Lecture Recap and Video: Jonathan Bean on Designing for Market Transformation

Architectural education rarely acknowledges the field’s fundamental role in the creation and perpetuation of market systems. Yet the confluence of events in 2020—not least demands for social equity and increasingly undeniable evidence of the climate crisis—presents an opportunity for architecture to expand the remit of design to encompass market transformation. This expansion of the field, which is already underway, would mean treating code, regulation and policy as objects of design co-equal to the aesthetic and technical qualities of buildings and spaces. This talk will explain how market expectations are shifting in response to an emerging social mandate for low-carbon, climate-positive and equitable future. The talk will then introduce skills, theories and practical knowledge architecture students and professionals can use to reinscribe the boundaries of the field in a world defined by market systems.

Jonathan Bean, PhD, is assistant professor of architecture, sustainable build environments and marketing at the University of Arizona. He previously held a position in Bucknell University’s Markets, Innovation and Design program and was a postdoc at Parsons Design School, where he helped start a new program in design studies. He has advised multiple University of Arizona Solar Decathlon Design Challenge finalist teams. In 2020, his student teams won honorable mention in the Elementary School division and first prize in the Mixed-Use Multifamily division.

Watch the Lecture