Scoala de vara de arhitectura sociala participativa Arhipera 2012
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A R H I P E R A International Summer School
of Participatory Architecture
THE EMERGENCE OF PARTICIPATORY ARCHITECTURE. CONTEXT | Lorin
Niculae THE METHODOLOGY OF COMMUNITY BUILDING | Lorin Niculae
content
A FEW THINGS ON ARCHITECTURE FOR THE POOR | Augustin Ioan
FOR A “POST-APOCALYPTIC” ARCHITECTURE | Augustin Ioan
THE NEW VERNACULAR | Vintil Mihilescu
46
60
66
Design Department at the University of Architecture
and Urbanism “Ion Mincu” (U.A.U.I.M.) since 1998.
Architectural experience since 1994. He received
his Bachelor in Architecture at U.A.U.I.M. in 1998
and his Masters in Markeng at U.A.U.I.M. in 1999, wring “The Social
Representaon of Collecve Housing in Romania” (dissertaon). He
graduated the U.A.U.I.M. Doctoral School in SD-SITT (2011) –
“Arhipera_The Social parcipatory Architecture”, doctoral thesis. He
began working in the area of
social architecture in 2007 and, starng from the year 2010, he has
ran the Housing Department in Soros Foundaon Romania (S.F.R) by
introducing the parcipatory design method for the beneciaries of
housing projects. Currently, he is the Director of Community
Building Department, S.F.R. In 2011, he founded the social
parcipatory architecture group “Arhipera”; the group’s
members
are voluntary architects and student architects who
work in the architecture programme for vulnerable
groups bearing the above menoned name. Founding member of “Ordinul
Arhitecilor din România”. Humanitas Library
founding shareholder.
Lorin Niculae
trans. Silvia Gigoi
“What if you can’t prove you had a house?” (Hernando de Soto)
One of the most pressing urban planning issues of the world, and
particularly of each country, is the urban housing for people in
poverty and especially for people in extreme poverty. The global
demographic growth happens mostly in disfavoured areas, where
resources are scarce or absent. Besides social exclusion caused by
poverty, disadvantaged groups cannot access basic facilities and,
as far as the study is concerned, they do not have access to the
architecture made by architects, with direct impact on the quality
of built environment and on the quality of life. As early as 1995,
Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper declared that only 2% of the
population who bought houses consulted an architect (Bell, Good
Deeds, Good Design: Community Service Through Architecture 2004,
13).
In 2012, an enormous global social pressure, which particularly
affected Romania was caused by the explosion of a precarious built
environment and the unprecedented expansion of ghettos, slums,
suburbs or extremely poor housing areas, which, however called in
one part of the world or another, cause local authorities’ despair
and urban and rural inhabitants’ as well, people who are directly
confronted with this issue. Current architecture practice (if
improvised shelters are considered to be part of) raises some
serious stability and health problems for its users. Last, but not
least, its volume and expansion are overwhelming.
5
Given this situation, during the last decades there has been an
imperative need for architecture to redene its eld of action, to
become an “architecture of change”, not only aesthetically but also
socially and ethically relevant. An architecture which is good as
far as design quality and professional standards are concerned,
must satisfy as many users as possible, it must be permeable and
exible. Rather than creating blueprints for buildings, this
architecture puts the emphasis on creating an economical, political
and social network, capable of changing built environment in areas
with extreme poverty and also changing the communities themselves
as far as their social and material poverty is concerned.
It is time for mainstream architecture to take into consideration
“the unseen face” of the profession and start looking for the
necessary resources and energy to take part with responsibility in
what is to become the prevalent built environment. It is high time
for it to provide real solutions to real problems. Maintaining the
architectural speech at a top notch or, in many cases, at a purely
conceptual level in Romania in 2012 is similar to bishops’ debate
on angels’ gender while Constantinople was being attacked by the
Ottoman cannons. This paper is also a warning. In the absence of an
active involvement of architects in developing the built
environment for people in extreme poverty, other factors take over
the problem. These are the local authorities who, in search for a
solution and lacking the necessary know-how, go for authoritative
solutions which, far from feeding the need, amplify it.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 25 (1) says that
“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the
health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food,
clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services,
(...)” (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 2011)
including the access to housing in the system of factors that
inuence the social performance of people and families.
As early as 2007, Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European
Union sanctions in article 34 (3) that: “In order to combat social
exclusion and poverty, the Union recognises and respects the right
to social and housing assistance so as to ensure a decent existence
for all those who lack sufcient resources, in accordance with the
rules laid down by Community law and national laws and practices.”
(Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union 2000). These
statements show that, from a political point of view, the need of
intervention in situations of extreme poverty is known and
assumed.
The commitment of the EU presidency generated the political line at
the European Parliament and of the European Committee level for
combating poverty by allocating nancing lines. Starting with 2014,
these will also include housing, under the ethical aspect, as a
premise for the improvement of social and economic aspects.
Lorin Niculae
Vântori, Neam county, 2010
Given this political, social and economic environment, it becomes
crucial for Romania in 2012 to be capable of absorbing correctly
the structural funds on affordable housing for disfavoured
categories, whose access and administration will be part of the
attributions of local public authorities, in accordance with the
principle of subsidiarity. In order to have access to the European
funds, they will have to work out local housing politics, as
regulators (as they also did until now), and also as implementers.
However, without a methodology, a guide-book or an intervention
model for housing, the possibility of absorbing structural funds
for housing does not necessarily imply the local authorities’
capacity of creating and drawing up eligible projects.
This certain deciency makes public local authorities liable to
taking the wrong decisions, not out of bad intent, but because of
lack of information on efcient techniques, as there is not a
signicant built environment in Romania, enough to give an adequate
answer to the problems. A few positive examples, insufciently
publicised, are a drop in the ocean – it is very unlikely that
local authorities in Constana had access to the practices in
Sruleti (Clrai county) for example. What is more, assuming some
successful examples from rural areas and adapting them to an urban
methodology can end up as an useless attempt with an uncertain
result.
Therefore, throughout this article, I am going to present the
antithesis between social participatory architecture and
authoritative architecture for mass housing with its tendencies in
the context of radicalization of the political speech on
administrative resources and efcient possibilities of “solving” the
problem of living in extreme poverty.
AN INTRODUCTION TO PARTICIPATORY ARCHITECTURE
7
Bleti, Ursrie, Prahova county, 2007
A fundamental characteristic of the social housing is that it does
not involve individualities (like an architect traditionally
discusses with a client), but communities. One of the errors of rst
years practice was negotiating the problem individually, only with
the direct beneciaries of the social houses, without involving the
whole community in the process. As a result, the community
segregated in “the haves” and “the have nots”1. Another consequence
was the total lack of involvement of the beneciaries in the process
of building, stimulating their passivity and making the community
an assisted one.
Social houses construction programs in areas of extreme poverty
must follow the principles of social participatory architecture.
The architect working in these conditions has to be a social
architect. It is about, neither more or less, a change of
paradigm of the architectural practice.
In the current paradigm, the development of a social housing
construction project for beneciaries in extreme poverty starts with
the attempt of eradicating a settlement, a built environment in
extreme poverty, which represents an issue for local public
authority. Once the town hall makes this decision, it requests a
local urban planning to an urban design ofce, which will take over
the project from the local authority, using the area placed at
their disposal. Then follow the approval procedures, the
architectural details, the authorization for construction, the
technical project, the bid with the entrepreneurs and the actual
construction of the social houses, followed by the freewill or
authoritative resettlement of the poor from the slum to the new
neighborhood. In fact, local public authority is both the beneciary
and the nancier of the project, which develops only by the rules it
establishes. The level of authority and control during the
intervention is extremely high and the role of urbanists and
architects is secondary, given the extremely low budget for this
kind of actions. The typical hierarchical pyramidal model “top-
down” is followed.
