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Designing A Common World:
Public Responsibility and the aim 
to objectify architecture
 
Hans Teerds

Introduction

      Many architectural offices today tend to present 
their works as the inevitable result of the program 
brief and building site. Often, they showcase their 
designs on their websites, in architectural magazines, 
in lectures, or on internet blogs as the sum of a 
few logical steps, adjusting a simple volume (the 
possible envelope according to local restrictions) 
towards a final form (a response to programmatic 
and site-specific characteristics). These design-
narratives often are illustrated with simple and 
schematic line-drawings, emphasizing the logic of 
the final result. It is of course a simplified version 
of the design process, a ‘narrative’ only possible 
in hindsight. The tendency beyond, I think, is an 
eagerness to withdraw from the ‘subjective,’ with its 
associations as grounded in mere personal preference 
in the presentation of the project, in favor of reason 
and logic, which operate in the open, outside the 
subject. The same tendency can be recognized in the 
effort by other offices to present their projects as the 
outcome of working methods grounded in a strict 
and seemingly scientific analysis of big data, made 
possible by the unprecedented power of computers 
to envision and manipulate data (in real time), and 



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to map and manipulate information flows. (figure 1) Once again, some of 
these offices use such computational models to evoke the impression that 
the design work is the logical, even irresistible, outcome of an objective 
and extensive analysis of information. Some even suggest that in the (near) 
future architectural designs can be generated through artificial intelligence. 
No architects required (or better said: only software engineers needed)! 
And thus, the narrative goes: the design process will be objectified in such 
a way that the obvious subjectivity of the designer is excluded from the 
process in favor of the much more subtle subjectivity of the computational 
model. It is the old quest of ‘architecture without architects’, this time 
not in favor of a vernacular architecture, local traditions and spontaneous 
building processes, but in favor of the promises of the black box of Big 
Data. To these two claims that aim to overcome the subjective aspects of 
architectural design (or as stated, of the architectural designer) we might 
add a third direction: the renewed interest in participation trajectories. 
Both in scholarly research, as well as within architectural practices, there is 
a growing interest in the development of open design trajectories wherein 
stakeholders (beyond the usual: clients, investors, and planners but also 
future residents and users) are invited to intensely participate. This interest 
in participatory design, moreover, is not limited to the design phase. The 
product itself, the building, should be built in an ‘open’ system, where 
users can easily adapt the spaces to their wishes in time. Many examples 
of the tendencies above can be given, both from the field of practices as 
well as from academia. However, as I do not want to pinpoint offices to 
a singular take, I leave it to the imagination of the reader to frame these 
tendencies in architectural practice to actual cases.   
        Although these three attempts are very different in character, a shared aim 
can be recognized: the aim to reduce the subjective aspects of architectural 
design by (in theory) minimizing or altering the role of the designer from 
creator to something more like ‘facilitator.’ Such a ‘humbleness’ that 
emerges from the field functions as a corrective to the era of ‘starchitects’, 
wherein the creativity and genius of a single architect was emphasized, 
alongside a worldwide inclination towards the ‘new’, ‘novel’, and ‘original.’ 
The 2008 world-wide financial and economic crisis that followed the 
collapse of the Lehman Brothers bank in the USA made very clear how 
hollow such a perspective was. Architecture simply had become an empty 
shelf: the ‘surplus’ aesthetics attached to buildings, the icing on the cake. 
Although this can be understood in economic (and even Marxist) terms as 
the ‘surplus’ value, which could be made profitable in terms of marketing 
and branding, it of course hardly can be seen as a ‘proper’ understanding 
of the significance of architecture for inhabitants, users, society. After 



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all, due to the crisis, it immediately 
became clear that such a surplus value 
was only profitable in the case of the 
few designers that had become a brand 
in themselves. Or better said: there 
seemed to be no language left wherein 
the significance of architecture could 
be explained, neither to the inhabitants 
and users, nor to society as such, and, 
in line with that, also not to clients, 
constructors, investors, developers. 
Architecture had turned into a ‘statue 
of Nebuchadnezzar’: beautiful, 
spectacular, impressive, powerful, 
glamorous, but only loosely rooted in 
society (if rooted at all). 
       Consciously addressed in articles in the media and 
(new) assignments to architects, or unconsciously 
touched upon in discussions, it seemed that the 
‘subjectivity’ of the architectural designer was to 
blame. And thus, we can understand (and probably 
also value) the above-mentioned ways to organize 
and present design differently: they are mostly sincere 
attempts to overcome the crisis in architecture and 
to (re)connect to the client and user, to each other, as 
well as to society. The subjectivity of the designer has 
become the ‘whipping boy’ of architectural design. 
These reflections implicitly divide architectural 
practices into two very different approaches: the 
artistic practice versus the engineering practice. 
Schematically, both positions can be seen as the 
outer ends of a spectrum. On the one side the 
architect is presented as creative genius producing 
original and unforeseen (architectural) proposals 
(model: the ‘starchitect’, Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead) 
which need to be characterized as ‘art’, while on the 
other side one would find the architects that simply 
understand their practices as consultancy offices, 
and their work as a form of engineering. These 
architects get the project done, straightforwardly 
fulfilling the wishes of the client (model: a ‘service 

they are 
mostly sincere 

attempts to 
overcome 

the crisis in 
architecture 

and to (re)
connect to the 

client and user, 
to each other, 
as well as to 

society.

