The following contribution sits in the complex debate around power and architecture and wishes to confront architecture's comfort zone, bringing ‘uncertainty in place of purity’. Acknowledging a new ‘social’ call to arms – reconfiguring architecture’s ethical shift and revitalising participatory neologisms and design activisms – and the expansion of the role of architect, the paper wishes to offer a renewed perspective on design, suggesting a reorientation between politics and aesthetics that would not simply reorder power relations, but create new political subjects too. What follows reflect on the direct experiences of the authors in a research by design activity undertaken in South East Asia and it briefly touch on the experience of Community Architects Network (CAN), a programme established and funded by the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) in 2010 and by now operating in 19 countries, networking with governmental and non-governmental organisations, architectural and engineering practices, grassroots organisations and local universities.