Passages from Schindler’s “Architectural Exclusion”

vjohnson30

Urban design is a “form of regulation” (1939).
This quote may in fact be considered the thesis of Schindler’s “Architectural Exclusion.” As entire piece is written to explain what this means. Examples of urban design being the way a bridge was built in a city to prevent public transit to be able to drive underneath it to access certain areas or simply a park bench that is sectioned off in three parts to prevent the homeless from laying on it. These urban design elements promote segregation and discrimination which is ultimately regulation of certain groups of people (often POC and the poor).

“Architectural regulation is powerful in part because it is unseen, it ‘allows government to shape our actions without our perceiving that our experience has been deliberately shaped'” (1940).
Simply put, the government is always looking for ways to subtly and inconspicuously undermine the people and keep the poor, poor. Not many people are thinking that the one way street they drive down has an discriminatory implication, rather it is a simple nuisance on their way to work.

“…’there is no such thing as a neutral design'” (1948).
No city, no structure, no building is placed haphazardly. In another words, everything is the way is it for a specific reason or function. In this case a sidewalk or lack thereof in a hypothetical city, a street, the location of a building, the transportation you can use to go to different places in said city are planned out carefully to promote regulation from the government.

“The inability to use public transit to access the suburbs is one of the primary barriers preventing black people from obtaining suburban jobs” (1964).
According to Schindler, (white) suburban communities vote to keep public transit, such as trains, from stopping in their areas. This is in hopes to keep POC, in this case specifically black people, out of the area. This is also assuming that those who ride public transportation are poor and this is reason enough to keep them out of the suburbs, again keeping the poor, poor.

816 thoughts on “Passages from Schindler’s “Architectural Exclusion””

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *