(Something) "socially responsive architecture" (stinks)

Something Stinks
By Austin Williams
I’ve just finished reading Steven Johnson’s “The Ghost Map” about 
London’s 19th C cholera epidemics. Until Dr John Snow located the source 
of the problem in the water supply, everyone believed that the killer 
disease has something to do with the all-pervasive stench of the city; 
the ‘miasma’ permeating the over-crowded slums of the city. Using 
painstaking empirical data backed up by meticulous research, the true 
cause was found. It heralded the triumphant era of Bazalgette’s sewer 
network.

Today, it seems that the miasma theory is making a comeback. Nowadays, 
the stink of bad design is being blamed for a range of intractable 
social problems, from anti-social behaviour to irresponsible travel; 
whereas good architecture can cleanse us. Larry Oltmanns of SOM 
describes Broadgate as “a design policy for fitter people and a fitter 
environment”, David Lammy says: ‘better places make us happier people.’ 
Not to be outdone, the Housing Corporation believes the architecture can 
combat racism and Bill Dunster believes that it can save the planet. If 
you believe the hype, cutting off the supply of bad design can begin to 
cure us of our ills.

However you look at it, the stench of Victorian condescension hangs 
heavy over much of this contemporary architectural discourse. Adam 
Sampson, chief executive of Shelter says that ‘offending and behavioural 
problems in adulthood may be traceable to behavioural problems that 
emerge when children are growing up in poor housing conditions.’ In 
1900, Lord Rosebery wrote: ‘the great cities, in the rookeries and slums 
which still survive, an imperial race cannot be reared. You can scarcely 
produce anything in those foul nests of crime and disease but a progeny 
doomed from its birth to misery and ignominy’.


cont'd....
http://www.futurecities.org.uk/articles/art04071.html