The ecological and economic challenges we face today are putting both the authorities and the market – and hence also architects – increasingly under pressure. When large-scale public and private commissions are carried out, economic profit trumps social, cultural or ecological profit. Michiel Van Balen, co-founder of Miss Miyagi, proposes a different way to develop real-estate projects, away from the contradiction between market and authorities. Based on the idea of the ‘commons’, he presents a model in which the common good and collective management come first, with a greater social benefit as both the objective and result.

‘First we shape our buildings and then they shape us’, Winston Churchill once said. Architecture is about spatially shaping our society with a critical eye because that built environment has such a profound impact on who we are and how we live together. Architecture therefore indisputably has a direct and indirect role to play in the current transition-related challenges. Directly, through the choices made at the project level in terms of mobility, density, material choices, techniques, etc. And indirectly, but perhaps even more importantly, by steering, via the spatial context, the social, economic and political processes necessary to be able to achieve this transition. The role that the design practice can play in this respect is therefore vast, but at the same time limited. Because within the juridical triangle between the architect, the commissioner and the contractor, the impact of the designer exists by the grace of the commissioner and with the approval of the authorities.