“

”

Figure 1:

grasshopper program 
computational architecture



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office’).2 Whereas most of the architectural offices, obviously, operate in 
the grey zone of this spectrum (aiming to do a good job with regard to 
both ends of the spectrum), the above signalized tendency in practice 
heads towards this latter end of the spectrum.
       This tendency walks a dangerous path because the removal of subjectivity 
entails the loss of the underpinnings of architectural responsibility. In 
order to unravel this idea I will lean upon two perspectives offered in the 
writings of the philosopher Hannah Arendt. First I will use her distinction 
between the earth and the world. This distinction and her understanding 
of the world as a world-of-things offer a perspective wherein the practice of 
architecture can be understood as world-construction, a valuable external 
reference frame for the professional field of architecture. This perspective 
at first sight might seem to offer an argument to reduce subjectivity in 
design, but that, as we will see, is at odds with Arendt’s own perspective. 
A certain balance between objectivity and subjectivity is needed. In order 
to define that balance, I secondly will use her unfinished reflections on 
the human faculty of ‘judgment’. This last perspective offers a key to the 
aspect of subjectivity in design, wherein subjectivity and responsibility are 
intertwined. This perspective is important, as it opposes the move to align 
architectural design with the repressive and dangerous tendencies endemic 
to technocratic engineering.
       Before I set up this argument, three brief remarks. First: the tendencies 
described above are not novel at all. Amongst others, the writings of the 
architects George Baird and Giancarlo De Carlo and historians Kenneth 
Frampton and Robert Gutman have stressed the tension between the 
artistic and the functional throughout the 19th and 20th century, and 
pondered attempts to either transform architecture to a more scientifically 
or socially ‘just’ professional field, or reduce it to a solely artistic one.  
Current trends, while not novel, are intensifications of these tensions.3
       Secondly, it is the subjectivity of the designer that I focus on even 
though it must be recognized that the building process is shot-through 
with subjectivity: subjective are the aims and wishes of the client, investor, 
developer, of the public official that formulates the restrictions for a particular 
site, and of the politician that wants to develop a lasting monument before 
time in office has finished. Design, however, is a particular instrument 
within the building industries. It is a tool that architects have, a tool that 
bridges the different viewpoints. This is an important given. Even in times 
wherein the subjectivity of architectural design is under attack, we need to 
understand the unique capacities of design. 
       Third, it of course is clear that this ‘designer’ almost never is a single 



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architect. In most cases, design is teamwork, work of 
an office with project architects, assistant designers, 
interns, drafters. So when addressing ‘the architect’, 
I have in mind both the single designer, as well as 
the collaborative.

The Things of the World

       How can we understand the context of 
architecture: What is its significance beyond the 
beautification of buildings, urban spaces, and 
cultural landscapes? The writings of Hannah Arendt 
offer an appropriate perspective in this regard, 
through which the cultural and political meaning 
of the profession can be understood. The Canadian 
architect and theoretician George Baird stated in his 
1995 book The Space of Appearance that Arendt has 
been one of the very few philosophers of the 20th 
century to include “the things of the world”4 in her 
political philosophy.  In other words, within political 
reflections in philosophy and other academic fields, 
theories hardly grasp the tangible world, the things 
that surround us. Arendt’s perspective then stresses 
the tangible world as politically relevant. In order 
to understand this relevance, let us first explicate 
what she meant by ‘things of the world’. In her 
writings, Arendt distinguishes the ‘world’ from the 
‘earth’, a distinction she partly based on the writings 
of philosopher Martin Heidegger, who had been 
her professor during her studies. The distinction 
roughly is between the natural and the cultural, 
the globe versus the human interventions, human 
affairs, and relationships. But where Heidegger 
offers a negative reading of this distinction, Arendt 
ponders the world in a clearly positive perspective.5 
Where Heidegger takes the classical philosophical 
stance and understands the humble and stumble, 
rumour and noise of public life, as disturbing the 

      This 
tendency 
walks a 

dangerous 
path because 
the removal 

of subjectivity 
entails the 
loss of the 

underpinnings of 
architectural 
responsibility.

“

”



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vita contemplativa, she, on the contrary, aims to celebrate the participation 
in public life and the engagement in the world and its wanderings, the 
vita activa. A perspective overlooked and neglected within philosophy, 
according to Arendt – and not without consequences. The whole political 
development in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century urged 
her—as a Jew born in Germany, searching for refuge in France and the 
United States—to become politically aware, and publicly active.6  So what 
does the distinction mean for her? To her the earth stands for the natural 
circumstances of the globe, depicted by the cycle of nature. For Arendt 
this is not an idealistic situation, as she stresses the need to transform that 
globe into a habitable place. This transformation establishes the world. 
The world thus is the earth made fit for human habitation and the human 
community.7 Through human intervention, through the creation of 
artefacts (houses, furniture, infrastructure), the earth is transformed into 
a human world.  The distinction between the two terms thus roughly 
corresponds to the natural and the cultural spheres. Arendt emphasizes 
the different qualities that belong to both entities: it is the cyclicality 
of nature versus the perpetuity of culture, the survival of species versus 
the permanence of the human artefacts. For Arendt ‘things’ are not just 
objects, but they are part and parcel of that artificial ‘world’. Human 
artefacts establish the world. In addition to this basic principle, Arendt 
draws attention to two perspectives of artefacts that qualify this world, 
which also turns them into a prerequisite for sensible political life —the 
relationship Baird stressed. 