Lorin Niculae
Architect
User
Consump- tion Lack of possession C o n c o r - dance
Anonymity
Intervention THEME PROJECT EXECUTION HOUSE
Participatory
paradigm
Analysis of existing and p r o j e c t i v e needs Resource
man- agement
User+ Ar-
User+
Architect
Participation P r o g r e s s i v e building D e c e n t r a
l i z e d production
User+ Archi-
User
Table showing the stages of a project for social houses building in
the two paradigms.
On the other hand, social participatory architecture suggests in
the rst place starting “bottom-up” through the democratic process
of consulting the citizens who are to be involved in the project.
Even if the local public authority could be the initiator of the
project, the consultative process involves a decision network, a
consortium of people who make the decisions, where urbanists and
architects have a more important word to say. Besides, the
architects can start by themselves this kind of project, bringing
the idea of change to the community and working on the project
together with the people. Given these circumstances, they become
social architects.
Trying to improve the living in extreme poverty and always
confronting with low budgets3, I tried as a rst stage to nd minimal
living formulas for the families included in the program. Anyway,
this has been the architects’ pursuit ever since the activity of
building for disfavored categories started, it sedimented
during
AN INTRODUCTION TO PARTICIPATORY ARCHITECTURE
9
Mayor Radu Mazre’s proposal for solving the lack of social houses
in Constana city.
As a rst stage, 1000 containers will be placed in Tomis Nord
district in 2012. From
http://lideruldeopinie.ro/41525/modulul-social and
http://www.stiri.com.ro/stire-4212/
case-sociale-de-8-milioane-euro.html Social housing becomes “social
mode”.2
the C.I.A.M. II4 (Arnstein 1969), by the conceptualization of
existenzminimum, this term is translated nowadays in extreme
housing , formulated by the American architects Deborah Gans
and Matthew Jelacic, in their attempt of solving the issue of
emergency housing for the refugees in Bosnia.
But social hosing is not and it should not be an emergency housing.
Even if the budget does not allow the building of a new social
house for a family of 12 members, it is important to build the
minimum that can offer the necessary shelter, together with
offering a maximum potential for development, accessible for the
users.
ARHIPERA concept for an evolutive social house in Sruleti (Clrai
county)
Lorin Niculae
The social house in extreme poverty is a living organism; its birth
means offering shelter; its growth means adapting to the family’s
needs and to the way of living preferred by the users. The house
must be designed so as to contain in nuce the possibility of
growth. The social house in extreme poverty must be an evolutive
house.
The situation described in the present work opposes the practice of
inserting the social house into a barren environment, inducing the
development of social quarters. The social house that we propose is
inserted into an existing environment of extreme poverty, on an
existing allotment or on a newly delimited one, near a house that
is unt for living, into an urban tissue that is in most cases
unstructured. I would like to add that, although inserting the
social house into an existing environment is the better solution,
in some cases it proves to be impossible, when a community has
occupied a land unt for living (exposed to pollution or to the risk
of ood or of landslide, etc.), thus making it necessary to relocate
the families.
To be a social architect does not mean to give up practicing your
profession in order to design cages but, on the contrary, it means
practicing it so as to change the world you live in for the better.
It may seem naive if it weren’t true. In the context of the present
credit shortage, many architects had to close their ofces for lack
of orders. If in the years to come social houses will mean only
very protable contracts between the municipality and the suppliers
of containers or of prefabricated building parts, then we shall
witness the cutbacks of the highly important sector of social
housing from the body of Romanian architecture. More than that,
such “radical” solutions generate segregation and the only long
term effect is moving the poverty pockets from the centre of the
town to the outskirts, where the desired surveillance, coercion and
control can be implemented, claiming at the same time the valuable
real estate allotments in the town centre.
If, on the other hand, the architects will put on their rubber
boots for generating architecture where it does not exist, then
architecture will start to matter not only as a sector destined for
the elite (fewer and fewer this days), but also for the poor masses
(which become more and more numerous), and the architects’ work and
effort will contribute to diminishing poverty. This change is
necessary and possible to make.
At the same time, in dening the social architect within the frame
of his profession and at the level of power relation, he is a
mediator between often opposed vectors: on the one hand – the
administration, who wants to solve the problem; on the other hand –
the poor people, who they themselves are the problem. The
architect’s role is to understand the point of view and the system
of thought of both parties and to supply an architectural solution
capable of “opening the limit”, of making opposites meet. And
this
AN INTRODUCTION TO PARTICIPATORY ARCHITECTURE
11
role is not impossible as long as the opposition of the parties
involved is given by the inaccessibility of the opposed systems of
thought. In other words, the architect is an intellectual, part of
the public sphere, who can induce social change, and good
architecture does good to many people.
This approach transfers the architect from the authority to the
agora, to the public sphere dened by the community’s needs and
aspirations. It is denitely not an easy decision to make. But the
reward of generating change where it seems impossible, of bringing
hope where there is none and of engaging all your creativity for
producing architecture out of extremely little, is well worth
it.
NOTES
1 Using Saul Alinsky’s words.
2 The example provided by Mayor Mazre was taken over in 2012
by
the Group of counselors PNL of Bistria, who proposed the
resettlement in containers of the poor who couldn’t pay their rent
for the town hall’s apartments. Mayor Andrei Rusu declared that
“It’s an absolutely necessary solution because we need to clear the
city centre”. We can nd here a traditional form of extra-muros
exclusion of the poor.
3 Budgets are always low relating to the issue’s scale.
(author’s
note)
4 The critics of the congress can be found in Giancarlo De
Carlo’s
“Architecture’s Public”, commented in this chapter.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arnstein, Sherry R. “A Ladder of Citizen Participation.”
JAIP , 35. no.4, 1969: 216-224.
Bell, Bryan. Good Deeds, Good Design: Community Service Through
Architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press,
2004.
Bell, Bryan and Katie Wakeford. Expanding Architecture. Design as
Activism. New York: Metropolil Books, 2008.
Blundell Jones, Peter, Doina Petrescu and Jeremy Till. Architecture
and Participation. London: Taylor&Francis, 2005.
“Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.” European
Parliament. 12 18, 2000.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/ pdf/text_en.pdf (accessed
November 22, 2012).
Dean, Andrea Oppenheimer and Timothy Hursley. Rural Studio: Samuel
Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency. New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2002.
Habraken, N. John. Supports: an Alternative to Mass
Housing. London: Urban International Press, 2011.
Hamdi, Nabeel. Educating for Real. London: Intermediate
Technology Publications, 1996.
—. Housing Without Houses: Participation, Flexibility,
Enablement. London: Intermediate Technology Publications,
1995.
—. Small Change: About the Art of Practice and the Limits of
Planning in Cities. London: Earthscan, 2011.
