I’m a third year student in the Masters of Architecture program here at MIT, which means I am now taking my 13th architecture studio (add 4 years undergraduate and count one studio per semester). Architecture and technology, I think, have a very complicated relationship–a lot of architects would like to claim that good buildings are technological advances, although often I think those claims are a slippery slope into a dissolution of definitions.

But, since even the earliest cathedrals, technology has been very closely tied to major movements in design history. This is probably most apparent in the case of Modernism and mass production, but it caries also clearly into more contemporary work, like Zaha Hadid’s parametric wonders and today’s crazy digital mash-ups. Technology is so clearly embodied in aesthetics, and then, often, aesthetics are rationalized as they might relate to social change. Or maybe social change comes first–and the technology to produce it subsequently enforces a particular aesthetic. It’s a chicken-and-the-egg question; in some cases it seems the chicken came first, and in other cases I am certain it is the egg.

Maybe it’s just an unlucky semester, but I find myself doubting more and more often the effectiveness of architectural technologies to spur social change. I think more often than not I am convinced that technologies are filling first the aesthetic agenda, and claiming a social agenda only to convince investors of their designs. But I want to turn this criticism into something productive; I want to learn to judge better in my own work when technologies might be helpful to the communities they serve, versus when the excitement that comes from novelty actually shrouds or exacerbates more important problems.