1.       For Arendt the world always is a world shared with others. Or in 
her terms: the world always is ‘in-common.’ Human artefacts, that at once 
establish a world, immediately also establish commonality. “To live in the 
world,” Arendt writes in a famous quote, “means essentially that a world 
of things is between those who have it in common, as a table is located 
between those who sit around it; the world, like every in-between, relates 
and separates men at the same time.”8  Arendt stresses that this ‘table’ not 
only is to be seen as a spatial commonality (to be collected around an 
artefact-in-common)), but also as a commonality that stretches in time 
(we have the object not only in common today, but we share it also with 
previous generations, as well as with those to come).9  Both continuities 
(or commonalities) of the world are rendered by Arendt as prerequisites 
for sensible political life. The intangibility and vulnerability of “action 
and speech,” that Arendt frame as the crucial activities of political life, 
requires a durable and common stage.10 Politics, for Arendt, does not 



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primarily relate to parliament and government, 
to town hall and council, but to “the coexistence 
and association of different men,” which certainly 
relates to the intangible interaction between human 
beings (like in the political arena) but also is related 
to the tangible (public) artefacts and institutions 
that structure and organize the world and orients 
their inhabitants.11  The world of things, in other 
words, is at once the stage of politics as well as the 
concern of politics. 

2.     While the first point stresses artefacts as such, 
delivering a stable stage for the realm of politics, the 
second perspective qualifies these artefacts. They are 
not neutral atoms in space, but have a particular 
shape, history, tactility, or to be short: presence. 
They appear to the human being through their 
form—a form that is particular and recognizable, 
and that can revive particular memories and 
narratives.12  According to Arendt, this particularly 
counts especially for such artefacts as memorials, 
monuments, and works of art. She thus underlines 
the capacity of artefacts—in particular: works of 
art—to reify stories and narratives, to memorize 
actions of the past, and to make history present 
today. Artefacts are carriers of meaning, memory, 
heritage, orientation, order, and identity, they 
can revive (collective) memories and evoke 
remembrances.13  This aspect of the ‘things of the 
world’ is related to a crucial capacity of the human 
being; the possibility to tell a story. The life of the 
individual—a narrative in time between birth and 
death—is an example of such a story, but also the 
‘the life of the polis’, which obviously is the story 
of particular histories. The crucial aspect of the 
narrative is not only the possibility to contemplate 
actions within time, but also that it can be shared 
with others. This, for Arendt, transforms the life of 
the polis into a political life.14  This capacity to tell 
stories is foremost a capacity of the human being, 



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but, as Arendt also stresses, such narratives are the “everlasting essence of 
the work of art” in the context of politics.15  Needless to say that works 
of art indeed often consciously reify (historical) narratives, and that such 
works of art have been important to the realm of politics and the self-
understanding of human communities. However, we do not have to limit 
our understanding at this point to figurative art, Greek poems, or the 
plot in movies. The particular shape of artefacts (works of art as well as 
everyday artefacts) can be a ‘holding place’ for narratives: objects can evoke 
remembrances, and thus are able to make particular histories present, but 
they also can evoke future perspectives, which unfold and are addressed in 
stories too. 
       To summarize, artefacts not only offer stability and permanence, but 
also memory, remembrance, structure, and orientation in the world. Both 
layers of understanding of the ‘things of the world’ value artefacts in a 
very sensible and concrete way, engaging aspects of spatiality, materiality, 
tactility, tangibility, and the capacity of narration, as well as the inherent 
aspects of production and use. All these aspects in one way or the other may 
contribute to the commonality and durability of a political community or 
disturb it.

Architecture as World-Construction

       This perspective upon the ‘things of the world’ offers a valuable 
path to construct a cultural and political—and therefore also ethical—
framework to understand the work of the architect, not only for architects 
working on grand cathedrals, but also for those developing and designing 
not-so-grand bicycle sheds.16  Arendt stressed that works of art are the 
most worldly human artefacts, particularly since they are objects not 
intended for commonplace utility but only to be accessed in a disinterested 
attitude, and therefore will not be damaged through use and spoiled by use 
or consumption. Works of art therefore are, if kept well protected from 
natural influences, the most durable objects on earth, and thus will offer 
the most stable underpinnings for society.17  Arendt nevertheless does not 
limit the twofold aspects of the ‘things of the world’ solely to works of art, 
but only placed them in hierarchy above the other works of the human 
being. 
       With these concepts in mind, let us stretch Arendt’s perspective 
to the field of architecture. We first need to recognize how important 
architecture is with regard to the establishment of the world (and in the 



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context of an existing world, the maintenance and 
continuation of it). The built environment after 
all literally shapes the world for its inhabitants. It 
constructs the everyday places of human life, as 
well as the monuments that structure political life, 
the memorials, the buildings of the parliament, the 
offices of public institutions. It structures the cities 
and neighbourhoods, where people live, work, enjoy 
a movie, or go to court, as well as the landscape, 
where the food grows, the natural reserves are, the 
slopes for skiing. Architecture builds the museums, 
where the works of art are exhibited, and it delineates 
the public squares, where people can gather. 
Architecture, in other words, mediates between 
the human being and the earth, as well as between 
the human being and the human community. It 
creates the private spaces of the home, as well as a 
context for meaningful collective life. It offers room 
for actions to unfold, for stories to be enacted, for 
history to take place, for experiences to be gained 
—and by doing so, through all the events that take 
place on their stairs and balconies, their wooden 
floors and tile pavements, against their walls and 
columns, (hi)stories are written. The patina of the 
materials, the traces of use on the stairs and floors 
—they are not entirely negative, as Arendt seems 
to argue: it is particularly through these traces of 
decay and use that history is made present, that 
memories and remembrances of users, inhabitants, 
and communities are evoked.18  Buildings and 
cities, landscapes and works of infrastructure—they 
all first accommodate the human community, but 
second also offer a ‘holding place’ for memories 
from the (recent) past. 
     Works of architecture (both grand and 
humble), we might conclude, simply relate users 
and inhabitants with the earth and with each 
other spatially through the placing of walls, doors, 
windows, roofs, pavements, and so on. This relation 
not only is established at this point in time, but also 
over time, with generations of the past as well as 

