Designing for Citizens of the Non-Democratic World - Part 1
Abstract
Did you know your ignorance on corruption is a dictator’s power? Irish musician, Bono, defines the solution to government corruption rather well by claiming “the worst disease in the world today is corruption. And there is a cure: transparency.” Other vocabulary that may pose a threat to a dictatorship could be; exposure, democracy, accountability, ethics; to name a few.
If corruption is a disease, then yes, almost the majority of the world is certainly dying. An eighteenth century English writer, Charles Caleb Colton, believed “Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it’s set a rolling it must increase”.
This is a thesis investigation that explores architectural and urban cures to the ‘disease’ of corruption, as well as finding the epidemic... and Bolivia is the guinea pig.
Corruption in Bolivia had been escalating like a ‘ball of snow’ since the beginning of the Morales regime in 2006. Current president, Evo Morales, flees Bolivia after committing election fraud in 2019, sparking political tensions and the rise of a coup. Morales is granted asylum in Mexico and the ‘ball of snow’ has stopped ‘rolling’ - for now. It is only a matter of time before it rolls again as Morales threatens to return soon with “strength and power”.
Now, more than ever, as architectural designers and urban planners, we can intervene to establish a cure for corruption through a design intervention. Will we move Bolivia into a warm democratic climate with a systematically transparent design where corruption will forever fail to ‘roll’ again.
Or do we move Bolivia into an even more colder, corrupt climate that spreads the epidemic into a state of authoritarian regime? One that forbids the practice of democratic rights and protest - to end conflictual opposition and violent confrontation once and for all?