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Nursing architecture: from intimate to ordinary
Edited by Brittany Oetting | Routledge | $48.95
In recent years, discussions around care and its definition have seeped into architecture and urbanism.This is evident in works such as Angelika Fitz and Elke Krasny’s 2019 edited volume Intensive Care: Architecture and Urbanism on a Broken Planet (MIT Press), the work of Gabu Heindl and the Rural Urban Framework, as well as the efforts of design nonprofits such as Emergency Architecture and Human Rights (EAHR) and the Kounkuey Design Initiative.new volume Nursing architecture: from intimate to ordinaryOne Book, edited by Brittany Utting, is one of the most comprehensive contributions to this discourse, whose origins can be traced to developmental psychology. In the 1970s, moral development psychology was dominated by “justice ethics,” which focused on the application of universal, abstract principles of justice. But Utting’s selection of works by various authors, including architect Neeraj Bhatia, philosopher Hélène Frichot and designer Elsa MH Mäki, proposes an ethics of care that challenges traditional definitions of architectural practice.
In his introduction, Utin revealed that the legal definition of nursing has existed for more than a century.She traces “standards of care” in architecture to 1896 coombs v bede Court cases define it as the reasonable exercise of skill and judgment expected of architects in similar geographic areas. Although today’s design and construction are much more complex, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) defines the standard of care in strikingly similar terms: “Architects shall perform their services with the professional skill and care customarily rendered by architects,” Utting argued. Practice in the same or similar location and under the same or similar circumstances.”
This “at the same place” restriction informs care structure. In acknowledgment that the built environment is entangled with larger processes such as mining economies and infrastructure, including global fiber optic networks, chapters are divided into three sections corresponding to three scales: body, collective and planetary.
“Intimacy and interdependence” deals first with the most local scope: caring for the individual’s body. Ignacio G. Galan’s chapter “Domestic Life of Disabled Persons and Bathroom Politics” explores the Independent Living Movement (ILM) of the 1970s, which revolutionized bathroom design standards. In Domestic Life and Architectural Film, Lilian Chee analyzes the relationship between domestic space and architectural maintenance, mainly in the documentaries of Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine. Photo essay by Ian Mun from their films Thriving Objects (2022) concludes the chapter with a contemplative visual interlude between academic works.
Next comes “Collective Power and Conflict,” which rises to the collective scale. Here, writings explore nursing as a site of collective struggle, from working-class identities and representations of the labor movement to Appalachian community action and the history of national health care. Neeraj Bhatia, in “Co-Practice as a Form of Care,” discusses communes in Northern California in the 1960s such as Kaliflower and the Black Panther Party. These anti-care institutions involve multi-scalar approaches that inspire new modes of freedom. Bhatia observed that through mutual aid programmes, new institutions provided new forms of resilience, solidarity and local agency in people’s daily lives.
The third and final section, “Repaired Landscapes,” asks, “How can we engage with the world without repeating the scalar logic of expansion and extraction inherent in modernity?” These chapters answer with a politics of care that addresses Damage to the natural environment, including articles on new spatial practices in environmental management, and damage to global internet infrastructure. Drawing on Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s 1960s “art of maintenance”, Hélène Frichot writes a “maintenance manual” for architects, examining the understated public spaces of Lacaton and Vassal’s 1996 Parc Leon Aucoc. The problem is the new building? ” Frishaw asks. “Can maintenance itself constitute a project, a project of repairing the world as distinct from world-building?” Carol Gilligan is mentioned briefly in this chapter, but care structure She has a wealth of contemporary ideas that build on the nursing ethics she developed 50 years ago.
Each chapter projects the concept of care into new discursive terrain, overcoming pitfalls associated with care such as gender differences, power imbalances, and uneven distribution of care responsibilities to women, communities of color, and immigrants. But under Utin’s editorial lens, these concepts crucially go further: care is expressed through the materials, spaces, and labor practices of architecture. care structure are demonstrations, manuals, and analyzes of many of these practices. Overall, each chapter challenges the legal standards of care that govern the foundations of our discipline.
Paul Mosley is an assistant professor of architecture and urban design in the School of Architecture and Environmental Design at Kent State University.
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