Arendt 
stressed that 
works of art 
are the most 

worldly human 
artefacts

“

”



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of the future. Architecture plays a role both in a tangible and material 
sense (by the very structures), as well as in a mental sense (by being 
sites of heritage, memory, and so on). Architecture, therefore, should be 
understood as ‘world-construction.’ 
       If architecture, a term which here includes the fields of planning, 
constructing, urban design, and landscape architecture, is world-
construction, then it needs to carefully engage with the world it brings 
into existence in order to keep it fit for human inhabitation and political 
interaction. Architectural design then cannot be indifferent to the world-
in-common, but requires an attitude of engagement towards the worlds 
it both touches and creates. From this perspective, we can usefully define 
three tasks for the professional field of architecture: 
1.        This perspective stresses the value of the existing (built) environment 
as the context of the social network of the inhabitants as well as a ‘holding 
place’ for stories, memories, remembrances. It thus offers an argument for 
a careful renovation, restoration and refurbishment of existing buildings, 
urban structures and cultural landscapes. The existing built environment 
is not a tabula rasa, nor neutral ground, wherein architecture intervenes. 
2.      Importantly, this is no argument for stasis. In her reflections on 
culture, Arendt stresses that two perspectives align in culture: the careful 
maintenance of the existing intertwines with the intervention that creates 
room for the new.  The second task for architectural practices thus is to 
embed the new in the existing.19 This of course creates a new composition, 
a new entity—but with respect to what has been, and how that has been 
established.20  
3.        For the third task, we need to take one step further. To acknowledge 
that through the shape of artefacts narratives can be told, is to challenge 
the architect to both understand and take responsibility for the narratives 
inherent in their proposals. This charge, of course, counts for all 
interventions in the world, but from a political perspective, it particularly 
counts for the design of public buildings. After all, public buildings— 
townhalls, schools, libraries,—through their form also reify particular 
narratives, as for example a well-designed public school will narrate the 
importance of education in our society (moreover, the structure of the 
school does influence the possibilities of education, but also narrate 
what educational system we are after—think of the early school-designs 
of the Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger), while a rundown public 
school building simply seems to show that public funding of the school 
is not prioritized.21  Just as townhalls of the past perfectly reify the 
relationship between local power and the citizens and cathedrals do the 



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same for religion and the community of believers, 
new townhalls and churches also reify comparable 
narratives.22  They are carriers of the organization 
of the current human community and thus expose 
what has been assigned as important for this 
community. As political philosopher Bonnie Honig 
argues in her recent Sydney Lectures in Philosophy 
and Society: “Public things are the infrastructure of 
democratic life, and they underwrite the signs and 
symbols of democratic unity, that, for the moment, 
still survive.” And while she relates this perspective 
with the previous mentioned need for a stable 
underpinnings of the political realm, she writes: 
“things … stabilize the web of meanings in which 
we live and into which we may act.”24  
These three tasks: valuing the existing built 
environment for its embedded meanings, sensitively 
engaging that environment with new revisions, 
and care for the narrative quality of architecture, 
are crucial assignments for every architectural 
intervention in the world. What designers propose 
never is neutral. It must always deal with structures 
from the past, as well as their inherent narratives, 
while at once adding new narratives that in their 
turn reify the current relationship to the earth 
(and its environmental issues) and the world (as a 
world-in-common). 

The Challenge of Subjectivity

       According to George Baird, this perspective 
“electrifies the architectural project,” ethically.  
Rightly so: while individual wishes, needs and 
ambitions as well as commercial perspectives, 
profits, and business cases are the genesis of 
most architectural assignments, there is always 
spillover.25 Architecture—even in the most isolated 
circumstances—always is tethered to the world-in-
common, and thus is establishing, maintaining, 
and intervening in the world, which in turn has 



