Cyprus: Building Blocks for Social Sustainability

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By Petros Lapithis

At demanding times such as these, when we are called upon as a nation to withstand the turbulence of the financial crisis and the challenges of the energy potential, issues of community and social cohesion become pivotal to our global survival. The time has come to look beyond skin colour, religion and social order and to employ architecture as a means of creating living spaces that transcend racial division and micro-politics.
With this in mind, a group of instructors and dedicated students gathered around the walled city of Nicosia, and invented a world where social problems are tackled with urban proposals. This initiative came forth under the umbrella of Buildings Blocks for Social Sustainability (ARCH-392 Catalyst I).
"To sustain is to survive, and to survive as a community requires that class and racial differences, as well as spatial and perceptual distances are overcome by good will and good design. As such, social sustainability combines design of the physical realm with design of the social world for creating successful places that promote wellbeing by understanding what people need from the places they live and work."
The workshop addresses the issue of social sustainability within a humanistic and cultural context, set on the platform of the built environment. Participants are called to consider matters of formal and informal urban structure, sense of community, social identity and ethics as those pertain to societal development in a diverse, multicultural setting. Operating under the premise that social sustainability can be attained through means of collaboration and common awareness, the workshop’s findings aim to activate urban spaces in a three-dimensional and temporal manner in order to induce values of social and egalitarian participation.

http://unic.academia.edu/SustainableDesignUnit