Architecture From the Outside In

Architecture and sociology have been fickle friends over the past half century: in the 1960s, architects relied on sociological data for design solutions and sociologists were courted by the most prestigious design schools to lecture and teach. Twenty years later, at the height of postmodernism, it was passe to be concerned with the sociological aspects of architecture. Currently, the rising importance of sustainability in building, not to mention an economical crisis brought on in part by a real-estate bubble, have forced architects to consider themselves in a less autonomous way, perhaps bringing the profession full circle back to a close relationship with sociology. Through all these rises and dips, Robert Gutman was a strong and steady voice for both architecture and sociology. Gutman, a sociologist by training, infiltrated architecture's ranks in the mid-1960s and never looked back. A teacher for over four decades at Princeton's School of Architecture, Gutman wrote about architecture and taught generations of future architects, all while maintaining an "outsider" status that allowed him to see the architectural profession in an insightful, unique way.