Lorin Niculae
—. The Placemaker’s Guide to Building Community. London:
Earthscan, 2011. —. Urban Futures: Economic Growth and
Poverty Reduction. Bourton Hall:
ITDG, 2005. Hatch, Richard C. The Scope of Social
Architecture. New York: Van
Nostrand, 1984. Pearson, Jason. University/Community Design
Partnerships. New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. Portereld, Gerald A, and
Kenneth B Hall. A Concise Guide to Community
Planning. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional, 1995. Sanoff,
Henry. Community Participation Methods in Design and
Planning. New
York: Wiley&Sons, 2000. Sinclair, Cameron and Kate Stohr.
Design Like You Give A Damn:
Architectural Responses To Humanitarian Crises. New York:
Metropolis Books, 2006.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. November 22, 2011.
http://www. un.org/en/documents/udhr/.
Turner, John F.C. Housing By People: Towards Autonomy in Building
Environments. London: Marion Boyars Publishers,
1976/2009.
Voicu-Dorobantu, Roxana, Ana-Maria Marinoiu and Florin Botonogu.
“Social Housing: an Economic Issue.” Romanian Economic Journal, XI,
no.29, 2008: 171-183.
Ward, Colin. Cotters and Squatters, Housing’s Hidden
History. Nottingham: Five Leaves Publications,
2002/2009.
Whitehead, Christine, and Kathleen Scanlon. Social Housing in
Europe. London: London School of Economics and Political
Science, 2007.
—. Social Housing in Europe II - A Review of Policies and
Outcomes. London: London School of Economics and Political
Science, 2008.
AN INTRODUCTION TO PARTICIPATORY ARCHITECTURE
13
Since its appearance in 1960, starting with Habraken’s manifesto
and continuing with Giancarlo De Carlo (1969), John Turner (1976),
Christopher Alexander (1982) and Nabeel Hamdi (1995), social
participatory architecture has been dened by the theoretical and
practical work of a myriad of great architects. In 1969, The
Skefngton Report (England) was the rst governmental investigation
that raised the question of public participation in design. In 1976
participatory architecture was ofcially “accepted” in the
profession by creating a working group in the Royal Institute of
British Architects (RIBA), whose role was to “examine the
relationship between profession and communities” (Hamdi
1995, 20).
Social participatory architecture establishes the foundation of its
discourse precisely on the acknowledgement of the fact that
Modernism failed to full the aspiration of democracy and
rationality. What Jürgen Habermas called the “project of modernity”
must be understood in the social and political context that
generated it: the armed conicts and revolutions of 19
th century, the decantation of the ideals of Illuminism, the
industrialization, the extension of railroads and waterways
involving mobility, the urbanization (Habermas and Weber Nicholson
1989)1. “The Industrial Imperative” was one of the main engines
that startled the creativity of modern architects, generating new
ideals and ideologies. Modernism
THE EMERGENCE OF PARTICIPATORY ARCHITECTURE. CONTEXT
Lorin Niculae
tried to obtain social equality by means of industrialization and
progress. Adopting Le Corbusier’s phrase, J.J.P. Oud said that the
house would be relevant for the masses only when it has become a
machine, because production can provide social housing for the
entire society by creating series; manufacture production would
serve only a limited and wealthier public (Stamm 1978).
The doctrine of New Objectivity (Newe Sachlichkeit) brought about
the idea that a functional, comfortable and efcient object doesn’t
necessarily have to be aesthetic, but it has to be accepted by the
society, just like industrial objects that are aesthetic because of
their simplicity and efcient use. New Objectivity also made way for
the idea of demolishing poor residential districts in city centres
in order to make room for the big metropolitan projects, involving
mass resettlement of the inhabitants to the outskirts. (Frampton
1996, 289)
The ideal of Modernism brought order, rationality and accessibility
among the premises of obtaining individual freedom. Nevertheless,
since 1960, after cramming the districts with modernist blocks,
immune to the context, or innite rugs of identical, standardized
social houses in city centres and in the outskirts, it was obvious
that these conclusive acts weren’t able to reconcile universal
truth with regional particularities, progress with tradition,
universal style with local cultural identities, social change with
capitalism. Under the leadership of Le Corbusier, Congrès
International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) advocated for utopias
in which the demiurge architect decided the fate of the masses by
means of his intuition of discipline and order. Article 22 of The
Athens Charter (1933) denounced that “the suburbs are often mere
aggregations of shacks hardly worth the trouble of maintaining.
Flimsily constructed little houses, boarded hovels, sheds thrown
together out of the most incongruous materials, the domain of
poor creatures tossed about in an undisciplined way of life —
that is the suburb!” (CIAM 1933). One can notice Le Corbusier’s
interest for unity and discipline, while diversity is seen as a bad
consequence of poverty and lack of perspective.
Fascinated by the technological progress, Le Corbusier was a
declared enemy of the streets. In an era when transport was prone
to become 100% airborne in a few years, Le Corbusier placed the
airport in the centre of the city, turning the street and the
sidewalk into an old, millenary and non-functional relic. For
instance, one of the articles of Athens Charter stipulated that no
block entry should be made directly from the street (art. 27).
Pedestrians would have had paths and promenades reserved for
them.
Giancarlo de Carlo (1919-2005) is one of the leaders of social
participatory architecture, member of the famous Team 10, together
with Georges Candilis, Aldo van Eyck, Alison and Peter Smithson and
Jacob Bakema. Founded in 1953, during the 9th congress of
CIAM, Team X (or Team 10) provoked a schism at the heart of
Lorin Niculae
Modernism. Disappointed by the functional segregation in Housing,
Work, Loisir and Transport proposed by the Athens
Charter, the young generation of architects searched for other
principles of structural development of the cities. The team’s
answer to the report of the 8th CIAM in 1951 was a simple one,
condensed into one paragraph: “Man may readily identify himself
with his own heart, but not easily with the town within which it is
placed. ‘Belonging’ is a basic emotional need – its associations
are of the simplest order. From ‘belonging’ – identity – comes the
enriching sense of neighborliness. The short narrow street of the
slum succeeds where spacious redevelopment frequently fails”
(Frampton 1996, 271).
Modernism failed from a democratic point of view precisely by
enslaving its ideals to a power system (capitalist or communist,
individual or collective, it doesn’t matter) which eliminated the
user’s individuality from the eld of architecture (each system by
its own means) and caused man’s alienation from their own house.
Habermas shows in his article republished in 1981, “Modern and
Postmodern Architecture” (Habermas and Weber Nicholson 1989), how
the system of mobilization of workforce, of organizing the sites,
of the general conditions of living in the city and last, but not
least, of locating the buildings led to the concentration of large
groups of people in the outskirts, since the project of modernity
failed to integrate social housing inside the city, as it failed to
integrate the factory as well. The construction of houses started
to subsume to economic and bureaucratic factors, detached from the
concept of family and tradition.
Therefore, Team X focuses on the feeling of allegiance and
identity, indissolubly related to mass housing. At the same time,
the slum and the poor outskirts are promoted as examples that
satisfy a set of basic needs, that nobody can live without. In The
Doorn Manifesto (Holland) in 1954, Team X formulates 8 principles;
the rst one stipulates:” it is useless to consider the house
except as part of a community owing to the inter-action of these on
each other” (Smithson 1968).
The last congress, the CIAM X, held at Dubrovnik in 1956,
gravitated around the Smithson brothers’ “diagrams of association”
and the different levels of human association. The concepts
discussed were identity, cluster and mobility. In Dubrovnik as
well, Van Eyck presented the importance of human association. Thus,
“The Functional City” ends its programmatic existence. It is not by
accident that Le Corbusier, together with other founders of CIAM,
did not take part in the congress.
