Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement presents eleven projects on five continents that respond to localized needs in underserved communities. These innovative designs signal a renewed commitment to the social responsibility of architecture felt by many of today's practitioners.

 

The featured projects include a school in Bangladesh, a reconsideration of a public housing tower in Paris, an apartheid museum in South Africa, and a cable car that connects a single hillside barrio in Caracas to the city at large. These works reveal an exciting shift in the longstanding dialogue between architecture and society, in which the architect's methods and approaches are being dramatically reevaluated. These undertakings not only offer practical solutions to known needs but put forth a reconsideration of the role of the architect in the twenty-first century. 140 pp.; 170 illus.