CIVIC ARCHITECTURE PROGRAM
Comprehensive Inventory of
• Assets
• Frameworks
• Institutional capacities
Produced by the Politics Lab of the James L. Farmer House at Huston-Tillotson
University
This packet provides an inventory of the structures, programs, research outputs,
partnerships, and initiatives currently operating under the Civic Architecture Program at
the James L. Farmer House. It is intended for external partners, funders, university
leadership, and research collaborators who require a clear account of what exists and
what is in active development.
For sharing with
• Senior collaborators
• Funders doing due diligence
• Peer reviewers who want detail
• Partners who need conceptual grounding
• HT leadership who want full transparency
Assets
• Institutional standing and legitimacy
In and through the Farmer House
o
 The Civic Architecture Program has (gained, now stands with) campuswide
and also specific departmental-area recognition and roles in and through the
Farmer House
The Farmer House
o
• Is
A recognized site for advancing democratic design methods
o
 Supporting
Curriculum innovation
o
• Public leadership development
Civic partnerships
o
• Democratic design
Institution-building work
o
• Institutional research
At Huston-Tillotson University
o
In statewide networks
o
• Serves
As the operational home for work in the following areas
o
 Student leadership pathways
 Research projects and scholarly development

 Institutional and civic partnerships
 Statewide civic initiatives
 Civic LLM and Civic AI technical development
Framework
• The Farmer House operates from a single, unified conceptual framework – civic
architecture – which guides its research, teaching, and institutional design practice
The framework
o
 What is it?
A single, consolidated, whole body of ideas with many components (see
o
further below)
An architecture
o
• Whose purpose is the construction and reconstruction of democratic
life itself
Descriptively, civic architecture is
o
• Normative but not moralizing
• Relational but not communitarian
• Institution-focused but not procedural
• Design-oriented but not technocratic
Although the Farmer House doesn’t work gratis
o
 People and institutions pay to access services and support from
the Farmer House
 Where does it come from?
A shared commitment
o
• To the idea that democracy is built, sustained, and repaired through the
institutions people create, inhabit, and remake together
 What does it do?
Guides
o
• The Farmer House’s research, teaching, and institutional design
practice
• Development of the Farmer House’s programs and research
• The design and repair of democratic institutions
Treats
o
• Democracy as a world people labor to build together
Offers (Provides)
o
• Tools for diagnosing institutional failure
• A structural account of how democratic capacity emerges
• A method for diagnosing institutional breakdown and rebuilding
democratic purpose
Integrates
o
1. The dimensions of democratic public life into one coherent
architecture
Moral
o
Cognitive
o
Structural
o
Material
o

2. The relevant subject matter into a single framework for understanding
how democratic worlds are formed and remade
Democratic theory
o
Institutional design
o
Interpretive practice
o
Narrative formation
o
World building traditions
o
Analysis of labor and infrastructure
o
Links…into one usable architecture for diagnosis and design
o
• Moral reasoning
• Institutional analysis
• Narrative understanding
• World building
Draws on…but is reducible to none of them
o
• Democratic ethics
• Black public moral traditions
• Institutional design theory
• Interpretive practice
• Design thinking
Explains
o
• How
Democratic life is built and sustained
o
Democratic agency becomes real
o
 Only when
Institutions carry moral purpose
o
Narratives stabilize meaning
o
Communities act together
o
People perform the labor that holds systems together
o
Stands within
o
• Several traditions yet it is claimed by none, because its purpose is to
assemble the moral, cognitive, and structural elements required for
institutions to hold and sustain a shared democratic world
• The central commitment of the framework is that the moral life of
democracy is carried (out) by the institutions people build, inhabit,
repair, and redesign together. Democracy depends not on procedures
alone but on the moral, cognitive, and material labor through which
people hold institutions accountable to shared purpose.
The core components parts
o
 The following nine (9) components are interlocking parts of a single
architecture not separate frameworks
1. Civic power as three braided domains
• Democratic capacity requires three interdependent domains of power
to function together
I. Civic infrastructure (institutions, roles, systems)
II. Cultural and narrative power (public meaning, imagination)

III. Community and organizational power (mobilization, relationships,
action)
• The insight
Institutions without narrative lack meaning
o
Narratives without institutions lack durability
o
Community action without structure cannot scale
o
• Democracy only becomes real when these domains reinforce one
another.
2. Institutional labor
• Institutions survive through everyday labor – judgment, care,
coordination, repair, improvisation, emotional work.
• This labor is the material foundation of democracy. When it collapses,
institutions hollow out
Workflows break
o
Roles exhaust
o
Moral purpose disconnects
o
Systems fail quietly
o
• Institutional labor is the unseen architecture that makes civic life
possible
3. Democratic authorship
• People are co-creators of the institutions, meanings, and shared worlds
that make democracy possible.
• Authorship occurs when people
Interpret moral problems
o
Engage conflict
o
Act with others to build or revise public life
o
• It is the keystone of the framework. Without authorship, institutions
lose vitality and democracy becomes hollow.
4. Institutional repair (the framework’s diagnostic & design function)
• The framework provides a structured method for diagnosing
breakdown and guiding repair.
• Its internal repair tools include
Compacts and brokens
o
 Interprets when institutions break agreements
 Names structural betrayal and guides restorative action
The Civic Architectural Scaffold
o
 Organizes moral grounding, structural analysis, cognitive
framing, and material labor
 The framework’s systems-level model for institutional design
Narrative & imagination
o
 Helps people interpret what is broken and envision alternatives
Democratic ontology & world-making
o
 Explains why repair matters: democracy requires people to
experience the world as shared and re-makable
Educational initiatives (e.g., Civic LLM, Teaching for Joy)
o

 Build comprehension-based learning, structural analysis, and
cognitive agency
• Together, these components form the repair logic of the single civic
architecture framework.
5. The moral architecture of institutions
• Institutions carry moral meaning
• They embody agreements about
What matters
o
Who counts
o
What is owed
o
• When compacts hold: trust and purpose deepen
• When compacts break: betrayal, alienation, and illegitimacy take root
• The framework teaches institutions to understand – explicitly – the
moral weight they carry
6. Narrative and imagination in civic formation
• Narrative and imagination shape
Identity
o
Obligation
o
Possibility
o
The boundaries of the real
o
• They are the cognitive and moral infrastructure of civic life. Without
shared stories, people cannot build a shared world.
7. The Civic Architectural Scaffold
• The scaffold is the internal structural model of the entire framework. It
illustrates how democracy depends on
Moral grounding
o
Institutional structures
o
Cognitive frames
o
Material labor
o
• It is the framework’s central design structure
8. Democratic ontology and world-making
• People must experience themselves as living in a shared world that
they help build, maintain, and repair
• World-making is democratic labor
• Democratic collapse occurs when people stop seeing the world as
shared or re-makable
• This ontological grounding is the deepest layer of the framework
9. Political Democratic Populism (PDP)
• PDP provides the framework’s theory of democratic formation
Democracy is created by ordinary people interpreting problems,
o
engaging conflict, and constructing shared worlds
It is an ontological, structural account of how democratic agency
o
emerges from interpretive and institutional labor.
• PDP functions both as a concept and a theory, giving the framework
its account of bottom-up world-making

Research and Scholarly Outputs
• The program maintains a research portfolio of manuscripts, active projects, applied
design work and more. The portfolio is suitable for grantmaking, academic review,
and institutional presentation.