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political and cultural meaning. Architecture thus is an inherently political 
and cultural endeavor, the import of which forms the basis for its unique 
ethos, for not only does it assert that architecture significantly establishes 
or maintains the world-in-common, but also that architecture can become 
an agent of destruction to the commonly shared world. It can disturb the 
possibilities for establishing political life and obliterate the (collective) 
stories that are stored in the world. 
       This is what justifies holding that the architectural project thus reaches 
beyond the immediate interests of the stakeholders: through its impact 
on the commonly shared world. This of course not only offers an ethical 
perspective upon the architectural designer’s work, but also is applicable 
for other parties involved in the building process, from commissioner to 
building manager, and from constructor to politicians who decide upon 
the building regulations, or the ambitions with regard to urban renewal, 
social housing, or public buildings. Arendt’s perspective offers a framework 
for a (self )critical approach to each building assignment—a horizon against 
which a project (from program brief to design, and from construction to 
demolition) can be evaluated, challenged, and valued, as it both challenges 
the ‘what/why’ as well as the ‘how’ of a project. 
       Although this perspective of ‘the world in common’ might call for 
sensitivity amongst designers to the larger context of their work, it does 
certainly not plea for objectivity in design. Baird, argues that neither a 
radically subjective position, nor a supposedly objective approach are 
appropriate responses vis-à-vis the idea of a shared world.26  Obviously, to 
develop participation processes, create open-building structures, make use 
of data modelling, and present architecture through a logical explanation 
can be valued positively as exhibiting awareness of a certain architectural 
ethos. These strategies are particularly welcome against an architectural 
era that uncritically engaged with the new and the novel, the oeuvre 
and the artistic. However, there is a clear downside to these attempts to 
wipe out subjectivity as well: if objectification of design is the endgame, 
it comes with a reductionist perspective and risks dissipation of design-
responsibility. This assertion is based on three considerations: 
1.        According to Arendt, the world is characterized by plurality: it is 
site-specific and time-specific due to the natural circumstances of the earth, 
the development of the world, the cultural and political development and 
engagement with the world, the development of tools and instruments 
(technology) that make minor and major interventions possible, as well as 
through the histories and events that unfolded within the world and thus 
upload the world with narratives. Although the ‘facts’ of these differences 



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can be traced in comprehensive analyses, or can 
be collected in the numbers of ‘big data’, their 
cultural, social and political meanings, that is to 
say, what gives them ethical import, are out of reach 
of these instruments. Without acknowledging 
the personal and collective narratives, the cultural 
and political aspects of the built environment, 
architecture is stuck in reductionist and purely 
materialist perspectives. This particularly is the 
case if the design-instruments (as data-mining, 
logical reasoning, participation) are magnified, and 
rather than being mere tools to achieve an ethical 
end become regarded as self-justifying processes. In 
all of the mentioned cases in the introduction to 
this article, there is the risk to reduce the reality of 
the world to objective facts: either to the ‘factual’ 
perspective of participants in the development 
process, or to the overwhelming amount of ‘facts’ 
that are collected through data mining, or finally to 
the ‘facts’ that are seemingly the inevitable result of  
logical investigation in program, site, and use. 
2.    Simultaneously with such a reductionist 
perspective, these methods and attempts to objectify 
architecture also disturb the ethical understanding 
of architect’s practice since the process of ‘design’ 
is misunderstood. When the design-method 
is so magnified, the process should follow its 
predefined path. Such a process is repressive; it 
strongly steers while diminshing the freedom 
to do things differently, to be surprised by one’s 
findings. This steering both removes opportunities 
for personal reflection and simultaneously taking 
responsibility for one’s decisions. One can hide 
behind the outcome of data mining, the wishes of 
the participants, the facts that are taken from the 
context and program, or behind the investors or 
client—any of which somehow ‘automatically’ lead 
to the proposed project. This of course is a bit of a 
simplified presentation: there still is ‘design’, but it 
operates on a higher level of abstraction: the design 
of the used methods and instruments, the selection 

      if 
objectification 

of design is 
the endgame, 
it comes with 

a reductionist 
perspective and 
risks dissipation 

of design-
responsibility. 

“

”



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and development of the computational program, the selection of data 
scraped, the way data are connected, the ‘architecture’ of the algorithm. 
This is a way of defining the organisation, a matter of decision making, and 
interpretation—and their impact on the world can be devasting. However, 
now the design decisions do not operate in the open, but are kept at a 
remove from the actual projects. A new and obfuscating layer, defining 
the algorithm or the structure of the design method, is added between the 
designer and the end-object. It distances challenging and subtle matters 
of subjectivity, biases, ethical dilemmas from the actual design task. This 
remove easily hides the subjective and ethical aspects of the project from 
the public eye, particularly if these methods and instruments are seen as 
objective, even if not scientifically truthful, and thus are neither challenged 
nor questioned—not in the discussions within the designer’s office, nor in 
the (everyday) talks to clients, neighbours, and society. 
       This, I would argue, is hiding behind the instruments, and behind 
the outcome of the application of these instruments, without taking 
responsibility for one’s own decisions (not on the level of the design 
of the method and instrument, nor on the use of the outcome of the 
implementation of these methods and instruments). In other words, if 
method and instrument are presented as factual and scientifically truthful, 
the outcomes easily can be understood as ‘objective facts’ too. What then 
is left to the designer except implementation? The architect will operate a 
design-machine, and needs to follow what is prescribed—simply turning 
the diagrams or directions into structures (if this is still needed, one might 
imagine that artificial intelligence even this step in the design process can 
take over). He or she probably will follow a self-prescribed path (through 
the definition of the algorithm)—but without taking responsibility that 
this path is inherently subjective and hence to be challenged continuously. 
3.      Arendt’s perspective of the world-in-common clearly at once both 
challenges the subjective intervention in this world, as well as the aim 
to be objective. It not only provokes the idea that design simply can be 
the ‘just’ interpretation of big data, or that it can be the application of 
computational models and logical reasoning, but offers a ‘critical’ reading to 
all other instruments through which the professional aims to define a more 
or less ‘objective’ underpinnings of his designs. Arendt also is critical of the 
immediate and unquestioned application of theories, dogmas, philosophies, 
particular design methods, and so on. All these ‘instruments’ can form 
an obstacle between the designer and the world, particularly when the 
tools are overvalued and the complexity of the world is reduced to singular 
perspectives. Architectural design, understood as ‘world-construction’ 



