Subject

Governance, Participation and Social Design

  • code 12082
  • course 1
  • term Semester 1
  • type OB
  • credits 3

Main language of instruction: English

Teaching staff

Introduction

How can designers collaborate with stakeholders to create better communities? 

What processes lead to place-making that is at once healthy, flexible, resilient, regenerative, beautiful, fun, and engaging? As a workshop team we’ll pursue these questions, engage in cooperative and regenerative design principles, explore relevant project case studies, focus on optimized project processes, while we respond to a specific, timely, and real-world request for design services.

Objectives

Through discussions, presentations, teamwork, research, and project-specific 

practice we will grow to have a deeper understanding of:

1. How design teams may best engage with community members to 

collaborate on resilient +/or post-disaster ‘acupuncture‘ projects.

2. The roles of diverse client(s), cultures, environments, and sites as

foundational assets and springboards for appropriate design responses.

3. Engaging in a real-world project stream focused on design/build-for-change 

results through the application of workshop methodologies and materials.

4. The widening range of opportunities, resources, challenges and pitfalls 

related to humanitarian design/build projects and participatory/community 

design processes.

Learning outcomes of the subject

1. Arriving at a nuanced understanding of how and 

when to appropriately work with diverse communities 

in challenging circumstances

2. Enhancing assessment and practical capabilities 

relative to real-world humanitarian design project 

scenario(s)

3. Deepening knowledge of culturally and

environmentally-appropriate design process

4. Increased ability and real-world experience stemming 

from the workshop collaboration

5. Increasing understanding of built examples and useful 

methodologies to amplify participants’ capacities in 

future design collaborations

Syllabus

A. Design Challenge: A charrette running throughout the

workshop to engage students in a design process in 

the context of one or more Real-World Design 

Challenge(s)* Note: TBA in Workshop Brief 

Package(s)

B. Talks: Presentation of case studies and empirical 

narratives focused on approach, interaction and 

practice methodologies relating to diverse ‘client’ 

communities and their challenges

C. Roundtable Discussions: Group analysis (with Q + A) 

at periodic intensives focused on community 

engagement, team work, community interface, local 

capacity and materials/systems amplification

D. Student Presentations: Pin-up Review + discussion of 

student design approaches to the Real-World Design 

Challenge workshop brief(s)

Teaching and learning activities

In person

Group work, case study analysis and group presentations.

Evaluation systems and criteria

In person

Per UIC grading guidelines with emphasis on attendance, quality of participation and graphic and verbal communication.

Bibliography and resources

1. [Oral Histories, Community Input, Deep Listening (unwritten); Whatever the 

community stakeholders say out loud is a, perhaps the, primary resource]

2. Humanitarian Architecture: 15 Stories of Architects Working after 

Disaster, Esther Charlesworth, Routledge, 2014 à| pages viii-15, 214-228.

3. Places to Intervene in a System, Donella H. Meadows, Whole Earth, Winter 

1997 à| pages 1-12.

4. Design Like You Give a Damn [2]: Building Change from the Ground Up,

Architecture for Humanity, Abrams, New York, 2012 à| Lessons Learned...

pages 11-46.

5. New Architecture on Indigenous Lands, Joy Malnar & Frank Vodvarka, 

University of Minnesota Press, 2013 à| pages 42-59, 179-202

6. Do It Yourself Architecture, BOUNDARIES International Architecture 

Magazine, Luca Sampo Editor, Issue No. 9, July-September 2013 à| pages

32-39.

7. Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and 

Mobilizing a Community’s Assets, John P. Kretzmann and John J. McKnight, 

Evanston, IL: Institute for Policy Research, 1993, An Introduction to Asset-
Based Community Development à| pages 1-11.

8. Sustainable Native Community Collaborative, exemplary housing case 

studies resources (pdf files) and short films (vimeo), online at: 

http://www.sustainablenativecommunities.org/fieldnews/2013-case-studies/

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