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The SOCIOARC project focuses on the connections between social life and the built environment. It is a collaborative project led by scholars from Landscape Architecture (Anita Bakshi) and Sociology (Zaire Dinzey-Flores). Together we working on a book, a podcast, and a digital resource for design school curriculum and practice.
The built environment informs social life. And in turn, social life is informed by the built environment. Yet they are often studied, developed, and addressed in isolation. Sociologists are concerned with social dynamics and often focus on the social and economic manifestation of individuals and communities. Space is often relegated to context and the abstract where of geographical location.
Architects, landscape architects, and urban designers and planners of course care a great deal about the built environment and its composition. Yet they most often design for the non-social individual - an abstraction of “the public” or “the community” that is generally not investigated in great detail. Designs instead take their influence from certain legacies of design practice as well as assumptions that are made about the needs of the community.
In this project we focus on the concrete, physical reality of built space and its impact on social production. In this way, we seek to move past dominant approaches that address space and the social as abstracted categories. We rely on evidence from the visual and material worlds, alongside our observations of the social impacts of the built environment.
https://cca.rutgers.edu/detail/84-sponsored-working-groups/working-groups/486-society-design-lab
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