For sociologists and philosophers, agency is the capacity of an entity to act in any given environment. In recent years, architecture has been confronted with an ever changing social, economic, political and built environment, thus the practice has been constantly challenged to define, discuss and adapt its agency to respond in the most appropriate way and become an instrument of charge.
The agency of architecture necessarily implies questioning the relationship between theory and practice; and we are inevitably unable to dissociate our work as architects from our personal behavior and actions inasmuch as agency is also the capacity for human beings to make choices, choices that affect our neighborhoods and even the configuration of our cities. In this sense, the agency of architecture can be understood as a catalyst for creating alternatives for the built environment, and there are as many ways of doing so as there are ways of practicing architecture: from research to urban interventions, exhibitions and building.
This capacity of architecture to adapt, react and respond to specific circumstances is visible in the work of practitioners from a diverse set of backgrounds and projects. From small scale studios to big offices, our aim is to give voice to those practices that constantly seek to enrich, subvert or even put in crisis what we assume to be the agency of architecture.
Director of Foros: Ethel Baraona
Aula Magna School of Architecture
Inmasulada 22, Barcelona
www.uic.es/architecture