The power of community
The projects of Alejandro and Arravena: Half-homes and Plan for sustainable reconstruction in Chili both show the importance of the power of community, which I also totally agree. We can not solve people's daily life problems unless the users can express more so we can use their own power for buildings. But the more important thing is how to synthesize these resources such community, local environment, design, site, etc. to solve the problems in cities. I don't believe that designers can change the society if they do, that's because the way they consider for the users. In China, now there are lots of old building gonna be replaced by the new buildings. So a lot of people need to move and most of them are low-income people. Some of them really hate it, because the old building is their home, they already get used to the life around here, and the new residential provided to them maybe not good enough. To solve this conflict, how to use the power of community itself is significant and the participatory design process probably can be a good start to know what's the users real demand。
I fully agree with your point of view, but really want to let users participate in the design is actually a perfect DIY system process. Users do not have sufficient expertise, so the responsibility of the construction company is to create a large problem library to guide customers.
ReplyDeleteWhile I think the "Half-homes" project is a good example of a type of participation within architecture, I would argue that the participation might occur too late? The project is designed with "holes" so to speak that are just left to potential residents, but it actually lacks an open dialogue between the users and the designers.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and I think the 'Half-homes' is an interesting project, every family has their own needs and desire for house, and this is interesting transformation from identical house to its own unique house.
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