Architecture is largely a discipline that sits on stilts, away from the floodlands of the people that use it in everyday life. These supports, which keep the art and science of building design (and, to some extent, the appreciation of buildings themselves) accessible primarily to card-carrying intellectuals, were erected, consciously or otherwise, in the last forty years by a team of masterful thinkers and artists (starchitects like Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid) and journalists who are quick to glamorize the field (like, say, by using terms like "starchitects").

In the last few years, people have started to shake the pillars architecture sits on, building their own weird little houses, crowdfunding their own architectural projects, and using buildings to solve small-scale problems. Architecture started gurgling up from the grasses; non-architects began building community centers in Haiti and apartments made of garbage Dumpsters in New York. These projects are not blessed by the powers that be in the architectural world, but they’re happening anyway.

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By nature of the permanence and expense of its medium, it takes a long time for architecture to change, and this change has been roiling under the surface for years. For example, at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale (an event that’s considered the most important architectural exhibit in the world), famous architect David Chipperfield directed the show under the theme "Common Ground," a term, Maclean’s once wrote that’s "freighted with connotations of civic engagement." The entire event was considered a "veiled attack on […] big budget, signature-style buildings that dramatically transform cityscapes, often with blatant disregard for the neighbors." In an interview with design blog Dezeen, Chipperfield said architecture was like "perfume brands at Duty Free, on a pedestal, singular and isolated," and called for "standing on the ground, which we share." His Biennale was about "architectural culture" not about architects themselves.

That pseudo-populist drumbeat thumps on: just recently, in New York Times, a prominent archicritic thoughtfully skewered the idea of the starchitect, writing that architecture "is a social art, rather than a personal one, a reflection of a society and its values rather than a medium of individual expression."

That is to say what has been stewing on the corner burner since the economic collapse of the early ‘90s is starting to bubble; architecture is changing in a way that prioritizes the fulfillment of the community over the fulfillment of the individual, the built over the philosophized, the rudimentary over the sophisticated. And, well, hallelujah for that.