The aim of my article is to reflect on the necessity of finding an efficient way in which designers can communicate with people in order not only to design for them, but to involve them in the design process.
Everyone, designer or not, has his own ideas about how his house or city should be. Collecting those ideas from a community and transform them in an actual design requires more than creativity and good intentions.
The first part of the article provide a theoretical background for the topic and it is based on research in literature. In particular I will develop some key points about what constitute design knowledge, the relationship between designers and the people for whom they design, how designer can involve people in the process of designing, what kind of tools are required and what is under design.
The literature research includes:
Davis, Meredith (2008), “Why Do We Need Doctoral Study in Design?” International Journal of Design, 2(3), 71-79.
Jones, John Christopher (1970), Design Methods: seeds of human futures, London: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Illich, Ivan (1973), Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper and Row.
Sanders, Elisabeth (2006), Scaffolds for building everyday creativity. In J. Frascara (Ed.), Designing effective communications: Creating contexts for clarity and meaning. New York: Allworth Press.
Fisher , Gerard (2002). Beyond couch potatoes: From consumers to designers and active contributors. First Monday, 7(12). Retrieved May 15, 2008, from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/issue/view/152
The second part of the article will give an insight into two study cases.
The first one is a housing project developed by ELEMENTAL studio in Chile. Here the architects, leaded by Alejandro Aravena, decided to respond to the demand of social housing by creating a framework in which a basic house was provided but at the same time it was given to the people the possibility to implement it according to their needs and financial possibilities.
The second project embrace the urban level and it is a research project started by Ekim Tan and called The responsive City. The goal is to rethink collectively the planning of the city. In this case the tool designed by Tan is a collective game which allowed the urban planner to collect the information needed directly from the people in a bottom-up process.
Everyone is welcome to comment,
Thank you
Michela
I think it is important to focus either on the architectural or the urban level. The differences between both levels with respect to the key points you will define in the first part may be larger than the similarities. As such, I expect the essay's content to be stronger if you focus on one level and, thus, one case study.
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