Crompton, E., 2019.

Could Participatory Design Offer A Revolution To Architecture? Field Notes from a Situated Action in Hasselt, Belgium

Architecture always involves people, but current architectural design methods continue to actively avoid involving people. Participation has been both applauded as the hero, and stigmatised as the enemy, of design methodology perhaps due to inevitable political entanglements. I subscribe to the notion that Participation and Architecture will always be political, in the sense that they both affect people's lives. Participatory Design (PD) methodologies, and their transformational power, can offer Architecture a more responsive approach of how to involve people.
For the purpose of this paper, I will reflect upon the findings of a Situated Action, called The Library of Engagements, included in the Participatory Design Conference held in Hasselt, Belgium in August 2018. The Library is a collection of PD methods that I have been gathering since 2010. It is shared through a performative dialogue, initially with the aim of inspiring more designers to employ participative methods in their processes, and has developed into a motivational toolkit for citizens to take action themselves. The paper focuses on two examples and uses descriptive field notes to summarise unintended but beneficial outcomes.