The congress of 1959, held at Otterlo makes the transition from
CIAM to Team X. Aldo van Eyck presents the diagram “By us for us”
which illustrates the principle “Since man is both subject and
object of architecture, it follows that its primary job is to
provide the former for the sake of the latter” (Van Eyck
1948, 89).
THE EMERGENCE OF PARTICIPATORY ARCHITECTURE. CONTEXT
17
The housing problem explicitly formulated by theorists of social
participatory architecture since 1960 resonates after 50 years, in
an unexpected proportion, considering the present times, in which
the explosion of slums, the rise in numbers of homeless people and
the government’s incapacity to answer these issues in a democratic
way requests an organized and aware architectural and urban
response. The architects’ riot against houses without identity in
1956 generated an architectural phenomenon which was insignicant in
size, an epiphenomenon that wasn’t able to change the primary,
main-stream phenomenon of construction of mass housing. This
remained tributary to the economic criteria, the statistics, the
standardization and prefabrication. The users of the social houses
assumed their role of consumers granted by the developing agencies
and the social house became the product that the economic rise of
many countries was based on. The example of Pruitt-Igoe has been
forgotten and nowadays the only difference is in form: we don’t
build blocks any more, but low-rise developments which repeat on
the horizontal the problems caused by modernist blocks’ lack of
identity and referentiality.
Starting with 2008, with the establishment of credit crisis,
followed by the sovereign debt crisis, people began to acknowledge
the fact that poverty exists and there is even extreme poverty, not
only in the third world countries, but also in the developed
countries and that there are no solutions for this problem yet.
Social mass houses can’t be built in extreme poverty and this fact
was emphasized by the disaster of the unsuccessful interventions
starting from statistics and nancial calculations. On the contrary,
practice proved that only small scale participatory interventions
can be successful.
Baia Mare, Horea street, social building mainly inhabited by
Romanies. 2011
International interest for social housing appeared in the last
years as a result of continuous degradation of living conditions
for the segment of population living in poverty in the context of a
more and more acute social polarization, with the worst
consequences: social segregation, marginalization, social
exclusion. The
Lorin Niculae
emergence of homogeneous or discontinuous settlements in extreme
poverty must generate a proper social, urban and architectural
response as, for now, there is no National Operational Programme
for improving living conditions for disfavoured people confronting
this serious situation.
Baleti (Prahova), house built by Soros Foundation and Habitat for
Humanity Romania, for a Romani family. One can see users’
preoccupation to maintain the house clean by placing a
doormat at the entrance and leaving the shoes outside. Clean and
airy interior. Curtains were installed at the windows. Photography
from august 2011. House inaugurated
on May 2010.
The response comes from central and local authorities who are
trying to solve the problem in the normative paradigm, starting
with the evaluation of the size and nature of the problem, deciding
the budget and eventually handling the architect a pre-established
project as far as the maximum admitted surfaces, the typology and,
sometimes, even the nishings are concerned. The most serious issue
that architects are confronted with is that their services are
requested only after the games have already been made and the task
has been received from the contracting authority. Contracting
authority is the client, when, in fact, the community occupying the
future designed social houses is as much a client as the former.
Practically, architects operate in a “blind” system, in which the
programme is dened by sociologists and economists and the real
beneciary is inaccessible. The expression of architect’s knowledge,
experience, sensitivity and creativity resumes only to a formal
exercise, limited by a pre-established budget, designated to a
beneciary dened by the average, without a real correspondent (for
example, families of 2,5 members).
The only way to “escape” this system of contingencies, detrimental
to the profession, is practicing a social participatory
architecture that starts with the community and overturns the
paradigm, providing the architect a central, creative role.
THE EMERGENCE OF PARTICIPATORY ARCHITECTURE. CONTEXT
19
1 Jürgen Habermas, Modernity: An Incomplete Project, essay
rst
published as reading in 1980, when Habermas was awarded with
Theodor W. Adorno prize in Frankfurt. It was then read in 1981 in
New York and afterwards published as “Modernism versus
Postmodernism” in the German journal “New German Critique”, no. 22,
1981, consulted at http://sernt55.
essex.ac.uk/ar/ar936/f%20Week%206%20%20Habermas/Modernity%20%5BAn%20
Incomplete%20Project%5D.pdf
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture: A Critical
History. New York: Thames&Hudson, 1996.
Habermas, Jurgen. “Modernity: An Incomplete Project.” University of
Essex. 1980-1981.
http://sernt55.essex.ac.uk/ar/ar936/f%20Week%206%20
%20Habermas/Modernity%20%5BAn%20Incomplete%20Project%5D.pdf
(accessed November 30, 2011).
Habermas, Jürgen and Shierry Weber Nicholson. The New Conservatism:
Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate. Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press, 1989.
Hamdi, Nabeel. Housing Without Houses: Participation, Flexibility,
Enablement. London: Intermediate Technology Publications,
1995.
Smithson, Alison. Team 10 Primer. 1968.
http://www.team10online.org/ (accessed December 18, 2011).
Stamm, Gunther. “Architecture of J. J. P. Oud, 1906-1963: An
Exhibition of Drawings, Plans, and Photographs.” Great
Buildings. 1978.
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Weissenhof_Row_Houses. html
(accessed November 30, 2011).
Van Eyck, Aldo. “Projekten.” Clean Design o5. 1948.
http://www.
cleandesign05.co.uk/Architectural%20Solutions%20for%20Urban%20
Housing.htm (accessed December 15, 2011).
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21
“Houses are expensive. However, it is
more expensive not to build them.”
Bryan Bell (Bell and Wakeford 2008)
INTRODUCTION Next I will analyse the ensemble of methods specic to
social participatory architecture applied in extreme poverty for
the construction of social houses, as redened and conceptualized
through practice. In its form presented here, the methodology is
based on the structuring effort undertaken during the community
building program of Soros Foundation Romania between 2009 and 2012.
Briey and without going into details, the programme aimed at the
strengthening of rural communities in extreme poverty, the
construction of new houses, the rehabilitation of some of the
existing ones, the completion the settlement’s functional matrix
with the missing functions in the territory (usually services) and
the insurance the sustainability of the projects. In 2009 and 2012,
the programme was unfolded by Soros Foundation Romania (SFR) in
partnership with Habitat for Humanity Romania, in Bleti (Prahova)
and in Vântori (Neam). In 2011 and 2012 the project was completely
undertaken by SFR and is carried on in Sruleti and Dor Mrunt, both
in Clrai county.
THE METHODOLOGY OF COMMUNITY BUILDING
Lorin Niculae
For the presentation of the methodology I will appeal to examples
from the ongoing program, therefore the stated concepts will have a
correspondent in the real situation. Although the subject of the
study is social participatory architecture, we have to cope with a
program that includes several subjects, as we shall see next. For
this reason, I will also state very briey the other components of
the program to allow the reader to envisage a complete image for
placing, while keeping it in the right proportions, the
participatory architecture.
photos during a participatory meeting in Sruleti, jud.
Calrai, from 31 August 2011
The scheme of relation system within the framework of
community
building
Community building represents a recent concept promoted in
participatory architecture by Nabeel Hamdi. It refers to building a
systemic frame of social and production relationships at community
level able to support the community, of which the relationship with
the built space occupies a central place (Hamdi London). In other
words, in order to replace the existing extreme poverty housing
with the desired housing corresponding to the stability, aesthetics
and comfort standards, it is necessary to place this objective in a
system of mutual supporting objectives which converge to
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sustainability. Community building integrates housing, employment,
health, hygiene, education and culture elds. Employment supports
housing just as housing can credit with employment.
