Universitat Internacional de Catalunya - Barcelona

Governance, Participation and Social Design

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

Main language of instruction: English

Head instructor

Dra. María del Carmen MENDOZA - cmendoza@uic.es

Office hours

Teaching staff are available by appointment through email.

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.

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.

• 01 - That students apply the knowledge acquired and the capacity to solve problems in underpriviledged places in multidisciplinary contexts related to the area of international cooperation.
• 02 - That students may be capble of integrating knowledge and face the complexity of formulating their opinion from information which may be incomplete or limited, and that include reflections on the ethic and social responsibilities related to the area of cooperation and arquitecture in post disaster situations.
• 03 - That students may capable of communicating the conslusions of their research as well as the knowledge and resasons that support it, to a specialized and non-specialized public, with clarity and security.
• 05 - Aquire a methodolgy based on interdisciplinary criteria in order to develop sustainable architectural projects.
• 06 - Aquire a specialized knowledge in the management of materials and human resources for each project development
• 07 - Be capable of aplying to a specific project the knowledge acquired.
• 08 - The capacity to develop planing tecniques of projects developed by interdisciplinary profesionals of cooperation organizations.
• 14 - To know and apply the practical and theoretical principles for the conservation of sustainable resources in urban development.
• 15 - To know how to extract global identity factors aplicable to local territorial situations
• 19 - To propose and develop constructive techniques based on local cultures and materials
• 20 - Acknowledge local resources related to energy systems and apply them to constructions.
• 21 - Saber aplicar los conocimientos en técnicas constructivas low-cost, fundamentales y universales, aplicables a todos aquellos países en fase de desarrollo o afectados por catástrofes naturales y humanas.
• 22 - To know how to adapt construction materials in order to develop alternative, sustainable, and low-cost construction techniques
• 27 - To know how to apply the methodologies applied by the international cooperation agencies and local entities

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.

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).

Group work, case study analysis and group presentations.

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

Basic bibliography listed below, class material will be provided prior.

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, pages viii-15, 214-228.

3. Places to Intervene in a System, Donella H. Meadows, Whole Earth, Winter 1997, pages 1-12.

4. Design Like You Give a Damn [2]: Building Change from the Ground Up, Architecture for Humanity, Abrams, New York, 2012, Lessons Learned...pages 11-46.

5. New Architecture on Indigenous Lands, Joy Malnar & Frank Vodvarka, University of Minnesota Press, 2013, pages 42-59, 179-202

6. Do It Yourself Architecture, BOUNDARIES International Architecture Magazine, Luca Sampo Editor, Issue No. 9, July-September 2013, pages32-39.

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, 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/