Participatory Design
- Oct 10, 2019
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 10, 2019
Constructing Meaningful Architecture through Community Engagement
The most essential question for architects is one of semiotics; how might we use communication through formal and non-formal signs to construct the most meaningful architectural experience for users?
One the one hand, architecture traditionally serves to assert its meaning through material form, by alluding to powerful precedents or by presenting an avant-garde style. On the other hand, architecture can serve as an instrument for users to interpret their own meanings from architectural form. I believe that successful architecture continuously works to accomplish both through empathetic, participatory design.
Modern architect, Le Corbusier, theorizes and illustrates unprecedented aesthetic projects, independent of their site. Consider his Ville Radieuse and the Villa Savoye as two examples of artistic objects imposed on their site, that could be reimposed anywhere. In other words, his works are not site-specific. Le Corbusier argues instead for the architect as sovereign:
“Thus the architect has at his disposal a box of building units."
His architectural talent can operate freely. It alone, through the building programme, determines his architecture,” (101). If an architect’s ‘talent’ determines success, their works will never truly benefit the most people. A project solely constructed with ‘talent’ and formal priorities fails because it lacks empathy for its users.
A later British architect, Kenneth Frampton, critiques Le Corbusier’s early 20th century universalism: “Modern building is now so universally conditioned by optimized technology that the possibility of creating significant urban form has become extremely limited,” (17). Frampton notes how others excited by Le Corbusier’s notion of ‘building units’ was supported by industrialization, which led to a decline in authenticity. He instead calls for a critical regionalism, which is a reaction against modern universalism that requires close, local observation and collaboration.
Frampton’s critical regionalism challenges existing assumption about authorship in architecture. However, his opening statement devaluing technology ignores all the possibilities an architect can make to innovate beautiful forms that are intimately informed by future users.
My solution starts with an idea from Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s rigorous visual analysis of street signs on the Las Vegas strip:
“Learning from the existing landscape is a way of being a revolutionary for an architect. Not the obvious way, which is to tear down Paris and begin again, as Le Corbusier suggested in the 1920s, but another, more tolerant way; that is, to question how we look at things,” (3).
A methodical approach to question what we see is to conduct qualitative field research. Surveying the community like an anthropologist provides insight about broader cultural behaviors and other desires within social spaces.
Anthropologist Michael Warner describes potential field participants in his article, Publics and Counterpublics. Essentially, a text is determined legitimate only by recognition from its members, while members become members by simply participating in the conversation. The members of this conversation are labelled a ‘public.’ For example, when a journalist publishes a new article online, the post is only legitimized with a share, a string of comments, or in a passing conversation. A text is only a text once it is received by a public. In this way, architecture is only legitimate when architects interact with a new project’s public to discern more specialized, empathetic designs that promote participatory membership.
David and Tom Kelley of IDEO share an inspiring example of how a healthcare engineer benefitted from field research in their book Creative Confidence:
“[A] workshop offered Doug new tools to incite his creative confidence…He observed and talked to users of existing products and services to better understand consumer needs. He collaborated with managers from other companies and industries on crude prototypes of designs to meet those needs…
Going through the human-centered design process with people struck a chord in him…By thinking holistically about how children experienced and interacted with the technology, Doug helped transform the [daunting] MRI suite into a kid’s adventure store, with the patient in the starring role,” (15-6).
Proud of his latest technological accomplishment, Doug questioned why children were so afraid during a scan in his new machine. He felt all his work wasn’t worth it if the children were scared and their parents weren’t satisfied. So, he surrendered his creative autonomy, or what Le Corbusier describes as ‘talent’, to inject his project with a little more empathy.
Maybe an architectural public demands a community garden, or more places to sit outside, or a covering for the local bus stop. Maybe the office workers want bigger windows or a coffee drip in the kitchen. Maybe they don’t care about a sculptural staircase and would rather an open foyer with tables to chat and eat lunch. Maybe a neighborhood needs bike lanes more than an expensive art installation.
Another cross-country example of well-received community engagement work is in San Francisco; landscape architect Walter Hood produces spaces that facilitate participation and engage their publics. His works use community engagement as an anthropological method to extract pre-existing meanings and create subsequent forms from field research, rather than imposing a form with his own prescribed meaning.
collages by Walter Hood, from UC Berkley website
Citations:
Kenneth Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance” (1981)
Le Corbusier in Ulrich Conrads, “Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture” (1927)
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, “Learning from Las Vegas” (1972)
Tom and David Kelley, “Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All” (2013) Print.
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