I used to think that participation in architecture was something that could only improve the result of a project since the users would be more satisfied and felt more attached to the final product. Unfortunately, recently I saw first hand how uncontrolled participation could lead to a never-ending design process with a prolonged process of decision making. For big scale public projects, like the one I am talking about, cities try to avoid massive rejection from citizens by involving them in the process with town meetings. The problem comes when there is no system for the participation or limits. This project has been on town meetings for two years already and has shown an incredible amount of proposals that have been rejected because the majority is not in favor.
A Town meeting in Vermont
Like mentioned in Carlo's reading "the architect first recognizes and then respects the knowledge of the user.", architects should acknowledge the clients perspective and take it into account for the project development. Participation will improve design from my perspective and more importantly the satisfaction of the users, but I do believe that extremes are not always positive and could harm the process and the result.
Support in Town meeting for School project
Incompetent leadership can further add to the confusion at these types of meetings. Isn't that where we come in - first as an sensitive observer, then as a sensible change-maker?
ReplyDeleteI agree Vishnu. We should listen and respect the ideas that arise in town meetings, but then we have the responsibility of sorting through them in order to do something that is for the greater good of the community. If we hear everyone's opinion and try to bend the project to each one, nothing will ever get done.
ReplyDeleteI like town hall meetings for the fact that the citizens' voices are heard but I also hate them because everyone just talks in a circle and the outcome of the night is most often right where back to where it started. I see the problem as the public's lack of trust in our design abilities. We spend years in school learning what is good and bad design, yet when we go to implement it in the world, it is almost always faced with criticism. So how do we improve our relationship with the general user?
ReplyDeleteJess makes a good point, we commit so much time to being trained in the trade and developing our own ideas as designers and the public doesn't seem to trust what we're doing sometimes. Are we as architects bad communicators and not presenting our message clearly enough for the average person to understand? (sometimes we can have our head in the clouds) Or maybe the people who are speaking out at these public forums simply want to have their voice be heard and don't necessarily care about the design. Very similar to the video Chris posted from Parks and Rec, although it's somewhat of a hyperbole, some members of communities don't really have a valid argument, they just want to say something.
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