During this period, I have permanently up-dated the initial
methodology to the actual situation and I have integrated the
feedback of the three years practice. Denitely, this methodology
represents a stage, a partial conclusion, offering a exible frame
for organising and structuring the intervention, a methodology
which is required to be adapted to every concrete situation on the
site and to be modied and be completed according to new data,
situations, groups of beneciaries, legislative or any other kind of
changes.
The role of methodology seen, as I mentioned, as analysis of
program-specic methods ensemble, is to supply the necessary minimum
instruments and to structure the intervention issues of all
entities interested in the ongoing of such a programme, NGOs or
governmental agencies. This is necessary because the premises for
the development of a social houses construction programme, most
denitely, change in relation to the traditional structure of such a
programme.
Giancarlo De Carlo dened the development of most investment
projects thus (Hatch 1984, 3):
No. Action Responsible
3 Financing
7 Use Users
9 Recycling
10 Elimination and replacing
In relation with this “traditional” structure, in the case of
social houses in extreme poverty construction programme, the
participatory process implies both the user and the architect in
establishing the function, selection of the site, actual
construction etc. Therefore, De Carlo’s table changes
accordingly:
THE METHODOLOGY OF COMMUNITY BUILDING
25
2 Selection of the site Owner + architect + user
3 Financing Owner +user
5 Form and structure Architect + user
6 Supervision of the con- struction
Architect + user
10 Elimination and replacing Owner + user
We see therefore, that the architect’s role, far from being
diminished, becomes more important and covers more steps in the
construction “life span” than in the traditional system, yet this
depends a lot on the level of participation of the beneciaries that
the architect (or the expert) would like to have and to trigger.
The best representation of the level of participation is the
“Participation scale” model stated for the rst time by Sherry
Arnstein in 1969. (Arnstein 1969)
Participation scale, according to Sherry Arnstein
The scheme of participation scale, taken from the document
consulted, shows the different levels of participation. From the
bottom upwards, this can “climb” from non-participation to the
power delegated to the citizen, crossing through manipulation,
therapy, information, consulting, reconciliation,
partnership,
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delegate power, civic control.1 Along with the birth and the
theoretical outline of the participatory speech, starting with
1960s, this started to migrate from the public sphere of non-
governmental organisations to that of public authorities, their
ofcial speech becoming present, sometimes grounded, other times
only to mask undemocratic decisions. For example, the recent case
of shifting the gypsies from Baia Mare was instrumented by the
local authority by appealing to a language in which the words
“partnership”, “consulting”, “delegation” had a central role, while
the actions behind these words were, in fact, pressure, summons,
threats and inuence.
Real participation, in Dor Mrunt, Clrai County – UAUIM students,
members of Arhipera.
21.09.2011
The border between the participation steps is vague and its
achievement depends a lot on the intention and the skill of the
social architect who implements the community building project.
Sometimes, aiming at a certain result that he considers good for
the community, he can reduce the real level of participation to
tokenism. He consults the community, creates the appearance of
integrating the feedback, but, in reality, he materialises his own
predetermined ideas. This was what De Carlo was criticised for,
justied or not, in the case of the project in Terni. One of the
purposes of this methodology is to present the instruments through
which a real participation can be reached in the framework of a
participatory architecture project.
GENERATING A COMMUNITY BUILDING PROGRAMME. “A social programme is
dened as a set of activities or projects
oriented towards an objective/group of objectives, in which
the
human, material and nancial resources are coherently
organised
to produce goods/servicies or environmental changes, as answer
to
certain needs.” (Istrate 2004)
Any intervention on the dwelling, on this level, needs an
implementation programme, which we shall dene next, through
aim,
THE METHODOLOGY OF COMMUNITY BUILDING
27
objectives, principles and actions. This programme is both reactive
and proactive. It is reactive as it tries to respond to a clear,
identiable and quantiable need, namely the need to dwell. It is
proactive as it suggests an approach starting from the positive
characteristics identied in the community and from the abilities of
the groups of users, it dwells on consolidating all these traits
and, nally, it militates for an architecture of public interest in
Romania.
The project for increasing the quality of the built environment,
achieved by means of social participatory architecture, is a part
of the community building programme which reunites and integrates
many projects in synergy, according to the particularity of each
programme. A participatory architecture project can be developed
only in conjunction with a social economy project, which is capable
to support the community in both the construction and the house
maintenance effort; with a project of social assistance focused on
community development, that includes education for children and
adults, professional training, access to health support; with a
project of networks extension in the site; with a project of
clarifying the legal situation of the land and the houses.
images from the construction site at one of the houses in Dor
Mrunt. Supervision of the
site by the members of Arhipera, who made a participatory design of
the house. January and May 2012.
PURPOSE The purpose of the programme is to improve the living
conditions in the communities affected by extreme poverty and to
create a model of intervention nationally applicable, able to
create an architecture of public interest in Romania. The
integrated intervention on dwelling in the studied communities,
namely that type of intervention which refers to dwelling as an
entity indissolubly linked to both the urban space and the urban
life, supported by actions which refer to the increase of
self-supporting potential of social actors envolved (employment)
and their access to basic services (health, education, culture),
can involve fundamental changes at the level of the users’ way of
life, on a long term. The
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projective change of the relations of production in the area (the
users will self-support at the end of the strategy application)
generated by the application of the intervention programmes, will
allow the proper use of the material base created, namely of the
initial capital represented by a house. These changes are necessary
not only in view of the post-utilization of the house, but mainly
with a view to reaching the social aim desired: social integration
and elimination of segregation.
OBJECTIVES Initially, the programme’s objectives referred only to
the changes foreseen at the dwelling level, but, as we consider
more thoroughly the causes that generated the precariousness of the
sheltering (since we cannot dene it as dwelling), I went the
causative way backwards, passing through extreme poverty,
unemployment, spatial and social segregation and arriving to social
exclusion as primordial factor that generates the existing
situation in the community. Thus, the programme’s objectives were
“translated” in a way that architecture had to nd the correspondent
and the equivalent in other elds of social life: access to a
dwelling according to norms and legislation can be achieved only if
the family has a proper level of employment and education; the
correct location of the house depends on the negotiation with the
local administration for good quality land within the built-up
area; the dwelling expression and its spatial-volumetric
conformation is generated by the dwelling tradition and the local
cultural identity of the community.