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is a matter of immediate engagement with the 
world-in-common, and reflection on its existing 
structures, meanings, its rootedness in the past, and 
how it can be strengthened, enhanced, continued, 
while immediately offering space to new needs 
and wishes. Architects simply are challenged to 
apply their work with caution, not to destroy the 
precarious threads that connect us with the past, 
neither to insert the failure-projects of tomorrow, 
nor to lose their rooting in society.27  
      This, for architects seeking to execute the 
ethical fullness of their charge, clearly is a balancing 
act between the objective and the subjective. 
The perspective that design deals with concrete 
artefacts that are in-common challenges designers 
to organize the ethical questions as clearly and 
concretely as possible within each design project 
(and not hidden in abstraction, or obscured in the 
instruments and methods), while communicating 
openly and accessibly about the subjective aspects 
of the activity of design (and how to deal with them 
from an ethical perspective). 

Architectural Judgment

       How then can we understand architectural 
design, if it is a balancing act between the objective 
and the subjective? The design process often is 
understood as a black box, wherein imagination and 
experience, taste and other subjective aspects, play 
a role. Generally speaking, architectural design is 
not understood by the broader public, as is tangible 
in all sorts talks about architecture in the media or 
in personal conversations in which the architect 
after all never is never challenged by his audience 
to respond to the costs of one iconic building, the 
terrible leaking of another, the un-functionality of 
again another spectacular building? However, if we 
zoom in to the actual process of design, we obviously 
immediately understand that the design first and 

       Arendt’s 
perspective of 

the world-in-
common clearly 

at once both 
challenges 

the subjective 
intervention in 
this world, as 

well as the aim 
to be objective.

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foremost is embedded in the wishes of the client. Architects actively define 
and shape the intervention in the existing environment according to a 
program brief, along the lines of wishes of clients, investors, developers, 
and other stakeholders. This perspective at first sight seems to limit the 
responsibility of the architect. After all: most of the outcome of the design-
process is already given and predefined in a program brief (particularly in 
complex projects, these program briefs are like books containing hundreds 
of pages with prescriptions). However, design is not simply the answer to a 
particular program brief, as there are many answers to that same program 
brief, as architectural competitions clearly show. 28 This simple given of the 
multiplicity of possible outcomes already shows how crucial the position 
of the designer is, despite his currently often limited power in the process 
of development. Besides the very activity of sketching and investigating, 
two aspects of design are crucial with regard to the world-in-common:
  • Through the design process, often contradictory and conflicting 
viewpoints and insights evolve, as the needs of the client are addressed 
as well as the wishes of the future users and inhabitants, the concerns 
of the neighbours, the ambitions of local politics, the constraints of the 
existing situation, the regulations of local rules and laws, and so on. 
Design investigates possibilities and opportunities, and through these 
investigations, new, unforeseen, and unthought-of perspectives open up—
perspectives that might unite contrasting positions. 
     • Through design, moreover, the question of imagination is posed: what 
do we envision as the outcome of the project, what should it narrate, what 
does it stand for (and how does it contribute to the world-in-common)? 
In one way or the other, decisions have to be made upon the directions 
of the design process. To treat these issues as jigsaw puzzles that can be 
solved through mathematical logic, smart reasoning, or through complex 
computation is to abdicate architectural judgment: to make choices, to 
decide upon what is important, to value the several perspectives, and to be 
able to discuss these issues publicly. 
      It will be useful to introduce at this point another term borrowed 
from Arendt’s writings: her reflections on political judgment. These 
reflections, although not fully developed because of her sudden death 
in 1975, incorporate ideas about the public access as well as the inter-
subjectivity of such judgments. In particular, two aspects of judgment—
the accessibility of the decision as well as its intersubjective character—are 
pressing questions regarding architectural design.   
      Arendt based her understanding of political judgment on Immanuel 
Kant’s proposition of aesthetic judgment. The crucial feature Arendt 



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adopts from Kant’s perspective is his idea of the 
“intersubjective validity [of judgment] in the 
public realm.”29  Aesthetic judgment, for Kant, 
is not limited to the application of personal taste 
(although the development of taste is crucial), but 
always is related to the larger context of society. It 
requires an active engagement with this community, 
particularly through the application of an enlarged 
mentality. This latter term open to an important 
perspective, particularly in regard to the activity 
of design. What is important at this point is that 
Arendt also argues that politics, upon which she 
is focused, should not be understood as a realm of 
‘truths’ in a scientific sense. “Truth in the sciences is 
dependent on the experiment that can be repeated 
by others; it requires general validity. Philosophic 
truth has no such general validity. What it must 
have … is ‘general communicability’.”30  Surely, 
facts do play a role in the realm of politics—as 
clearly can be derived from the omnipresence of 
‘alternative facts’ in today’s political institutions. 
However, even if all participants stick to the 
same facts, paradoxical and even contractionary 
perspectives can be developed. Facts after all require 
both interpretation and validation. In politics, 
it is much more about the weighing of facts and 
understanding their relationships, particularly in 
relationship to the world and its wanderings, than 
it is about finding and defending the truth. In 
politics, moreover, understanding the facts and their 
relationships does not lead to a political program or 
decisions that can organize society in all its plurality. 
On the contrary, for Arendt the political arena is 
not about facts and figures, but about conflicting 
interpretations and contradictory perspectives. 
This approach thus requires the capacity to make 
decisions not solely on the basis of facts, but also 
with regard to conflicting perspectives and within 
complicated situations. Political judgment, Arendt 
therefore argues, is bound to a certain community. 
One judges “as a member of this community and 



