Written by:
Jake Stephenson-Bartley
This is the second of three think pieces drawing on my own experience of architecture and the built environment, educationally and through practice, and inspired by an invitation to talk at MSA foundation year about participatory processes under the topic of Wider Issues within the built environment. I hope they will serve as a space for reflection and to challenge us to think critically about who shapes the built environment and how.
There is a great importance in engaging with members of the community or encouraging local authorities and placemaking professions alike to think more openly about how they invite others to participate in shaping the places around us. While it is certainly a challenge, it is a process that professionals are becoming increasingly more interested in. Within The Glass-House, we have certainly seen a greater sense of commitment from local authorities and architectural practices across the UK seeking advice on new processes so that they can engage with their communities and each other more effectively through participatory methods.
I like to think of participatory processes as the mother tree at the heart of all placemaking journeys—a tree that nourishes and shares resources, stories, and voices across diverse places, spaces, and systems. Connecting and sustaining everything around it. Its roots spread wide and deep, intertwining with the complexities of racial equity and the ecological crisis. These wider issues are all interlinked.
Instead of advocating for these processes at length, I will direct you to other pieces on the Glass-House website that advocate for embedding generosity, empathy and time into how we can communicate with each other across scales to support a more collaborative design process.
- Engaging Communities in Design Decision Making
The Glass-House Chief Executive touches on the numerous complexities of engaging communities in design and design decision-making exploring the values, languages, strategies and processes. This was not conceived as a how-to guide but instead, a series of think pieces to bring to attention the challenges and opportunities in co-designing a more holistic approach to placemaking. Read here.
- What is Co-design
This instructional animation touches on the principles of Co-design and the benefits to using this as a design methodology. Short, snappy and thorough. Watch here.
- Glass-House Chats: Bring Sectors Together
Chats often bring diverse audiences together from across the UK and sometimes the world. In this publication you find topical questions around placemaking and engagement, provocation, anecdotes and examples shared that can challenge and excite new ways of approaching place shaping. Read here.
- Cross-pollination: Facilitating Cross-sector Design Collaboration
A practical approach to incubating networks of place-based projects, collaborative research and innovation. Bringing people together across sectors to work and add value to existing and new projects within the community. The approach is based on the principle of creating a sharing economy of assets (skills, projects and resources) among different people and organisations, across disciplines and sectors. Read here.
- A Letter to Future Placemakers: “Before you start planning ask yourself these questions first”
A guest blog writer Olivia – submitted a piece for our ‘A letter to a future placemakers’ blog series. She eloquently shares a series of provocations and first steps for activating community projects – explored during her thesis project in Berlin. Read here.
- Working with an Ethic of Care
This Glass-House opinion piece explores the ethic of care and how ways in which we work can embed that within our professional life. The ethics of care is something that we all embody in different aspects of our life, and it is up to us to diversify how we think about, and with, care in order to contribute ways of continually maintaining and repairing our world. Read here.
Simply put.
All visuals by Jake Stephenson-Bartley, unless stated otherwise.