Where is the Social Project?

Focusing on the rise of participatory and activist practices that have emerged in the field of architecture over the past decade, this article explores questions of architecture's social agency and project. Privileging activism, informality, and alterity over what is perceived as a dominant architectural culture of tired formalism and celebrity obsessions, such practices expand design from the manipulation of form and material to the development of procedures and the creation of models of engagement. Can architects, if they wish to be socially responsible, remain designers or should they instead become social workers, as some practitioners claim?