Sean Canty
- Words Sala Elise Patterson
- Photos Fabian Martinez
The Harvard professor on architecture as a driver for social change.
Sean Canty’s architectural practice goes beyond designing buildings. Through both his work as a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and his eponymous architecture studio, Canty challenges the limited role architecture has traditionally played in wider society.1
“In the past, the architect was a singular genius, obsessed with the sculptural form,” he says. “Now we are coming to terms with the climate and issues of equality, and we’re having a newfound appreciation for our existing building stock. Post-pandemic, post–George Floyd, folks in the discipline opened up to the fact that architecture can’t be allowed to isolate itself from the issues of the world.”
But it is not enough to just acknowledge the biases and inequities inherent in traditional architec...
