Abstract
The case study presented here is an intensive nineday community participation project in a Swiss town, aimed at fostering community food production. The approach to participatory design presented here seeks to emphasize the in-situ improvisatory ‘doing' of collaborative activities. Using notions such as diffusing, reifying and catalyzing the study describes the iterative movement of the project that is bound up in material arrangements and social relations. Through a reflection in action approach, the author unpacks how the designer's agency is understood through social interactions and acts of summarizing, materialization and translation. The paper concludes by discussing power and agency, both as an outcome and central to the design process. This reflective exploration through the lens of agency seeks to encourage the reflexivity of designers in collaborative practice.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/nordes.2017.057
Citation
Pawar, A.(2017) The Ability to Make a Difference in Participatory Design Projects, in Stuedahl, D., Morrison, A. (eds.), Nordes 2017: Design + Power, 15 - 17 June, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway. https://doi.org/10.21606/nordes.2017.057
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Case studies
The Ability to Make a Difference in Participatory Design Projects
The case study presented here is an intensive nineday community participation project in a Swiss town, aimed at fostering community food production. The approach to participatory design presented here seeks to emphasize the in-situ improvisatory ‘doing' of collaborative activities. Using notions such as diffusing, reifying and catalyzing the study describes the iterative movement of the project that is bound up in material arrangements and social relations. Through a reflection in action approach, the author unpacks how the designer's agency is understood through social interactions and acts of summarizing, materialization and translation. The paper concludes by discussing power and agency, both as an outcome and central to the design process. This reflective exploration through the lens of agency seeks to encourage the reflexivity of designers in collaborative practice.