The social arc is about humanity and technology at scale. The arc relates to the exponential curve created when plotting a graph of the effects of human activity over time.

The influence of design has surpassed our awareness of the power we can collectively wield over ourselves and our environment. This is a moment for designers to develop some self-awareness about our impact on the world and how, collectively, we can change things for worse or for better.

Systems thinking helps us to better understand our current context and the complexity of the human experience. We are also part of an ecosystem and environment that are at times chaotic and violent, and at other times balanced and harmonious.

Humans have agency to build better habits, but we also have the ability to build better environments. We build relationships, we build communities, and we build cities. The project is far more complex than the field of architecture can encompass. The built environment is an extension of who we aspire to be as a group of human beings living and working in the spaces that we share in common. When we build, we project our aspirations into the future. What we build then shapes us into who we will become.

We are reimagining our social architecture as we redesign our social systems to mimic the living systems that we are a part of.