Designing the Other: Critical Places, Shared Legacies

Who is the other, what form do they take, in what body do they incarnate, where do they appear and materialize? The title of this journal issue draws attention to a crucial dimension in the mechanisms of exclusion: the relationship with the other. Considering the architectural domain, this topic challenges the ways in which space is constructed, inhabited, and regulated with respect to those who deviate from the norm, the average, or the majority. Franco Basaglia, emblematic figure in the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, alienated (from the Latin alius, meaning “other”), the others ­by definition, described the above-mentioned majority as “deviant”.