Architecture and Economy: the Ethics of Empowerment

At the end of 20th century, issues of homelessness and migration emerged as privileged fields in which the discipline of architecture encounters the harshness of the sociopolitical order. Architects were quick to adopt an ethically responsible role by becoming ‘enablers’ who design new ‘community’ situations to foster the development of new forms of participation in which everyone is potentially included. The ‘ethics of empowerment’ was thus extracted out of the ’70 ‘reclaim of rights’ political context, to support the formation of an ‘ethical community’ (Rancière). What would be a potential relation between architecture and economy that might shape a different ethics, i.e., a different correlation between the environment, the way of being and the principle of action?