Built environment in Sruleti and Dâlga (Dor Mrunt), Clrai county,
2011
The programme’s objectives became: -social inclusion -development
of the communities capacity, autonomy -spatial justice, eradication
of ghettos from the communities -creation of social infrastructure
and of operational social services -creation of architecture of
public interest in Romania
THE METHODOLOGY OF COMMUNITY BUILDING
29
THE PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNITY BUILDING Since the beginning, but
mainly during the programme, some essential principles of
intervention decanted themselves and inuenced the choice of the set
of methods. These comprise the principles magistrally stated by
Ctlin Berescu and Mariana Celac in the rst far-reaching work
dedicated to dwelling and extreme poverty in Romania (Berescu and
Celac 2006, 96-99), shifting the accent from norm to practical
method. It is about democracy and human rights ruled principles,
about social, economic and urbanistic principles, applied “on the
spot”, that proved useful in reaching the aim of the programme. We
will not present them in categories, since a principle, although
belonging to urbanism, has repercussions on the social eld, and a
democratic principle guarantees the urban action. We will focus
next on listing them in a concise manner, mentioning that this
enumeration is not exhaustive, as it is generated strictly by our
theoretical experience and work on the site. The subsequent or
similar experiences developed by other organisations cam complete
this list. These principles integrate the corollaries of social
participatory architecture stated in the chapter on the denition of
paradigm, adapting them to the actual situation on the site.
bottom-up intervention Generally, in Romania, the
interventions at the level of the urban tissue are realised
bottom-up. General Urbanistic Plans (GUP) and Zonal Urbanistic
Plans (ZUP) are drawn by urbanism ofces, at the General board’s or
local authority’ request. These are not submitted to the
inhabitant’s analysis. It would not even be possible in the present
form of drafting and codication of the information. For this
reason, the whole process lacks in transparency at the level of the
inhabitant, affected by the decisions made at “higher” level. Some
top-to-bottom interventions, though animated by good intentions,
ended up by becoming hateful and failed to reach their aim.
Decisions to move the inhabitants in extreme poverty to collective
houses, for example, made without consulting them, faced the
inhabitant’s resistance as they wanted to continue living in old
settlement, no matter how wretched or how justied the decision of
moving. On the contrary, an action that starts from the bottom,
from the citizen, involving him in making the decision from the rst
steps of urban and architectural design will be seen as a positive
action and its result will be appreciated by the beneciaries, who
will recognise themselves in this result. Certainly, such approach
will consume more resources, requesting actions of community
consolidation, work with the community, yet this is far from being
a drawback; on the contrary, a consolidated community will have a
higher capacity to support the intervention and to continue its
results through its own forces.
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Comparative scheme between the top-to-bottom model (left) and the
bottom-up model (right). One can see the higher contribution of
architecture and its proximity to the
decisional level in the case of the bottom-up model.
social participatory architecture The rst consequence of the
principle of the bottom-up intervention is participatory design.
The fundamental decisions referring to dwelling must belong to the
community who participate in the programme on the highest step of
the participation ladder, that is civil control. There are many
denitions for design that operates with different decisions
depending on the application (interior design, clothes design,
industrial design). It is precisely because of this diversity that
it is necessary to impose a denition for the present paperwork,
namely the one of Herbert Simon “design represents the change of an
existing reality into a desired reality ”. Thus
conceptualised, the design starts from revealing both the existing
and the desired reality, and this is not as handy as it seems at
rst sight. First of all, we have to cope with a community, not with
an individual. From the start, the procedure for collecting data
are more complex and operate with other indicators. Then, as I
stated in the introductory chapter, both the variables of existing
reality and the variable of desired reality uctuate in an ample
manner in short intervals of time, whereas such an intervention
programme develops over a medium or long term. To this respect, the
permanent up-dating of the programme’s elements, by monitoring and
integrating the feed- back, is a sine qua non condition for
adapting it to the reality. Otherwise we shall face blocking out
for failing to be adequate.
intervention for social inclusion and spatial justice The concept
of spacial justice, introduced in 1968 by Henri Lefebvre (Lefebvre,
Le Droit à la Ville 1968), (Lefebvre, Espace et politique 1972),
refers to space as a fundamental factor of social structure, in
relation with social justice. Spatial justice is a democratic
instrument that regulates, when applied, tha fair distribution of
services, of production facilities, of utilities in the territory,
so that there are no disparities at the level of
THE METHODOLOGY OF COMMUNITY BUILDING
31
individuals and groups of individuals that populates the respective
territory. Generally, the settlements in extreme poverty are
situated at the outskirts of a city or of a village, or else occupy
determined enclaves situated inside the city or village. It will be
taken into consideration building the new houses in areas of
interference between the settlement and the city/village, in order
to favour social exchanges and inclusion. During the programme, I
have noticed that some representatives of the local authorities
tend to allot sites for building new houses outside the cities, or
in industrial or polluted areas, lacking infrastructure. Building a
house represents an investment that must represent an initial
capital for the beneciary. Or, if the site does not have real
estate value, than the house, even if new and well built, will have
an adequate low real estate value, the house will be “un-saleable”
and the initial capital will be as inexistent, the only value of
the house being that of shelter.
Left,spatial injustice by location, at Fakulteta, Soa. Right,
spatial injustice by
limitating the fundamental right at free circulation. Milano,
Italia.
A very difcult approach is questioning the current situation, when
a vulnerable community is deprived of spatial justice, and the
majority of people think that this is the right and necessary way,
without taking into account that it was precisely the spatial
injustice and social exclusion that led to community
degradation.
Campo nomado Chiesa Rosa, Milano, for bosniac Romanis. 3 metres
fence, electric
instalation for lighting as nocturne.
Lorin Niculae
“more for many” The intervention is intended to involve as many
members of the community as possible, in different ways. An action
focused only on a few beneciaries will not mobilize the community
and will arouse animosity. That’s why the selection of the families
to involve in the programme is very important, and this selection,
as well as the needs to be satised for each family, must be done in
a democratic manner by the entire community, through efcient
delegation of decision to the community 2. Also, in order to
involve a larger segment of beneciaries, it is desirable that along
building new houses, rehabilitation work on the existing ones be
done, too, rehabilitation requiring a lower budget than building
anew. The works of rehabilitation can refer to emergency
interventions on houses or constructive elements in danger of
collapse (consolidation of walls, replacing ceilings made of
earth), replacing covers or equipping the house with functions
adequated for disabled users (bathrooms, access platforms). In this
way, a signicant part of the community will take part in the change
from the very beginning of the programme.
Arhipera members, working at the initial model of an evolutionary
house.
The initial model of an evolutionary house, on the site. The budget
of the programme provided the building of 2 such houses, with
4 rooms, for each community in the programme.
THE METHODOLOGY OF COMMUNITY BUILDING
33
After the proposal of the communities to introduce 4 families into
the programme, the
house was redesigned by reducing the building volume by means of a
bay. Thus, 4 such houses could be built in every community. To the
right, a house where the transformations done by the family during
the site work can be seen.
the best balance between the necessary locative surface and the
level of nishing-equipping (cf. Turner) This principle represent to
a large extent a truism, as long as the architecture manifests
itself in the “traditional” area. In the participatory area, the
nishing and even the conformation of the house is the result of
negotiation with a family that takes into account a possible
enlargement of the family members number in the near future, who
needs certain things more that others. Generally, we highlighted
this optimum balance when the house is equipped with additional
protection for bad weather (including an extended roof that can
cope with an enlargement of the built area of the house) and with a
minimum interior nishing that can be purchased/ manufactured by the
family itself.
continuity of dwelling and evolutive dwelling
We will try to ensure the continuity of dwelling on the site. In
the case of building new houses, the beneciary families prefer to
remain in the community, where mutual help and social extended
relationships work. Through practice, we reached at the same
conclusion stated by Turner referring to the benets of a slum
upgrade as opposed to moving to a new location, for
example.
