecture in terms of conceptual space, perceived space, and lived-in space, all of which determine how people’s rights and or duties are dealt in daily life. Now we have to consider how human rights fit into a spatial context, a historical context, and, most of all, a human context. The ability to model, sense, monitor, and respond to the challenges of urbanization generates a new form of design, one where we can ensure that humanity takes center stage.

Is it not the obligation of architecture to give all human beings access to facilities that constitute the minimum standards of human rights? These include shelter, education, work, and the possibility of participating in the economical, political, cultural, and social life of a community or nation. As its first obligation, architecture should facilitate these possibilities, especially for disadvantaged and vulnerable groups such as women, the disabled, minority groups, the poor, the homeless, refugees, migrants, nomads, and Romani people.

Architecture is a building culture, and it cannot be framed by the corruption of our ethical integrity that ultimately leads to damage to the very fabric of our humanity.