Lab Talk #3 Democratic Design
Democracy and Urban Form
© Rimini Design
To open the Democratic Design exhibition programme, Richard Sennett delivers a keynote on how architecture and urban design shape social life. He examines how the built environment can encourage interaction and strengthen civic participation – questions at the core of Democratic Design. Sennett’s writing, especially his Homo Faber trilogy – The Craftsman (2008), Together (2012) and Building and Dwelling (2018) – has strongly influenced architects and urbanists, shaping their values and approaches to city-making.
His talk will also draw on his latest book, Democracy and Urban Form, which revisits six landmark lectures delivered at Harvard GSD in 1981. There, Sennett argued that social discourse underpins democracy – and that cities, through their architecture and design, can either empower or constrain it.
Four decades on, as political polarisation persists in both familiar and newly emerging forms, his work returns to an urgent question: If cooperation, collaboration and compromise are the foundations of democracy, how can the design of our cities better support them?