ABSTRACT
Public interest design is not a new invention – it is the logical conclusion of 40 years of reforms in architectural education. The term "public interest" is meant to evoke something greater than market value or the convenience of a useful amenity. In finance, the public interest is served through regulation. Urban renewal's mixed results threw the public interest into high relief for architecture students of the 1960s who wondered how architecture and planning fell short of satisfying the broad "public". The Yale Urban Design Workshop (YUDW), founded in 1992 by Alan Plattus, is a bridge between the Yale Building Workshop of the late 1960s, and today's emphasis on public interest design. The struggle between liberalism's social mandate and neoliberalism's market-driven goals is the backdrop against which architectural education – and public interest design – has evolved. Work done either implicitly or explicitly for the public interest is most certainly moral in its scope.
