Arhipera and the Ethics of Social Architecture

This paper is a manifesto for the practice of social participatory architecture. It focuses on the need to understand in a different manner the relationships established in the field of social architecture between architects and their clients and users. What does ethics mean when it comes to designing for a community that lives in extreme poverty? Should architects design for the client or for the user? What resources should be used and how? These are just a few questions that this short text tries to address, while sketching the political context of contemporary social architecture. In this article I am going to present an antithesis between social participatory architecture and authoritative architecture for mass housing.

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