Architecture as Excuse: Social agency, informality, and participation within the built environment.

Architecture as an excuse will expose unconventional modes of production and professional empowerment within the built environment, within non-traditional fields of practice as opportunities to develop business models via a social agency, advocacy, and activism. Through this undertaking, strategies of participatory and sustainable environmental design endeavors emerge by working alongside communities and in collaboration with transdisciplinary teams.

Michael Smith Masis is founder and co-director of the award winning practice Entre Nos Atelier based in San Jose, Costa Rica. The practice encourages participation, collaboration, cooperation, and ownership by low income residents, rural and indigenous communities, and informal settlements, the true protagonists in the city. Projects are guided by principles of replicability, efficiency, functionality, feasibility, and environmental sustainability. His work has received the Young Architects in Latin America Award,  2017 CICA Award for Young Architects Practice, 2015 International Architecture Award at the Buenos Aires Biennial of Architecture, 2016 Grand Biennial Prize, and the 2016 and 2014 Icomadera Prizes and the 2015 Sustainable Construction Award in Costa Rica. A graduate of the AA SED Masters programme in 2008 Michael Smith is currently a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.