Teamwork makes the dream work

 

The readings and videos for this week discussing the role of human centred design and participatory design have been my favourite so far this semester. Human centred design is key to good architecture and participatory design is a powerful tool to create and validate it. Moreover, as Alejandro Aravena said in his Ted talk, it is simply common sense to involve the people you are designing for and who understand the context and community, who know the needs and wants and problems, and who will have to use or live with the design in the process.

I do think, judging from many of the posts I read by other students however, that there is a misconception of what this entails. It seems people view participatory design as letting anyone design whatever they want and that's what gets built but that is by no means the case. Participatory design involves interviews, surveys, focus groups, and charettes with users and other stakeholders during the design process, and can include further charettes and presentations throughout the process to ensure the project is progressing in the right direction. It is not uncommon to include stakeholder meetings in the early design process, but this goes a step further in involving the users and greater community as key stakeholders as well to really get to the heart of the design. As Aravena said in his talk, “participatory design is not a hippie, romantic, ‘let’s all dream together about the future of the city’ kind of thing. It is actually not even with the families trying to find the right answer. It is mainly trying to identify with precision what is the right question. There’s nothing worse than answering well the wrong question.”

This determination to find the actual question, the actual problems and needs of the users and find a solution to address it is core to a good design process for all. While there is obviously no way to please everyone individually, by including the community in the process, you can make sure to address the most important concerns, ensure you are not answering the wrong question, and make the community feel their input is valid and they have a sense of ownership in the project which can greatly benefit integration and community support. I truly do not understand why anyone would oppose such a common sense, beneficial tool or worry that it somehow diminishes the role of architects, removes their authority (which I consider a problematic idea and even more problematic argument), or leads to the creation of bad architecture or McMansion hell. The role of the architect and other designers remains the same, it simply adds further information to the process to get a better result.