35) An architect’s responsibilities.

In legal terms, an architect is liable for anything that goes wrong with a building. But who is liable if a building is constructed on sacred land and offends a tribe for whom the land constitutes a burial site? What if the design of the room makes access and exit impossible for a person in a wheelchair? What if a potential user or dweller feels scared, uncomfortable, humiliated, offended, or secluded in the space which the architect has designed?

What responsibilities has an architect if a person inside the space he/she designed is starving? Hunger is more than missing a meal. The issue, largely, is that the people who need food the most simply don’t have steady access to it. The causes of this can be displacement, dependence on disrupted farming, lack of roads, lack of storage facilities, etc. Architects will ultimately affect everybody’s rights, security and welfare, even if they never make a serious appeal to their consciences. This is simply because there is no town, village, city, human settlement, or building without architecture. The right to remake ourselves by creating a qualitatively different kind of urban society is one of the most precious benefits of empowering people’s human rights. Architecture rights are human rights.

Not only can architecture acknowledge the need and help people out of hunger, it can pull a neighborhood together to help build an environment that isn’t worrisome or scary. Human rights are matters of “paramount importance” and they should also lead to a number of important design decisions.

One way to ensure human rights are honored is to ensure the effective consultation and direct participation of affected communities in the design and implementation of new spaces, particularly on matters of housing and land. When people’s human rights are compromised, it makes them feel less than whole. They can feel beaten down, uncertain about the future, and unsure of their access to the conditions they need to thrive.

Obligations for architects and building professionals might be negative obligations of omission and restraint—or positive obligations of assistance, empowerment and aid. The support for or neglect of the empowerment of human rights in space designs originate in single, simple actions. Such acts take place whenever we decide to respect or neglect considerations of people’s needs in the design.

Design can increase or reduce fairness, safety, inclusion, privacy, and freedom. It can also remove barriers between communities and foster peace. It has been claimed that professionals have expertise or skill sets that may be employed to facilitate human-rights abuses (the volatile expertise claim). Similarly, professionals have expertise or skill sets that enable them to expose, report, or otherwise prevent human rights violations (the preventive expertise claim).

In essence, we like to assume that architects should be mindful of and driven by people’s rights in their efforts to respect, protect and fulfill those rights; and do their best to not only fulfill those rights, but also, to make themselves accountable and responsive to the people in this regard. Architects make value judgments all time, ethical and moral judgments. And they are always making decisions that are exceedingly personal and extraordinarily subjective.

Architects, designers, and planners have an ethical responsibility to protect public health, and to ensure public safety and welfare. They also have a duty to promote social equality and find ways to ensure that our differences—be they political, social, or economic—do not infringe on the democratic, cultural, and economic rights of all. This is not only an issue of social justice. It is also one of global survival. What is our prime responsibility, at the end of the day? To treat everybody as an equal.