Socially engaged architecture is a broad and emerging architectural genre that promises to redefine architecture from a market-driven profession to a mix of social business, altruism, and activism that intends to eradicate poverty, resolve social exclusion, and construct an egalitarian global society. The Routledge Companion to Architecture and Social Engagement offers a critical enquiry of socially engaged architecture’s current context characterized by socio-economic inequity, climate change, war, increasing global poverty, microfinance, the evolving notion of professionalism, the changing conception of public, and finally the growing academic interest in re-visioning the social role of architecture. Organized around case studies from the United States, Brazil, Venezuela, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran, Thailand, Germany, Australia, Taiwan, and Japan the book documents the most important recent developments in the field. By examining diverse working methods and philosophies of socially engaged architecture, the handbook shows how socially engaged architecture is entangled in the global politics of poverty, reconstruction of the public sphere, changing role of the state, charity, and neoliberal urbanism. The book presents debates around the issue of whether architecture actually empowers the participators and alleviates socio-economic exclusion or if it instead indirectly sustains an exploitive capitalism. Bringing together a range of theories and case studies, this companion offers a platform to facilitate future lines of inquiry in education, research, and practice.

Design for Life: The Architecture of Sim Van der Ryn surveys the work and principles of Sim Van der Ryn, one of the world's most important leaders in the field of sustainalbe architecture. Sharing his years of experience as a teacher and using his building designs as examples, the author shows us that buildings are not objects but organisms, and cities are not machines but complex ecosystems. Fleeing Holland just weeks before Hitler's invasion, the Van der Ryn family settled in the outskirts of New York City. Young Sim grew up exploring the tiny pockets of grass, puddles, and swamps he found in Queens. An avid high school art student, he progressed to studying architecture in college. But he found the pervading modernist-style buildings to be emotionally cold and lacking human sensitivity. He longed for a way to restore architecture back to life. His breakthrough came during the frequent campus visits of R. Buckminster Fuller, who inspired him to think and design with the geometries of the natural world. Design for Life shows how the young architect began to look at the world with new eyes and saw the shifting patterns in nature and how these patterns profoundly affect how we live and work in the structures we build. Using his own projects and teaching experiences as examples, the author reveals the evolution of his thinking and the emergence of a new process of collaborative design that honors the buildings' users and connects them to the Earth. The book shows how architecture has created physical and mental barriers that separate us from our world, but how we can recover the soul of architecture and reconnect with our natural surroundings. Sim Van der Ryn is the president of Van der Ryn Architects, a Northern California firm known for its work in sustainable architecture. He taught architecture and design at the University of California, Berkeley, for over 30 years, inspiring a new generation to create buildings and communities that are sensitive to place, climate, and the flow of human interactions. Appointed California State Architect in the 1970s by then-Governor Jerry Brown, Van der Ryn introduced the nation's first energy-efficient government building projects. His vision and persuasive skills heralded a golden age of ecologically sensitive design and resulted in the adoption of strict energy standards and disability access standards for all state buildings and parks. As the author of six groundbreaking books about planning and design, including Sustainable Communities (1986, with Peter Calthorpe), Ecological Design (1996, with Stuart Cowan) and numerous articles, Van der Ryn has helped inspire architects to see the myriad ways they can apply physical and social ecology to architecture and environmental design. The author lives and works in Northern California, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.