Dear Readers,
Many are saying it, but I will repeat it here: Oh, how the Overton window has shifted! Since you received our last weekly email on Sunday, May 31, positions on defunding (and even abolishing) the police have shifted from radical to mainstream.
[PITCH TO EDITOR@NYRA.NYC]
We are living through extraordinary times and we want to hear from our readers and our contributors. In addition to our normal collection of pitch ideas, which I’ll go through below, we’re inviting anyone and everyone to write a letter to the editor expressing your emotions, anger, or hope about the current political moment, which is inevitably framed by the city in which we live. Or, write a short 200- to 300-word piece about architecture’s connection to policing, racism, and injustice. For our regular contributors and those with existing research and expertise, pitch a longer article or response on one of the issues highlighted in the following articles and topics. In solidarity with the ongoing protests against police brutality and racial injustice, this weekly email is longer than usual.
[If you’re looking for events other than rallies, of which there are—fortunately—few, scroll to the bottom or visit our website: NYRA.NYC]
First of all, for anyone unconvinced or uneducated about the deep-seeded racism and violence that permeates policing—an activity that we have convinced ourselves is essential to maintaining the cities we design, build, and occupy—a recent article published by the Intercept argues against the “few bad cops” theory, providing evidence that police are not neutral stewards of public safety. Indeed, especially in wake of the slashed budgets due to the coronavirus pandemic and economic downturn, the clarion calls to defund the police reverberating throughout the cities of the United States (and abroad) are finally being heard by at least some lawmakers and leaders. A recent New York Times article profiles this rapid swing of the political pendulum.
But what does this have to do with architecture? Within the mainstream press, some of the most prominent mentions of the A-word have been nothing short of cringe-worthy. Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron’s recent article “Buildings Matter, Too” sparked immediate and much-deserved backlash for drawing a false equivalency between the life of (black) human beings and buildings. The New York Times detailed the fallout, which resulted in protest by African American writers at the paper and the swift resignation of the top (white) editor.
Of course, the connection between racism, policing, and architecture runs very deep. Recently, this topic has been picked up and amplified within certain corners of the mainstream media that regularly report on the built environment. Architect Bryan Lee, Jr.’s article in Bloomberg City Lab, “America’s Cities Were Designed to Oppress,” takes on the connection between policing and our design work shaping the urban environment. Quoting Martin Luther King Jr., Lee argues that “the profession of architecture is as complicit as any. This is a profession swarming with ‘white moderates more devoted to order than to justice.’”
The overlap between race and architecture has many ramifications. Explore We Aggregate’s Black Lives Matter umbrella, an excellent resource for peer-edited articles. Subtopics include Diagnosis: Policing and Incarceration; Resistance: Rights to City and Suburb; and Aesthetics: From Cities to Curricula.
As a native of Washington, DC, I was particularly drawn to Amber Wiley’s article “Schools and Prisons,” which takes up the example of the recently demolished brutalist home of Dunbar High School. The structure, although it had fallen into disrepair, was designed by black architects and rendered future-oriented, Afrocentric pedagogy in blocky concrete. The building was torn down and replaced by a deceptively “light and airy” structure by Perkins + Eastman, which Wiley argues consolidates the carceral state within the school’s seemingly innocuous form.
As a New Yorker, I was intrigued by Joy Knoblauch’s “Defensible Space and Open Society,” which takes aim at the theories of Oscar Newman (he was the “enlightened” architect in the 2015 HBO miniseries “Show Me a Hero,” set in Yonkers) whose use of environmental psychology promoted home ownership, but also a kind of soft surveillance that was eagerly adopted by NY architects from the 60s onward. Knoblauch’s April 2020 book The Architecture of Good Behavior: Psychology & Modern Institutional Design in Postwar America, highlights widely these accepted design ideas, which echo discredited broken windows policing.
Indeed, beyond the frame of discrete buildings and housing developments, segregation permeates the very structure of our cities, because of racism embedded in federally-backed mortgages. One of my favorite recent works of urban history is Richard Rothstein’s searing 2018 book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. It is a ground-breaking study that reveals the deliberate, de jure segregation of American cities and suburbs by bankers and elected officials at every level. Nevertheless, enabling white flight, architects drafted the plans for the vast tracts of whites-only suburbs, which enabled the abandonment and disinvestment in city centers, where African Americans largely remained.
