The role of the architect has changed quite drastically throughout the years of the professions existence. The architect began as a jack of all trades in which along with designing buildings the architect was typically a painter, sculpture, and an engineer. Years later the role of architect focused to simply buildings but still kept some remnants of being a jack of all trades. Architects fashioned themselves with knowledge of a great number of subjects rather than actually having the abilities themselves, in a sense they became the overarching organizer. I would argue that this is the state of the architecture profession as I write, however where will it go?

As the world becomes further networked and our resources become further stressed, architecture will become less of an elite art and instead make its way into the common forum. The reason for this is twofold. First, the expanding number of people living in informal/unrecognized settlements which demand architecture solutions to their problems. Second, and also concurrently,  the formal cultures in which architecture is designed is also changing. To fill this new requirement the role of the architect must shift towards a spatial agent, or in other words, an instigator, someone who sets the ball rolling and then steps back to see the amazing outcomes.

Several architects have already begun the transition and have made the jump quite successfully. What is most compelling about this new order of architecture is that both the formal and informal benefit through collaborative learning especially with ideas for sustainability, technology, and community. It is unfortunate however that the formal typically does not see the good that has come of this cross pollination and instead focuses on the negative, this almost always leads to pushing the informal away. It could be said that the informal through this paradigm becomes somewhat of a laboratory in which no one is afraid to innovate through trial and error. (2)

One example of two cities learning from each other is that of Tijuana and San Diego which Teddy Cruz writes about in great detail. Through improvisational construction techniques and the distribution of debris from San Diego, Tijuana has been constructed; Tijuana is a city which “constructs itself from the waste of the other.” (2) So Tijuana gets America’s trash and uses it to their advantage, great, but what are we really doing to help?

Running with the premise that we have established (Tijuana uses our trash to build their city), Teddy Cruz has fashioned a frame which can be hinged to create any sort of form. This frame acts as the glue combined with the discarded materials from San Diego to create a substantially more desirable dwelling. It does not simply stop there. These frames can also be used as infrastructure. In some cases a refillable, clip clip-on fiber-glass water tank containing a weeks worth of water can be strapped to the frame.(2)

It was hinted before, but what exactly are those in the formal settlements gaining from all of this. What we have here is an free, open, and exciting laboratory in which we can test a plethora of infrastructural and construction techniques which can then be applied to any city. This is an increasingly exciting premise which we should take full advantage of.

1) Spatial Agency

2) Tijuana Case Study: Teddy Cruz