Re-Socialising the Architect

This research uses the dominance of homeownership in New Zealand as a lens to critically reflect on architecture’s legitimacy and agency to work towards social good. It evaluates the hegemonic and assimilative forces that architecture can provide, seen in the naturalisation of homeownership as universal good and the greater implications of hegemony on architectural practice. In the context of New Zealand, this research qualifies a rapidly changing housing system and investigates what the architect and architectural practices must do within a society that is financialising housing to regain legitimacy as a social project, as well as observing the injustices within architectural labour. The research seeks to correct the increased prevalence of architecture as a tool of capital, and thus its retreat as a figure in social movements through re-examining the tradition of manifesto writing in architecture. The research is hopeful that an architect can become an emancipatory figure in social movements with a renewed sense of radicalism, activism, and social justice.