Architecture as an Excuse: Social agency, spatial justice and regenerative design

Design and architecture serve as catalysts for agency in the natural and built environment. Architecture as an excuse begins by questioning sustainability as an unsustainable principle. It seeks to value comprehensive and sensitive thinking towards the systems in which we live, where transdisciplinary approaches are fundamental. It is in this overlap between disciplines that spatial justice and regenerative design serve as approach platforms to work and promote more environmentally just, regenerative environments that dignify the human condition, represented in a body of work carried out in the last 15 years.

MICHAEL SMITH MASIS is director of the Entre Nos Atelier Central Office and the Spatial Justice Platform. He is a professor and researcher at the University of Costa Rica, Universidad Veritas, Tecnológico de Monterrey and the Universidad de los Andes. His work has received important awards and distinctions at the national and international level, promoting participation, collaboration, spatial justice and sustainability. Qualifying as an architect in 2005, Michael graduated with a Master’s in Sustainable Environmental Design from the AA in 2008 and was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University (2019).

Image: Cueva de Luz, La Carpio. San Jose, Costa Rica, Ingrid Johanning.