Documentation of the final design intervention, the alternative present scenario this intervention is offering:
Our second intervention was a workshop series, where our aim was to generate empathy and empower children and adults to co-create inclusive futures for humans and non-humans within the spaces we inhabit. By understanding the interdependence of humans and non-human agents within the urban space, and why this diversity is crucial in building better living spaces. Using imagination and embodied hands-on design methods.
“While the value of urban areas for biodiversity conservation is still being established, there is a growing acknowledgement of the fact that cities are a vital aspect in developing solutions to the global biodiversity crisis. At the same time, reversing biodiversity loss requires the participation of numerous actors, from scientific bodies, authorities and urban planners, to architects, all working towards making cities thriving multi-species habitats. 1”
So we started talking about this topic with school age children as actors, planners and thinkers. We did it, because we believed talking about other agents in our environments will lead us to empathize and by that to understand other perspectives. By understanding other perspectives and have an agency about other living possibilities, as well as to be able and think in an inclusive and equitable way. Consequently, by going through this process children may be able to also talk about their own needs and functions they are looking for, seeing how the built environment is constructed around them for one specific purpose or one specific group and showing if they would include other functions or needs in the space.
We choose a specific area to make our intervention. This area is specific, because it was designed with the neighborhood, and it embodies many needs addressed by participatory planning. We facilitated our intervention in the Superilla which is known for its’ specific way of being designed.
“Following small-scale initiatives carried out in areas such as Poblenou, Horta and Sant Antoni, Superblocks are now taking a leap in scale and pace, with the creation of a network of green hubs and squares where pedestrians have priority. This network is helping to create a new map of the city where citizens are the central players.” 2
This particular space in the Superilla was designed for the function of play and leisure time, in front of a public school, and around many offices. Including a playground, murals for jumping around and imagining new spaces and many tables, seating opportunities for conversations, for food and gatherings and for some relaxing times.
So we asked the kids: This is a space that was especially designed for you, you can play here, you can relax here. However there are other things, people moving around here. Do you know who lives in this space next to you? Do you know how they live in spaces, what they do, what are their needs, how do they want to play around?
“[i]magination gives us entry to abstraction, including mathematics. We gain the ability to conceive alternatives and hence to evaluate. We gain the ability to think of futures and outcomes, skills of planning. The ability to think ethically also becomes a possibility.”
We talked about human and non-human agents. We talked about the blind, the elderly, the bees or about trees which surround us. Then we talked about play, transportation, safety, sufficiency and such more. Functions which are reflecting needs and functions which are created by needs, reflecting the needs of a more conscious urban space. Such as having more trees in space, due to agents who live in trees or somehow having cleaner air, due to the needs of agents who mostly fly around the air.
It was very interesting to see how quickly kids and their parents could relate to non-human species, but it was harder to talk about the needs of elderly or people with disabilities, in the urban environment.
This workshop session was a workshop for ideation and co-creation. If I would like to name it for further method planning, it was a mix of an ideation and an empathy workshop. As a result the kids created blueprints for possible spaces for each of the agents we wanted to collaborate with. We used very simple and familiar materials for the kids, such as play doh, thread and markers on big sheets placed around the environment.
From the learnings and from the blueprints, our smallest architects and urban planners created, we built a placemaking toolkit. A toolkit consists of parts and elements of the urban environment for the above mentioned agents. Soon we will go back to the place and through co-creational methods, we will facilitate a placemaking workshop for rebuilding the superilla for different kinds of needs, using the state of art of equity and inclusivity in design.
My hypothesis about the continuity of this approach is that: by including many of us and creating equitable futures, we may experience a stronger connectivity and through connectivity we may be more prepared and open for short and long term changes in our everyday lives and environments.
Resources of the quotes:
1 - https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/, 21.04.2022
2 - Keith Oatley, Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 30.
“Currently, the dominant framework of childhood is to view them as ‘human becomings’ rather than ‘human beings.’ Viewing children as future, rather than current citizens, denies them of any participation in the city, and because of their ‘incompetence,’ assumes them to have no opinion.”
- (Lee, 1999, Isabella Yurtsever, 2019 ).1
With my further interventions my final aim is to due to the increasing urbanization and radical changes in society, or even in our environment, it is important that future generations are aware that their decisions matter and that their decisions have consequences. As well as, us adults need to be aware that an important aspect of children's rights is their freedom of speech (expression), and therefore they should also have an important role to play when we think about our environment and our future.
Thus, I want to strengthen these in our communities, through participatory planning and co-creation. I I think that our urban spaces consist of many opportunities to be a platform for better living together, to learn with children about the importance of social self-determination, productive citizenship and to see each other’s reality of each other, while shaping inclusive and inclusive spaces and futures for all together.
My third intervention built around the above mentioned aim. It is built around communities to see if these methods are empowering children and changing the behaviors of us adults. It is built around two countries to spread my aim and to include practitioners, such as urban designers and governments. Furthermore it is built around different smaller scale practices, to be able and maybe present as a good practice, to other bigger scale projects, to bigger and different communities. Through this intervention I will work with the Montessori school of Barcelona in designing their new campus building’s garden / public space, with the kids who will use it and a public school in a suburb in Hungary, in designing the public area of their new campus building under construction. Two very similar projects and very similar spaces, in two very different countries with two different educational systems.
While Montessori has a really specific and individual, very practice oriented educational method. It is designed to give a child all the tools she or he needs in life in order to succeed by him or herself.2 It encourages confidence, independence and curiosity through self-directed games and collaborative play. Montessori children make creative choices in order to complete these games and activities. The Hungarian public school is based on an educational model designed by the department of education of the government and follows a national curriculum. It is not individual, it is restricted and very likewise to earlier models, from the late 19 century.
On the other hand, both of the projects invites many decision makers for dialogues, it invites the teachers who teaches the child, the designers / urban planners, who designs the space for the children and the decision makers - the local government or the owner of the institution to see with the eyes of the children and hear out their ideas.
The intervention is a plan of a workshop series after designing it with the schools and the local government, which will consists of:
- Introductory workshops: where we talk about our environments, where we live, what we use. Who lives in these places, what are these places for and what do we imagine in them for ourselves and for others.
- Field research: where we go out to the already existing built environment around the school and to the new garden and talk about and we show, how do we experience the spaces
- Participatory planning: by the learnings of the effect of spaces and our environment, the needs and different perspectives in our living areas, the needs for a more conscious living and conscious functions of spaces for better living together we start designing the space, which we define. Developing a blueprint - data for the designer.
- Co-creational methods: studying about digital fabrication and manufacturing, we build two artifacts with the teachers and the children together, which can be implemented to the final design of the garden (which later enables more responsibility when using the space and our environment).
To sum it up with my interventions I am curiously looking for the impacts of consciously talking about and acting for giving voice to others, for enabling agency for decision making and the awareness of its impact. Of talking about inclusivity and equity in our everyday systems, such us the system of our urban environment and by consciously seeing each others realities.
All the behaviors, reflections and actions I gain from my community, shows the validity, the scenario or the story of the alternative / speculated present we are creating for a well designed future.
Resources of the quotes:
1 - Isabella Yurtsever, Seeing the city through the eyes of the child, BA thesis, 2019, Central Saint Martins
2 - https://www.barcelonamontessorischool.com/montessori, 24.04.2022