RAPS: Radical Architecture Practice for Sustainability
MANIFESTO
Climate crisis, resource depletion, social segregation and other societal challenges – humans are increasingly threatening their own conditions of existence. The necessity for systematic change appears to be obvious, but how to enact this radical transformation is still unclear.
Within the last three decades discussions concerning ‘sustainability’ have in architectural debates and practices become mainstream and caused much confusion and haziness, in which easy rhetorical use masks lack of real change, commitment and responsibility.
The project Radical Architecture Practice for Sustainability (RAPS) is characterised by a departure from narrowly instrumental debates and instead geared towards re-thinking architectural design and research practice for sustainability with the aim to advocate innovative approaches and systemic change. This project seeks to explore the role of architecture and architects in promoting sustainability. We argue that architecture / architects need to be more aware about their potential contributions throughout the entire design process in order to play an important and proactive role in this transformation.
Sustainability in architecture is necessarily interdisciplinary and complex. Thus, this project aims to propel a broad understanding of sustainable architecture that includes diverse interdisciplinary perspectives: technology, materiality, responsibility, ethics, knowledge production, philosophy, social sciences, aesthetics, politics, agency and more. A broader understanding of sustainability in architecture, that includes questions how knowledge is generated, problems are framed, design targets defined, concepts created, choices made and how these shape design development, building materialization and operation.
Thus, this project aims to explore, create, develop and encourage future concepts, propositions and scenarios geared towards radical change.
