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Jesko Fezer, Mathias Heyden
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Strategies of Participative Architecture and Spatial Appropriation
Introduction
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Global Non-Plan
Under present shifting circumstances, the question
is once again raised as to how we can deal with the built environment,
given the limits of planning. Procuring land and building one’s
own four walls are the dominant building practice in large parts
of the world, while state planning and regulations often limit themselves
to subsequent formalisation of housing projects. Informal markets
and other poverty-economies, usually attributed to ‘third world
cities”, have existed for some time in prosperous regions of Europe
and North America. For example, on the periphery of Rome, more than
800,000 immigrants live in buildings that were illegally established
and Athens, despite numerous interventions by government planners,
continues to change and expand in an increasingly unregulated and
process-oriented manner. Globalized economies and ensuing waves
of migration produce metropolises worldwide that are beyond the
bounds of planning. The settlement policies of global corporations
for their administration facilities and production plants as well
as the dynamics of poverty migration largely evade local or national
control. These forces of spatial self-organization and the unstable
economic and social conditions call the efficiency of conventional
administrative instruments radically into question.
The diverse practices of spatial production
continuously escape the analytic view. It is increasingly accepted
that the conditions under which cities and living spaces evolve
and the demands that are made on them are too concealed, complex
and mobile for the idea of temporal-spatial controls and fixed space
to be maintained. The various strategies of self-organization and
models of participative architecture demonstrate ways for dealing
with this unpredictability and for accessing different social fields.
Theories and buildings of user-participation show perspectives for
another design, which is able to refer again to complex and processing
realities.
What to do?
In the context of these altered social conditions, a simple update
of western European participation strategies from the 1960s to 1980s
seems unthinkable. The options for dealing with these projects dwindle
together with the dissolution of the welfare state to which they
were bound. Thus, the end of the social housing program and the
breakdown of other forms of state support whose aim were social
balance, weakened the framework for participation projects. Additionally,
the achievements of participation that were incorporated in building
and town-planning legislations have become increasingly ineffectual
in the context of a privatized urban development. There, participation
seems too rigid to be able to effectively carry out alternatives
and at the same time too malleable to raise powerful opposition.
It is bound to delay procedures by raising objections and discredited
as an effective way to gain acceptance amongst those affected by
controversial projects. In the other large arena for historic participation
projects - the design of single-family homes in suburban neighborhoods
- manufacturers of prefabricated houses have taken over the professional
production of wishes and fulfilment of desires. In this context,
the part of the planner, as it was developed in the context of industrial
capitalism, is greatly reduced.
These changes are in the context of overlapping
nation-states and global economic alliances, as well as in relation
to new social alignments and their intensification and acceleration
of exchange. These multi-layered networks and the self-determination
that is demanded from and gained through them, pose new challenges
for spatial design and practice. It establishes local spaces for
different groupings in which community, culture, alternative economies
and lifestyles are lived out and tested. Spatial production grounded
in involvement, enables people to partake and to negotiate with
others involved and thus makes social plurality productive. Participative
architecture questions the organization and use of space and exposes
existing social relations within an ongoing negotiation process.
In this context, the architect who is integrated
into very diverse communication hierarchies is well suited to take
up new tasks. Experienced in multidisciplinary discussions and negotiations
with owners, users, construction companies, contractors, craftsmen,
engineers, investors or administrative authorities; architects seem
best qualified to take up the varied challenges and forms of participation.
Based on their role as initiator, moderator, supporter and executer
of claims, new planning tools can be compiled in relation to historic
participative architecture and theories. Participative architecture
searches for new alliances, working methods and methods for spatial
organization, for approaches that
accommodate multifaceted and changing life-styles/ make living in
the plural possible / take up different ideas of the use of space
// reveal economic conditions for selfdetermination / call into
question real estate property / bring into discussion a collective
understanding of ownership / / accept the dynamics of self-organization
/ use the potential of self-building // design in an interdisciplinary
way / develop spaces that are notfixed to a final state / able to
react to future demands / contemplate parametric architectures /
program changeable rule sets / structure diversity with variants
// demand social interaction / open structures of decision-making
/ extend the temporal and personal spaces of negotiation / assume
an unlimited multiplicity of participants / assemble communication
techniques for non-professionals / make relevant information available
/ initiate public debates on the built environment // understand
planning as making things possible / offer technical support / initiate
negotiation processes through provocation / question adjustments
and competence relations / lend inspiration for possible developments
by outlining scenarios / evaluate possible consequences / offer
useneutral spaces / take into account possible misuses and temporary
appropriations // look for tasks that users offer / think of a building
on demand / offer planning competence to economically excluded people
/ look for contact to the culturally discriminated / stimulate the
spatial production of social structures / invent collective planning
tools / accept failings and compromises / promote self-generated
aesthetics / overcome fixation on images / use the communication
tools of information technology / apply flexible constructions /
test production methods of mass-customisation / integrate flexible
parameters in build structures.
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