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not as a member of a supersensible world.”31 Being part of a community 
urges us to understand the subjective aspects of our own position in the 
world, and urges us to take “the viewpoints of others into account.”32  
Arendt stresses that the capacity to acknowledge other perspectives rightly 
requires a specific human capacity that she calls after Kant the “enlarged 
mentality.” “The ‘enlargement of the mind’ is accomplished by “comparing 
our judgment with the possible rather than the actual judgments of others, 
and by putting ourselves in the place of any other man.”33  
       The striking perspective Arendt stresses here is that she seems to 
take this process of judgment very literally. To take other viewpoints into 
account is not to think about other perspectives (or to take note of these 
perspectives), but literally means entering the problem at hand from the 
standpoint of other positions in the world. This describes a process of 
active engagement: to re-place oneself to another position, to re-write the 
story from that very perspective. Judgment requires the ability to place 
oneself in the place of others, in order to think from their position in the 
world. This is a crucial perspective: judgment implicitly requires a public. 
The plural public is at the heart of judgment processes—if not literal, then 
through the human faculty of imagination. “By the force of imagination 
it makes the others present and thus moves in a space that is potentially 
public, open to all sides.”34  
       The crucial point for our reflection on architectural design is Arendt’s 
next step: it is one thing to replace oneself to other positions, and to be 
able to think from within these positions, but the question how to judge 
is still open. It still requires judgment to make up one’s mind and to make 
decisions. Judgment requires a space to reflect, think, test other points of 
view, as it eventually also requires expertise, experience, knowledge, and 
intuition. Such a judgment requires engagement and reasonable training, 
as it does not depend upon general rules but on “thinking the particular.” 
Since in judgment imagination and intuition are involved, it is understood 
as requiring faculties of the human being that are shaped through active 
engagement in the world and participation in public life, as well as fueled 
through experience and knowledge. Through such an engagement in the 
world, one is able to recognize the particular, and to imagine the particular 
from different points of view. It is only through such a process, Arendt 
argues, that judgment becomes “communicable:” It can be communicated 
to others, as it is based on the thinking from different perspectives and 
on the development of and reflection upon multiple possibilities. This 
communicability takes the form of a persuasive activity: it is able to appeal 
to the variety of perspectives within society, even if it has judged that some 

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of the perspectives seem to be other than just.35  
       If we now turn back to architectural design, 
we easily can see the parallel. On the architect’s 
drawing table literally lay a variety of perspectives 
at hand: the client’s, the users’, the inhabitants’, 
the local politics’ perspective, and the neighbors’. 
The architect listens to their voices and challenges 
the project from their point of view. In the end, 
however, it is the design that needs to bring these 
(often conflicting) perspectives together, against 
the horizon of the world-in-common (in space and 
time) and not the design tool, the algorithm, the 
survey, or the sorted data. Design is an activity that 
sometimes unfolds somehow in solitude (within 
the office, at the drawing table, in meeting rooms, 
and so on), but that inherently also requires a 
continuous, imaginative conversation with its 
context, with the world-in-common. It requires 
imagination to “make the others present,” and by 
doing so making the architectural office and the 
subsequent meeting rooms (of clients, engineers, 
planners, politicians) where the design is developed, 
a public space.36  It is through the making present 
of the public at the heart of the process of design, 
that the design also can be made public, that the 
design is communicable, that it is accessible to be 
discussed publicly.37  

Conclusion

       Returning to the three examples of resistance 
against subjectivity I described at the outset: 
Obviously, we can’t lump all three examples together 
as a singular tendency completely. Especially the 
attempt to open up the design process for the 
participation of future users and inhabitants seems 
to stand out. New technologies appear especially 
promising in this regard where they help to 
streamline processes of interaction, discussion and 
debate, and how new techniques, developed in the 

       All 
attempts that 

aim to diminish 
the subjective 

from design 
will fall into 

the trap of 
technocratic 

engineering, 
wherein a 

reductionist 
and materialist 

vision is 
embraced, and 
responsibility 

is endlessly 
displaced. 

“

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gaming industries, also can be applied to architectural and urban planning 
processes. Moreover, in several countries around the world new ways of 
developing buildings appear, where in cooperative ways future inhabitants 
strongly work together, and are completely involved in the processes of 
developing and designing, and even financing and constructing their 
future housing. However, this does not diminish the role of design in these 
processes. Moreover, it is clear that if all these voices have to be heard, 
the complexity of the design process increases. How to incorporate the 
different and often opposing viewpoints into a single design? It is in this 
perspective that we can validate the parallel between architectural design 
and political judgment, as pondered by Hannah Arendt. Judgment requires 
the training of the human faculty of ‘enlarged mentality’ and imagination. 
To judge means to be able to think from different perspectives, not 
to define the average of these perspectives, but in order to come to an 
informed judgment. 
       A similar case can be made for design. Design requires the ability to think 
from the perspective of the stakeholders, as well as from a more general 
context (as the world-in-common). It requires imagination to make these 
perspectives present. However, in the end it needs to judge, it needs to make 
decisions. Such ‘informed’ judgments do not only mean to be informed 
about the different perspectives at stake, but also are informed through 
personal experiences, taste, knowledge, skills, and so on, that is to say, 
subjectively. All attempts that aim to diminish the subjective from design 
will fall into the trap of technocratic engineering, wherein a reductionist 
and materialist vision is embraced, and responsibility is endlessly displaced. 
It is particularly in the very moments where the subjective enters judgment 
that a public and political discussion on architectural proposals is possible, 
and that architects can be held responsible for their ideas and proposals. 
Conversely, architectural design requires balancing between stakeholders 
and the public, between the earth and the world-in-common, the world 
as it is gained from the past, and the world as it can be in the future. 
This balancing act requires personal engagement in the world, which will 
feed the architectural knowledge that can be gained through studies and 
experience, which is gained through extensive practicing, studying, and 
reflecting upon the world. 

