Architecture Reborn, Through Public Interest Design

While articles such as Scott Timberg's piece in Salon this month have lamented the decline of architecture owing to the great recession and its boom excesses, Cary sees an opportunity to refocus the profession, in the service of wider society.

In a call to action, Cary writes that, "The emerging field of public interest design offers a new direction for architecture, one that takes into account the needs of the other 99 percent of the population that has historically been marginalized or disempowered from shaping their environments. While architecture has divorced itself from related fields like environmental psychology, landscape architecture, and urban planning, public interest design seeks to reunite them-not for the good of the profession, its image, or its bottom line, but for the benefit of society."

While the emerging field of public interest design has largely been marginalized to non-profit groups and institutions that rely on grants, philanthropy, and volunteer contributions to this point, Cary sees an opportunity for the field to enter the mainstream.