Architecture as an early warning system.

The purpose of an early warning system is to warn people that something bad is likely to happen.

Architecture is becoming the backdrop against which the drama of everyday life unavoidably plays out, constraining and shaping possible social interactions. While the narrow theories on human rights focus on civil and political liberties, the broad theories focus on a broader class of human rights and take account of poverty, hunger, and starvation. Slums work by effect if not by intention to embed the poor within the fabric of the city by providing them a place to live.

How can architecture possibly work as early warning system?

The assumption is that by monitoring architecture on progress we can trace a chain of information which can forecast and signalize lack of human rights. The aspiration is to promote architecture as a framework that integrates the norms, principles, standards, and goals of the international human-rights system into the plans and design of cities. Architecture has the power to shape how we relate to each other. The implication of grounding design in human dignity and human rights are huge.

More sustainable and inclusive architecture opens the door to a redefinition of human rights.

Whether teleological, consequentialist, deontological, or something else—we should find out the way we concretize the main features of human rights including their mandatory character, their universality, and their high priority. People have human rights independently of whether they are found in the morality, or law of their country or culture or the place they live. The right for all will need to be asserted and respected by every architect and every architectural project. 

This claim will be unsettling for those who believe that good architecture can be designed without any particular concern for equality as well as for those who understand architecture only as the material form taken by any unit of usable—and rentable or sellable—space. Many think that human rights sound a little impractical, a little theoretical. They seem to be saying that the key points of architecture and human rights are that it is unrealistic and complex.  Not only do architecture and human rights address adhering issues but they also benefit from one another as they both target human beings. 

I also know few architects that when told about architecture and human rights are searching for some place to run and hide. Well, they can run, but they really can’t hide. No sustainable urbanization will be possible without pursue the effective and efficient realization of human rights for all. Indeed in a no architecture-free world as the one we inhabit, architecture is the ultimate strategy for assuring a dignified and secure existence for each inhabitant.

A right is not something that we give to people. It is what we can’t take from them.