Upon identifying the multifaceted and disparate array of ever-changingenvironmental informants to architectural discourse, one is confronted with how to unitethis dialogue in meaningful ways to current modes of thought and action. The questiongains more significance as our knowledge of the greater environmental domain becomesmore systemic and complexly heterogenic, while at the same time, approaches to theissues have proved to be progressively more reductivist, disconnected, overtly abstractedor theorized, and universally globalized in regard to multifaceted and content-richhuman particularities in situ.This research focuses on the implications and applications of CriticalEnvironmentalism (CE) to propose a corresponding epistemological framework to wide-rangingsocio-environmental complexities occurring across architectural endeavors,primarily within urban and community developments as comprising the greatest numberof intersections between human constructions and the greater environmental domain.CE addresses environmental issues reciprocally emerging across numerous disciplines and theoretical stances and fosters critical and systemically collective approaches toknowledge integration, amalgamating multiple stakeholder perspectives within aninterconnective and operational goal of creative communal development and bettermentof the human condition in relation to environmental concerns. Situating the environment(Umwelt) as an interconnecting catalyst between divergent points-of-views, CEpromotes a multi-methodological, co-enabling framework intended to foster increasedethical and participatory dynamics, communal vitality, co-invested attention, andproductive interchanges of knowledge that cultivate an overall quality of knowing andbeing within the intricacies of the greater domain. As such, it engages broaderdefinitions for architecture within its social community, significantly embodied andepistemologically co-substantiating within a shared, environmental life-place.Fundamentally a hermeneutic standpoint, this investigation elucidates conceptualconnections and mutual grounds, objectives, and modes-of-operation across knowledgedomains, initiating an essential, socio-environmentally oriented framework forarchitectural endeavors. In this, it brings together common threads within critical socialtheory and environmentalist discourse to subsequently promote distinct interconnectivecomponents within a framework of socio-environmental thought for architecture. Theresearch then provides case examples and recommendations toward stimulatingprogressive environmental initiatives and thus increased capacity to improve existingepistemic conditions for architecture, urban design, and community development withinthe broader scope of Critical Environmentalism.
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