In 2013 I secured funding from the University of Johannesburg under Dr. Amira Osman to attend a 2 week workshop with Architecture Sans Frontieres – United Kingdom (ASF-UK) in Quito, Ecaudor.
The workshop forms part of the Change by Design Programme developed by ASF-UK and tested in several contexts including Brazil and Kenya.
The programme applies a holistic and multi-level approach to participative design in vulnerable contexts and seeks to support local stakeholders through its mechanisms.
The process has been documented in detail by the organisers and can be viewed here:
As well as here: Los Pinos Group Article.
“For the 4th installment of the Change-by-Design workshops, ASF-UK is teaming up with a coalition of Ecuadorian architects, community organisations, activists and academics to develop design ideas for the “Buen Vivir” neighbourhood, that can inform and help shape the Urban Revolution Agenda or ‘Revolución Urbana’ in major Ecuadorian cities in 2013.
The Buen Vivir concept, meaning ‘Good Living’ (or sumak kawsay in Kichwa) is an indigenous philosophy that advocates for social organisation, collective wellbeing, and new ways of engaging with people and the environment. Building on participatory design tools developed in previous workshops in Brazil & Kenya, we will be using the Buen Vivir concept to design an upgrading plan for the community of Los Pinos and a series of project proposals for the Community of Atucucho.
The workshop will also engage Ecuadorian students and professionals alongside the international participants, and will host a city-wide symposium and several visits to other organised informal settlements.
Local partners | The Ecuadorian coalition for Buen Vivir and Change by Design
This coming May, the Ecuadorian coalition will be implementing a series of one-day workshops with various actors, exploring the City, the Neighbourhood and the House of Buen Vivir, in preparation for the Change by Design workshop in August 2013. For images, stories and updates on the communities and local partners visit our Facebook page”
* taken from http://www.asf-uk.org/change-by-design-ecuador
The coalition is formed by:
CLACSO’s Latin American Working Group on Popular Habitat and Social Inclusion
CONBADE The National Confederation of Barrios of Ecuador (CONBADE)
IAEN | The National Institute of Higher Studies
UPS | The Polytechnic Salesian University of Quito (UPS)
GBA | The Neighbourhood Government of Atucucho
BCA | The Community Bank of Atucucho
The Community Development Committee of Los Pinos
* taken from http://www.asf-uk.org/change-by-design-ecuador
The workshop brought together 40 practitioners on the project and divided the group into a Los Pinos and Atacuho group, then into the 4 focuses: Policy & Planning, City, Community and Dwelling.
The first few days were spent visiting the sites and receiving critical input from various experts.
I was assigned to Atacucho, and the community focus group. We were tasked with beginning an immersive critical mapping process with various community groups from the Atacucho Neighborhood.
We developed various tools to engage with the youth group in Atacucho, and prototyped ‘Atacuchbook’ as a way to collective data.
This set of exercises was conducted in various locations including the street corner to broadly engage with as many groups, ages, gender and cultural sects within Atacucho.
Workshop 3
Armed with this data, and a restful weekend, we set about creating the next series of interactive exercises to work through with pre-arranged focus groups.
These exercises had us manufacturing and designing simplistic ‘games’ that allowed us to capture the subtle nature of people’s ‘vision’ for the neighborhood.
After this intensive two week process, we gathered all the data and the findings and developed a set of ‘recommendations’ that we shared at the local youth centre as part of the initial hand over process. The workshop made allowance for a set of interns to remain after this engagement to further develop these with the stakeholders over a six month period.
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| co-determined recommendation page example |
This took place in both Atacucho as well as Los Pinos and was the culmination of a very intense 2 week process.
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| Final workshop night |
Reflection
Quito reflects many parallels to South African cities, and offered some interesting aspects of social cohesion in the ‘mingas’ (social work parties) that allowed government tactical ways to recognise ‘community’ and work through towards development.
The workshop exposed me to a highly rigorous and complex process that truly engaged with the complexity of vulnerable urban residents, while allowing me to part of a process with no expectation of leadership.
I feel there is much I will take forward with me into my work in South Africa.
