It is very tempting to seduce ourselves, as architects or as anybody keen on architecture or otherwise involved in the design process that the answer to our problems lies with buildings. Do you actually believe you can separate buildings out from the infrastructure of cities and mobility of transit and the expectations and incentives of people?

The buildings are what form a major part but not necessarily the most important part of the infrastructure of the city.  Whether it is the transportation networks, water supply and other such systems that results in the buildings or in most scenarios the demand for modes of transportation or incentives that arises due to the existing buildings it cannot be ignored that both are a result of factors that cannot be independent a rely heavily on financial, political and social context. Thus the architecture of the city may not entirely depend on the design of buildings in isolation but the idea is nesting it to the surroundings so that it is adaptable to future developments or sets well within the existing systems. So no I don’t believe that they can be separated or even clearly distinguished from one another.

Why do people tend to believe that what is financially profitable (for developers) is not actually equivalent to economically feasible (positive impacts on social welfare)? How would you show that this does not necessarily have to be like this (but rather the opposite)?

The general tendency for developers is usually looked as being only financially profitable as it is assumed that short term benefits are more visually and easily understandable than long term profits or social welfare. This is not necessarily the same in every scenario; a simple example of the same can be seen while a country hosts the Olympic Games. Here although the developers make huge financially benefits at the same time huge amount of social welfare can be seen through the development of the overall infrastructure required to conduct the events which help improve the life the of the people living in those cities.

The goal of economic wealth is to meet human needs in such a way that life becomes in some respect richer and better in the process. It is not simply to produce as many stuff as you want. Stuff is a means. Yet the present aspect of the people on economy has always been focusing on means.

We tend to define the health of a community, a city, or a country according to how much economic capital (like cash flow and property value) and how much cultural capital (like birth of museums or festivals it holds) it has. But by taking only economic and cultural capital into account, we are missing a huge part of the whole thing here. We all know things can run smoothly, and sometimes very effectively accelerated with only individual to individual, a household to a household, a neighborhood to another neighborhood, but what about the connections?  Networks and mutual support systems among the residents of a community. Architecture couldn’t even live a day without these connections. It would be dead, deserted, and malfunctioned. Even a self-sufficient building couldn’t survive. This has happened to countless of Summer camp. We architectural students try to put our know-how into the hand of children in rural area. There has never been good connections between people from the city and those kids. The only connection would be a good will. Without studying of how lives there go on each day, studying of history, studying of surroundings materials or geological balance, mimicking ourselves as them, we could never make a connection. So no, without the linkage between whatever the city, the country or the people  is offering to the architecture, a part of the building will always be counted as social capital loss.

Of course as long as the money is the easiest way to define prosperity, the fastest way to get that financial gain back is to get the money. We can’t deny that this happens every second we are designing a building (as a developer or an architect) When it’s time for us to choose between two material for interior partition, one last very long and very toxic while the other looks green but ugly. When we couldn’t decide between two equivalent things, we use the cost to hand down the decision. The less we invest, the faster we got the profit back. So until there is another way to define wealth rather than money. (Well there is actually, with the carbon credit or LEED beneficial advantages, but they are not directly accounted for what we gain.) And it would be a huge leap of faith to imagin somehow there is a way to turn those benefits into money. Anyways, that is far from architects responsibility. The best we could to to turn things around is to perform our profession like we are going to live in the building we are designing and it will be ours, our children’s', our city’s and we have to take responsibility of everything the building costs, causes or crumbles into.

Both forms of capital, however, obscure the social role that architecture plays and the way in which buildings do not just represent financial or cultural value, but also social value.

Picture credit : http://makovskyblog.blogspot.com.es/2009/07/sometimes-love-equals-money.html

(Life shouldn’t be printed on dollar bills.  ~Clifford Odets)