After reading Patrik Schumacher’s latest piece on Dezeen, where he claims that architecture is being “killed” by woke culture, it is hard not to see his argument as reactionary, reductive, and, frankly, out of touch. His fixation on parametricism as the only viable path for architecture has always been rigid. Still, he is doubling down, blaming the discipline’s supposed decline on architects and educators engaging with social and environmental realities. The irony? His argument completely ignores how architecture has constantly evolved through reinterpretation, adaptation, and negotiation with its inhabitable world.
Architecture has never been a pure, apolitical exercise in form-making. It has always been entangled with culture, economics, and power. Modernism was not a monolithic ideology, it did not arrive in Latin America as a fixed doctrine but was transformed by architects who understood the complexities of their regions. Lina Bo Bardi, Luis Barragán, and João Batista Vilanova Artigas did not simply mimic European models; they reimagined them, integrating vernacular techniques, local materials, and social priorities. Schumacher’s rigid view that architecture must follow a singular, computational trajectory ignores this fundamental reality: design is never about blind adherence to a single ideology.
Moreover, his argument gets weaker here, his reliance on European philosophical frameworks to justify his claims. He may be interested in thinkers who align with his ideology, but that does not mean European theory monopolizes architectural thought. The history of Latin American modernism, and countless other global architectural movements, proves that alternative epistemologies have always existed. There are entire intellectual traditions outside the Western canon that have shaped architecture in profound ways. The work of Enrique Dussel, Achille Mbembe, Yuk Hui, and Sylvia Wynter challenges dominant Western narratives and presents alternative ways of thinking about space, technology, and social structures. Indigenous knowledge systems, Afro-futurist urbanism, and Latin American theories of liberation all offer frameworks for architectural thought that do not rely on European validation. To pretend these perspectives do not matter is to cling to an outdated and incomplete version of history.
Schumacher’s claim that architecture is being reduced to a “state of mere craft” because of social concerns is a fundamental misunderstanding of the discipline. Addressing climate change, decolonization, and social equity is not a distraction but an expansion of architecture’s intellectual and practical scope. The world is changing, and architecture is evolving with it. His nostalgia for a time when design supposedly existed in a vacuum is misguided and intellectually dishonest at worst.
Then there is his attack on education. He argues that “woke culture” drives ambitious students away as if critical discourse somehow dilutes architectural thinking. The reality is the opposite. Schools that encourage engagement with pressing social and environmental issues are not weakening architecture; they are strengthening it. Students today are asking better questions, questioning biases in design, and pushing the discipline forward in ways that Schumacher refuses to acknowledge.
Schumacher’s argument is not about protecting architecture’s future, it is about protecting his narrow vision of what architecture should be. However, architecture has never been static. A negotiation between technology, society, and culture has always shaped it. That negotiation is not a weakness; it keeps the discipline alive.