While doing a search for architects doing politically-engaged work, or work that encompasses a political or ethical agenda, I stumbled upon Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility. The group, as it turns out, has been around for thirty years. Despite their long history I got the sense that many people in architecture, as well as in mainstream culture, don’t know anything about them.
ADPSR was founded in Berkeley California in the early eighties as a community-based social action group. At that time their mission centered on opposition to the proliferation of nuclear arms and government policies they believed favored the military over the public good.
In essence, if the military budget were smaller then more government resources could be invested in projects and policies that benefit the general public. So, in a sense, they were continuing the fight against what Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his 1961 farewell address called the military-industrial complex.
