Looking to Leslie Knope & Hilarious Scenes From Parks and Rec
I think architects should look to Leslie Knope, the
efficient and overly enthusiastic deputy director of Pawnee, Indiana’s Parks
Department, as they consider the idea public participation. Jeremy
Till in the Negotiation of Hope,
paints a bleak contemporary picture of both the architect’s willingness to
interact with the community, and the architect’s ability to manipulate and sidestep this participation. The architect’s aversion to these interactions can be traced to
their denial to seek outside opinion, sourcing from either a condescension of
lesser informed opinions or a fear of the unraveling of their judiciously
designed ideals. As Till says, “my argument is that participation presents a
threat to normative architecture values.”
Enter Leslie Knope. Knope’s love for democracy is effervescent. Of harsh
public criticism she says, “What I hear when I am being yelled at is people
caring loudly at me.” If her outlook towards public involvement was implemented
routinely and sincerely, architects would not fear public participation.
Moreover, public participation would become increasingly informed and
successful. Till continues in his piece, “Once this threat [participation] is
identified, it is possible to overcome it and see participation not as a
challenge to architecture, but as an opportunity to reformulate, and thus
resuscitate, architectural practice.” To me, a path towards more informed and
intelligently crafted architecture is simple. WWKD. What would Knope do.
Hopefully none of us have to deal with a Board of Architectural Review like this:
I totally agree with Leslie (and you), that involving the public is a necessary evil. In that, involving the public can often lead to a design that is generally liked by the public however I do see sympathize with the side of architecture that is wary to involve the public. It reminds me of a quote from Henry Ford....
ReplyDelete"If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses".
I think it all comes down to how we phrase our questions to the public. If Ford had instead asked a more generalized questions to get the core of what the public really wanted he could have surmised that public wanted a faster, more reliant, self-sufficient means of transportation. Its the most reductive form of the answer that matters most than the literal one.
Classic Michigan things...but yeah I definitely agree. From the experience in Asheville it seems that the public is most interested in the 'what' part of community development (We want a grocery store). The architect can then come in an develop the 'how' and the 'why' parts of the process (we are going to design a grocery store that is net zero with a drive-through capability for the 21st century user).It should be a process of understanding the public and then implementing our 'special knowledge' that we learn during our education and professional careers.
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