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1. Many examples of the tendencies above can 
be given, both from the field of practices as well 
as from academia. However, as I do not want to 
pinpoint offices to a singular take, I leave it to the 
imagination of the reader to frame these tendencies 
in architectural practice to actual cases.
2. Cf. Dana Cuff, Architecture: The Story of Practice 
(Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1991), 28-35d.
3. George Baird, ‘“La Dimension Amoreuse” in 
Architecture’, in: Charles Jencks and George Baird 
(eds.). Meaning in Architecture (London: Barrie and 
Rockliff, The Cresset Press, 1969); George Baird, 
The Space of Appearance (Cambridge MA: MIT 
Press, 1995); Giancarlo De Carlo, ‘Architecture’s 
Public’, in: Peter Blundell Jones, Doina Petrescu 
and Jeremy Till (eds.) Architecture and Participation 
(Abingdon: Spon Press, 2007); Kenneth Frampton, 
‘The Status of Man and the Status of his Objects: 
a Reading of The Human Condition’, in Kenneth 
Frampton, Labour, Work, and Architecture. Collected 
Essays on Architecture and Design (London, New 
York: Phaidon Press, 2002); Robert Gutman, 
Architectural Practice: A Critical View (New York: 
Princeton Architectural Press, 1998).
4. Baird, The Space of Appearance, 21.
5. Julia Kristeva, Hannah Arendt (New York: 
Columbia University Press, 2001), 77.
6. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Why Arendt Matters 
(New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2006), 
82-84.
7. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: 
The University of Chicago Press, 1998 [1958]), 2.
8. Ibid., 52.
9. Ibid., 167.
10. Ibid., 173-174.
11. Hannah Arendt, ‘Introduction into Politics’, in: 
Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics (New York: 



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Schocken Books, 2005), 93.
12. Arendt, The Human Condition, 73
13. Ibid., 95; cf. Paul Holmquist, ‘Towards an Ethical Technique: 
Reframing Architecture’s “Critical Call” through Hannah Arendt,’ in: The 
Plan Journal, 1 (1) 2016, 19.
14. Kristeva, Hannah Arendt, 41.
15. Ibid., 41.
16. I of course refer here to Nicolaus Pevsner’s famous distinction between 
architecture and building, as defined in the first paragraphs of his book 
on the history of European Architecture: Nicolaus Pevsner, An Outline of 
European Architecture (Harmonstworth: Penguin Books, 1968), 15.
17. Arendt, The Human Condition, 167.
18. Every architect today will at this point hear an echo of Aldo Rossi’s 
famous reading of the monumental buildings in a city as the carriers of 
(collective) memory. Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (Cambridge 
MA: MIT Press, 2007 [1962]).
19. Hannah Arendt, ‘The Crisis in Culture: Its Social and Its Political 
Significance’, in: Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future. Eight Exercises 
in Political Thought (New York 2006 [1961], Penguin Books), 208-210.
20. Hannah Arendt, ‘Culture and Politics’, in: Hannah Arendt, Reflections 
on Literature and Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 190.
21. See Herman Hertzberger, The Schools of Herman Hertzberger 
(Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2009).
22. This of course is perfectly understood by the Trump Administration and 
their attempt to ‘Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again’ – although one 
can question whether the choice of narrative is appropriate. See: https://
www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/14466-will-the-white-house-order-
new-federal-architecture-to-be-classical (accessed March 12, 2020).
23. Bonnie Honig, Public Things, Democracy in Disrepair (New York: 
Fordham University Press, 2017), 17.
24. Ibid., 42.
25. Baird, The Space of Appearance, 22.
26. Ibid., 22.
27. Ibid., 285.
28. This of course is one of the reasons that design cannot be brought 
back to a formula: program briefs as well as the local circumstances require 
interpretation, and thus judgment from the designer. There are as many 



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answers to an assignment as there are architects 
(and even more, as also architects themselves often 
come up with multiple possibilities). 
29. Seyla Benhabib, ‘Judgment and the Moral 
Foundation of Politics in Hannah Arendt’s Thought’ 
In: Ronald Beiner and Jennifer Nedelsky (eds), 
Judgment, Imagination, and Politics (New York/
Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001), 
194.
30. Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political 
Philosophy (Chicago: The University of Chicago 
Press, 1992), 40.
31. Ibid., 67.
32. Ibid., 42.
33. Ibid., 42-43 (Arendt quotes Immanuel Kant’s 
Critique of Judgment, §40).  
34. Ibid., 43.
35. Ibid., 72.
36. Ibid., 43.
37. Ibid., 67.



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