Nevertheless, not everyone went along with this unjust approach to housing. Amanda Kolson Hurley’s 2017 article published in the journal Places, “Housing Is Everybody's Problem: The Forgotten Crusade of Morris Milgram,” profiles the life and work of the housing activist, from his upbringing in the Lower East Side to his decades of work advocating for integrated suburbs outside of Philadelphia.
Furthermore, beyond housing, throughout our country’s history architects have designed police stations and prisons. In fact, architects’ support of law enforcement is being showcased with a new honor, The Law Enforcement Design Awards, which were just announced on May 7th. How timely. Should architects protest? Starchitect Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)’s new police station in the Bronx has come under scrutiny. While criticism has been leveled against the station’s overblown budget, should architects refuse to design police stations all together? Should we join in lock step with the movement to end prisons and “promote peace, environmental protection, ecological building, social justice and the development of healthy communities,” as demanded by Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility?
There is also the question: how is architecture connected to the act of protest itself? How have cities been shaped by direct action and in turn affected the way we engage on the streets? Tour guide and urbanist Lucie Levine’s article “Power to the People: Looking Back on the History of Public Protests in NYC Parks” is a quick primer on the subject. And, Mimi Kirk’s article “How Centuries of Protest Shaped New York City,” takes another historic view on the topic. Finally, geographers Don Mitchell and the late Neil Smith published a recent compendium on the relationship between protest and New York City’s built environment, Revolting New York: How 400 Years of Riot, Rebellion, Uprising, and Revolution Shaped a City.
Indeed, perhaps more than police lines, urban design itself provides the hard edges against which protesters push. It is also highly symbolic of the way the public is allowed to engage with its own government, public buildings and spaces. Sadly, the supposedly temporary barriers and fences erected in times of unrest often become permanent. The recent fortification of the White House highlights this very phenomenon, as profiled in a Washington Post article.
On a more positive note, how might architects use their skill sets to aid and support the kind of civic engagement we are seeing today? Mutual aid groups, which were pioneered by Black and Brown communities, abound in New York and have surged to meet the needs of the coronavirus pandemic and protestors confronting the police. Projects like #designasprotest, seek to draw architects and designers with their specific skill sets into a set of weekly Friday actions leading up to Juneteenth. How can architecture, design, visual art, and performace act as protest and raise awareness for a broader public? How can architecture as protest reframe narratives and debates?
Finally, what role might architectural education play in anti-racism? While numerous schools of architecture and institutions have published statements in support of direct action and policy changes, it remains to be seen if these organizations and their alumni have the political will to make substantive changes to a historically white profession. The 2019 memoir, Designing Victory, charts the life, work, and struggle of architect Robert P. Madison. Denied entry to Case Western Reserve’s architecture program because he was black, Madison went on to become the founder of the first black owned architectural practice in the Midwest. What is your school or favorite institution doing (or not doing) at this moment? How can they do more?
While I know that the protests should and must continue, there are actually a few “architecture events” this week. The Review is committed to providing coverage in the spirit of our time and is dedicated to providing a space for articles that tackle the relationship between social justice and architecture. We are also committed to serving as a record for the weekly goings on in our architectural community and bearing witness to the diversity of activities that continue, even in these difficult times.
I hope that everyone is staying safe and well.
In solidarity,
Dante Furioso, Managing Editor
Events
On Monday
Celebrate Pride: A Virtual Tour of Pre- and Post-Stonewall Activism Hosted by the Center for Architecture (AIA New York) at 6pm
On Wednesday
Pratt Community Dialogue Series: Black Lives Matter at 12:30pm
Regional Plan Association Virtual Assembly at 3pm
Open House NY Jeff Ebert: On Resilience at 4pm
On Thursday
Expanding Modes of Practice: Interboro at 7pm
On Friday
Design as Protest weekly action. Search #designasprotest for info or to sign up.