(Hamdi London, 121)
When consolidations are made, it is important that the family stays
in the house during the intervention. This thing favours the
implication of the family members in the building or rehabilitation
work. Each stage of the building process is visible. The family is
not exposed to the stress involved by moving, and this is a very
important factor to be taken into consideration, with both
psychological and economic repercussions on the family as long as
we are talking about a house in the rural environment that
represent the nucleus of the household. That is why moving the
people and the goods will be avoided as much as possible. At the
same time, the feedback received in real time from the families is
capitalized in the different evolution of every architectural
typology; each house becomes the expression of the transformations
during the experience, in the way stated by Habraken, totally
appropriating it to the use.
For rehabilitated houses, we found solutions for coating walls, for
thermo-isolating the facades, for replacing the exterior carpentry,
even for replacing the roof without the need for the residents to
leave the house.
In the case of newly designed houses, they were placed on the same
allotment (when there was already a house on the leased site) or on
allotments leased by the mayoralty. During the 4 years of the
programme, we encountered only one situation when the asigned
family wanted to leave the community area and this was due to the
fact that the mother wanted to raise her children in an environment
protected against the juvenile crime that characterizes a community
in extreme poverty.
Houses in Bleti (Prahova county) that had the roof replaced without
moving the
family. 2010
The buildings designed starting with 2011 in the framework of the
community building programme, whether houses or social centres,
were designed to adapt to growing familial or communitary needs as,
along with the modication of the family structure or the raise of
the communitary usage level, they would not be abandoned in
favour
THE METHODOLOGY OF COMMUNITY BUILDING
35
of some bigger ones. The houses were provided with an extension of
the roof surface with one bay in respect to the compartmented
space. The enlargement of the built area of the house can be made
by the family itself starting from the existing structure that
supports the roof. The effort as materials and labor is minimum and
affordable for the family.
On the left, evolutive house in Sruleti. On the right, evolutive
house in Dor Mrunt.
Design Arhipera 2011.
The social centres are built as pavilions, therefore new pavilions
can be added in the growing matrix provided by the project. In this
manner, both the investment and the building effort of the family/
community decrease, and the investment becomes sustainable.
On the left, social evolutive centre Sruleti. On the right, social
evolutive centre
Dor Mrunt. Design Arhipera 2011.
the principle of sustainability The sustainability of the
intervention can be reached through: -usage of local and
recycled materials. Thus, the repairs will not require
investment.
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Generally, in the communities affected by extreme poverty, the
buildings widely use reused materials. In Podenii Noi (Prahova), we
discovered a local craft in using this
materiales, though. The two buildings above prove a well controlled
craft and even an
aesthetic value of the facades.
-usage of local workforce and technologies. In some communities,
though there is valuable raw material, it is neglected by the
locals, and skill of processing it was lost. In this situation, the
qualication of the locals is necessary so that they can have access
to the resource, both for dwelling needs and for supporting
activities of social economy able to provide a constant income to
the community. -the minimum investment that ensures the maximum
effect will be made. For this reason, every case will be considered
separately.
the principle of the visibility of the intervention and the
immediate result The programme’s debut in the community is one of
the most difcult stages of implementation because of the people’s
and the local authority’s inertia, of their tendency to indulge
themselves in a bad situation(extreme poverty), a situation they
know and for whom the necessary adjustments(the subsistence
economy) developed in time. The greatest challenge, though it may
seem bombastic, is creating hope. That is, according to the
denition of Paulo Fiere, “a more and more critical perception of
the concrete conditions of the reality. Society reveals itself as
something unnished,
rather than something inexorable; in becomes challenge, instead
of
resignation” (Fiere 2005). Often, the hope is mufed by informal
leaders, usurers, pimps and sometimes, even mayors, who try by all
means to maintain the status-quo, knowing that a change for
the better, a community consolidation, can generate the change of
the existing balance of power, in which a few people gain from the
more emphasized poverty of the many. That is why the visibility of
the intervention is one of the strongest engines of community
consolidation. The delay of a programme usually implies its abandon
by the community.
the principle of involving the locals into the production and
post-production processes
THE METHODOLOGY OF COMMUNITY BUILDING
37
This principle is extremely important both in terms of the direct
result of reducing the cost of the investment by using local
workforce, and in terms of the long-term effect that it ensures
taht: not only the utilities able to serve the dwelling, but also
the qualied staff able to use them remain on the site.
This desideratum can be reached only through a coherent investment
policy that must follow some necessary steps, as: - hiring the
adult and unemployed locals as unqualied, for starters, workforce;
- bringing to the site the engineers, the foremen, the technicians
and the workers able to instruct and to qualify unqualied workers;
- organizing training courses for qualifying the locals; - creating
some structures of social economy for production of construction
materials (quarry, gravel, sand, clay), brick kilns, carpentry
workshops etc. whose staff will be ensured by the locals involved
in the programme, under qualication; - as the programme develops,
qualication level of the staff increases. Consequently, the
remuneration and the capacity to support the newly built houses
increases; - at the end of the programme, those productive
functions will remain in the site, will serve the whole settlement
and will facilitate changes between gypsies and the majority of the
people of the settlement; - besides those functions, at the end of
the programme, the area will be inhabited by a productive segment
of population, able to provide qualied work both inside the
settlement and in the adjacent areas and thus the premises of the
user’s capacity to support their houses are created.
the principle of self-nancing During the development of the
programme in Bleti, we noticed that along with the appearance of
the new houses, the members of the community who hadn’t been
involved in the project started to save money and consolidate/
arrange their houses, using qualied workforce and the know-how of
the constructors brought for building. A similar phenomenon took
place in Sruleti and Dor Mrunt, where, even if the project’s budget
stipulated that the concrete oor of the rst level would be used
only for 2 bays, all the beneciaries managed to supplement, on
their own, the concrete oor for 3 bays, according to the designed
area of the roof, increasing considerably their chances to
partition and use the third bay as the third room of the
house.
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Even if the contract with the entrepreneur provided pouring of only
approx. 40sqm of the
concrete oor, the beneciaries of the houses counterbalanced the
supplement of 20sqm
with labor for digging in limited areas for the foundations and for
the preparation and the pouring of the concrete. Photos from
Sruleti and Dor Mrunt, April and May 2012.
the principle of complementarity We will propose, after the
analysis, to ll in the functional matrix of the settlement with
functions placed in the studied area according to the following
basic principles:
1. the principle of differentiation: the new functions will differ
from the ones existing in the administrative territory of the
settlement, capable of serving the area of intervention. The
functions will complement the existing functions in the territory
only when, after the analysis, the existing ones prove to be
insufcient or poorly reported to the area; 2. the principle of
relationship: the new functions must be necessary not only to the
community, but to the whole settlement, so that they create the
premises for productive trade between community and settlement. New
functions should be attractive and competitive for the whole
community.
New functions that are going to be brought will be adopted
exclusively by members of the community, also involving a
continuous process of formation and qualication (which will start
with the development of the investment programmes) and a process of
self-nancing.
In the images below one can see the proposal for the completion of
the existing functional matrix in Bleti at the beginning of the
programme. Thus, new functions appear in the area of intervention,
such as Ursria, a social centre (represented by an orange ellipse),
service areas (yellow rectangles), and also an area for worship,
given the great distance from the rural church and the vicar’s
strong disinterest in the fate of the Romani community.
AN INTRODUCTION TO PARTICIPATORY ARCHITECTURE
39
ACTIONS. The methodology of the intervention will focus on two axis
starting from the objectives.
