40) Design pooling.

There is an urgent need for a new framework of thinking to seed the creative process by promoting collaborations and sharing.

 How can architects engage individuals and vulnerable groups so that the output of the people becomes something coherent and lasting, instead of just a matter of random ideas? There is an answer: factor cooperation into the architecture as a part of the project itself. Cooperative design has to be structured into places, but we still do not know how to do it efficiently. In traditional projects, sharing and collaborating with the public doesn’t often occur. How do we organize these individuals into some structure that has explicit influence on the project? When we build cooperation into the project, we take the problem to the individuals rather than moving the individuals to our solution.

The challenge comes not when we present ideas in advance to an audience and receive their comments, but rather in the act of defining what form people’s contribution should take. This kind of value is unreachable in our traditional, professional methods of design. As architects, we can often lose sight of how we should shape people’s place, but when our design includes the views of individuals and groups, the project gains greater flexibility and value.

This is revolutionary—a profound change in the way we practice our profession. Participative design replaces rigid and controlled planning with a cooperative system. So, who is the architect? The answer to that question does not matter, because it is not the right question. Inclusive architecture is an answer to an even more important question which is: how does this design impact the community’s well-being and their dignity?

This is a whole new way of doing things, which has downsides and upsides. Very often architecture succeeds in creating appropriate spatial and functional connections, which result in the ability of people living there to introduce required changes.

To create a space that ensures the protection of people’s dignity and privacy, as well as the humanization of their conditions, the designer can strive to learn the reality of the people’s situation. At the same time, the people strive to articulate their desired aims and learn the appropriate technological means to obtain them. This will not happen without architects who are open to experiencing surprise, puzzlement, and occasionally a little confusion. 

When members of the community are active in designing and implementing a project, when they are invested in the work, when they are involved in all stages from planning to implementation, when they are happy with what has been done and how it was done, and when they feel they were treated respectfully and as a valued member of the building team, then we give the poor a meaningful part in initiatives designed for their benefit. A design system that coordinates the output of people or a community as a by-project is an inclusive issue. People become equal partners with a significant say in decisions concerning their lives. Every occupier is an active participant in their own social well-being and not merely a welfare consumer.