Collaborative Action: Designing with Community

Ranging from the highly-urban environments in Seattle or Chicago to the modest environments of rural North Carolina and Mississippi, eight communities across the United States received projects in small-scale designs, to community event days, to collaborative artistic movements. The recipients of the Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship, funded by the feel good, socially-conscious Fetzer Institute, young, recently licensed architects designed and developed enrichment projects for the betterment of different communities, through a methodology that Enterprise is calling ‘Collaborative Action’.

Presented by Boston-based Nella Young, director of the Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship, and  recent architecture licensee and Rose fellow Emily Roush Elliot, the participants of the seminar were introduced to the eight projects that were further elaborated in a complete publication, ‘Made With Love‘.

Each receiving a $5,000 grant, each project was approached with specific circumstances to their given communities, through a general framework cited as ‘compassionate listening, collaborative action, and collective reflection’. The three-step methodology, further detailed and/or changed given the circumstances and contexts of a given community, is attempted to solve a routine ill of typical community “design saviors”, where designers enforce their own philosophies upon a community without dialogue. Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellows hope to remove the inefficiency and stigma by promoting and being very attentive to community dialogue.

Listening is the very first part of the process. Upon arrival to a community, fellows strive for initial silence and are conscious to avoid any presupposition as to what might be an appropriate solution. Rather, the approach is to engage in appropriate, interview-style conversation with a community to reach an appropriate diagnosis. Only upon such diagnosis may the process continue into collaborative action, the development of a project involving the direct labor and effort of community members themselves, and final reflections upon a project’s completion.

Praised and admired for their creative community projects and collaborative efforts, the audience proceeded to interrogate and redirect the conversation toward figuring out a proper way to evaluate the success of such projects.

Given the recentness of their efforts, and their largely non-scientific nature, but rather cultural efforts, effectively evaluating the change in a community after a project is not so-straightforward. The presenters were challenged in trying to imagine how they might be evaluated, producing a collective discourse among the participants of the seminar. Experienced designers from the NOMA community, together with the presenters, certainly realized that the typical architect is so fixed and accustomed to tangibly physical outcomes of his or her projects, that to accept such an ambiguous and non-specific outcome, is rather strenuous at first. It was discussed that factors such as crime rates, performance in education and health could all be statistical evidence for the success of such community enrichment projects. In a much longer-term suggestion, there was the notion that perhaps the events presented to the community by the designers could inspire a child to take up a certain career or goal in his life. However such could clearly not be effectively measured within a reasonable time frame.

Fellow Emily Roush Elliot made the case for the non-necessity for statistical data in assessment of such projects. Success was evident enough in the spirit such projects brought to their community, emphasizing the power that such projects hold in their moments of execution. No one came to object or challenge her proposition, however she was certainly met with skeptical eyes.

One participant came to suggest what might be the most reasonable, practical, and sensible approach to assessing the success of these projects. Simply put, does the community maintain the positive behaviors instilled by these projects, or do those become lost with time, if not shortly after the project ends.

SOME PROJECTS

Hirabayashi Place, Seattle’s International District

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Dedicated to the legacy of Asian-American civil rights leader Gordon Hirabayashi, who notably challenged the United States for the internment of Japanese nationals during World War II, the architectural development is a symbol of Seattle’s historic and thrived Japanese-American community. An antiquated rendering, the newest development to its facade include paintings of Hirabayashi and relevant symbols to force the remembrance of an almost forgotten civil rights hero, and testify to the strength of a prevalent ethnic community.

Ujamaa Food Market, Asheville, North Carolina

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From the Swahili word for ‘extended family’ or ‘brotherhood’, the Ujamaa Food Market is a mobile market of local, organic produce, affordable to low-income families of a rural southern community. It’s mission is to not only provide quality food, but to educate and inform populations about healthy food practices and the sustainability of eating local produce.

Mobile Workshop, Lathrop Homes, North Side, Chicago

Workshop Van

What began with conversation with the developers and community of an affordable housing project on the North Side of Chicago, quickly turned into a community-oriented design opportunity. After hearing of complications and difficulties directly from the community itself, the Rose Architectural Fellow designed a portable workshop for the community’s access so that they might collaborate through building.

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