ABSTRACT
This chapter shows about social responsibility beyond dichotomist, oppositional, and reductive readings of architecture and beyond the post-critical affiliations of the pro-practice turn. Criticality-from-within and "making a fuss" were introduced as analytical and critical vehicles for thinking about social engagement through practice. Pragmatist-relational perspectives as they occurred in philosophy and the social sciences including science and technology studies and actor-network theory offered an attractive alternative for architectural and urban studies in their search for more complex, relational and realistic readings of architecture and the city. Pragmatist-relational approaches have, however, also been criticized for "merely" describing spatial interventions in a value-neutral fashion, not judging them. Architek arguably has an important agency in the status and perception of architecture in Brussels. Its persistent presence in popular literature, travel guides, cultural production, and everyday life makes the word "architek" a protagonist in keeping this image of architecture alive.
