Paper short abstract:

Design is saturated by talk empathy as an active, reflexive mode of attention. Ethnography amongst architects, however, suggests that empathy is primarily passive and tacit; by implication, empathy's limits are figured largely by 'ecological' factors transcending individual efforts to empathize.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1970s, design professions have promoted "empathy" in a critical move aimed at making design more responsive to "users." Throughout that time, "empathy" has been regarded as a methodological tool consisting in determinate, if processual stages that unfold reflexively and willfully. Based on ethnographic research carried out among healthcare architectural teams in San Francisco, this paper examines the role that more passive aspects of empathy play in design. Drawing on phenomenological models, I argue that empathy is already underway before we begin seeking richer interpretations or feeling the need to examine another person's experience more closely. This passive root of empathy cannot be taken over and proceduralized. Empathy, on this level, is tacitly co-constituted as acts of empathy attention become reiterated within an 'ecology' of others. I argue that it is important to consider efforts after empathy in design as being a matter of cultivation -- of the community more than of the self -- rather than as a method or methodological innovation only. These arguments can, in turn, be turned back on the anthropological project.