The rst axis contains the ve stages of constitution of economic
capital: research, analysis, design, implementation, scaling the
model. The second axis ( the order of enunciation does not reect
the hierarchy for the two axis, these are of equivalent value and
inseparable, it is only an effort of taxonomy) contains the ve
stages of constitution of social capital, of community development
through the project: preparating the community, community
consolidation, implementation of the Community Action Plan (CAP),
sustaining and development of the project, its extension in the
territory. There is a horizontal sinergy and synchronisation
between the ve stages of the rst axis and the second axis
respectively. That is why we shall structure them according to the
table on the right.
Structuring the methodology horizontally, by applying the criteria
of differentiation of the objectives of the intervention (capital
vs. social) and vertically (enumerating the compulsory steps for
reaching the goals) gives the advantage of coordinating the
actions.
The complexity of the integrated intervention model needs
performance management programme, as well as organizing the
internal processes in order to be able to correlate the activities
on all the axis in the scheduled intervals. For this purpose, the
department for Community building was created in the Soros
Foundation Romania in 2012, and its role is to develop an
integrated programme which runs according to the structure
described above. This department coordinates the activities of
social participatory architecture programme Arhipera, social
economy programme Rures, education and culture programme A.C.T., as
well as social assistance programme.
The model of community building department can be exported to
possible County Ofces of community building, as these structures
could be created by means of European funds under The Prefecture of
every county.
Lorin Niculae
ACTIONS
2
lated issues Allotment
Local Initia- tive Group
Financ- ing
Social economy
Action Plan Transforming the LIG into an associa-
tion Decisions of action of the association in order to reach
social and economic
goals
4
Produc- tion and sale
THE METHODOLOGY OF COMMUNITY BUILDING
41
EDUCATION. In this paperwork I have referred to the activity of
participatory architecture group Arhipera, mainly consisting of
students of UAUIM and architects that graduated this institute. The
group’s activity is based on volunteering, and there’s a great and
diversied demand for design. The group activates in the homonymous
programme of Soros Foundation Romania, coordinated by the author of
this paperwork.
I have founded this group in Soros Foundation Romania in 2011,
trying to answer the following question: ”What if community
building programme really turns into public politics, then who
will
practice participatory architecture in communities? Will
there be
architects aware of the enormous social value of
architecture,
capable of working pro-bono in communities? And if there are,
will
they know what methods to apply so that the result be positive
and
sustainable?”
On March 2011 I invited four of my best students of UAUIM to found
this group. That’s how Arhipera_architecture on edge_ was
born, a group of architecture for vulnerable groups. Nowadays, the
group consists of 17 members, is developing 8 big projects, at home
and abroad (Uganda) and takes part in national and international
conferences and symposiums.
Arhipera members during a class of housing design using only
recycled/reused materials.
April 5th 2012.
The adopted educational model aims at sustaining the
transformations of mainstream architecture (I named so the current
architectural practice starting from the demand of a client or
local authority) in order to be able to cover participatory
architecture’s purpose, shown in the following scheme.
It may seem at rst sight that mainstream architecture loses a part
of its means of expression gained especially by means of
technological progress and investment budgets, but in fact it earns
in extent, in practicability, in experiencing with reduced means
and in direct dialogue with community members.
A similar educational model has been applied by the Faculty of
Architecture of Auburn University in partnership with Rural Studio
group, since 1992. Students make participatory design and then
build houses, social centres, churches and sport facilities for
vulnerable groups in the area. At the end of the activity, the
construction is donated to the family or the community, by case,
and the students gain practical experience, which is extremely
important for their future profession.
ADVOCACY Community building Department of Soros Foundation Romania
ghts for an architecture of public interest in Romania, many
directions being involved:
1. introducing social architect qualications in COR system and
creating operational standards for the profession; 2. equalization
of volunteer practice of newly graduate social architects with
internship, involving the modication of HCN nt. 746/ 2009 of Order
of Architects of Romania;
THE METHODOLOGY OF COMMUNITY BUILDING
43
3. introducing social architecture projects in the university
syllabus for universities of architecture and urbanism; 4. founding
county ofces for Community building to take over the model of
project management and internal organization developed in Soros
Foundation Romania. Results of applying the model are veried in
practice. 5. leading public politics in housing domain for
vulnerable groups in the direction of participation and preventing
the risk of actions that cause social exclusion, solving
quantitatively the housing problem.
NOTES
1
Tokenism is referring to mimicry the participation, to maintaining
it at a simply formal and committed level. (n.a.)
2
In 2009-2010, the community building programme of Soros Foundation
Romania developed in partnership with Habitat for Humanity Romania
(HfH). In the communities in Bleti (Prahova) and Vântori (Neam),
the selection of the families to benet of dwelling was done by HfH
according to the internal methodology. The selection decision is
still disputed inside the communities because of the lack of
transparency of the decisional process.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arnstein, Sherry R. “A Ladder of Citizen Participation.”
JAIP , 35, no.4, 1969: 216-224.
Bell, Bryan and Katie Wakeford. Expanding Architecture. Design
as
Activism. New York: Metropolil Books, 2008. Berescu, Ctlin and
Mariana Celac. Housing and the Extreme Poverty. The
Case of Roma Communities. Bucharest: Ion Mincu University
Press, 2006.
Fiere, Paulo. Education for Critical Consciousness. New York:
Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005.
Hamdi, Nabeel. The Placemaker’s Guide to Building
Community. 2011: Earthscan, London.
Hatch, Richard C. The Scope of Social Architecture. New York:
Van Nostrand, 1984.
Istrate, Ion. “Comuniti în Micare: Programe i intervenii sociale.”
Fondul Naional pentru Dezvoltare Comunitar. 14 January 2004.
http://www.fndc.ro/comunitate/evaluarea_programelor_sociale.
html.
Lefebvre, Henri. Espace et Politique. Paris: Anthropos, 1972.
—. Le Droit à la Ville. Paris: Anthropos, 1968.
Lorin Niculae
45
architecture in Del and Helsinki, and literary wring
in Amsterdam. As an architect and cric, she has been
involved in a number of harbour redevelopment
projects in Amsterdam, The Hague, Helsinki and
Tallinn. Havik writes regularly for various magazines
in the Netherlands and Nordic countries and is editor
of the Dutch-Belgian peer reviewed architecture
journal OASE . Her architectural and wrien work
combines an experienal reading of the city with
an academic and theorecal approach. At Del
University of Technology, she teaches the master
diploma’s studio Public Realm and Border Condions
alongside courses in architectural theory and
literature. She co-edited the anthology Architectural
Posions: Architecture, Modernity and the Public
Sphere, SUN Publishers 2009. Her PhD research Urban
Literacy. A Scripve Approach to the Experience,
Use and Imaginaon of Place (TU Del, 2012)
developed a literary approach to architecture and
urban regeneraon, proposing the three noons
descripon, transcripon and prescripon.
TRANSCRIPTIONS
This lecture addresses the social dimension of architecture and
stresses the gap between the design of urban spaces and their use.
It argues that the interactivity between writer and reader in
literature, in the sense that the reader co-produces the text, also
counts for the designer and the user (or perceiver) of
architectural space. I propose the notion Transcription as an
approach connecting this interactivity to the role of activities,
movements and events in the experience and the making of urban
space.
TRANSCRIPTION: THE SOCIAL AND EXPERIMENTAL IN LITERARY AND
ARCHITECTURAL SPACES1
I would like there to exist places that are stable, unmoving,
intangible, untouched and almost untouchable, unchanging, deep-
rooted; places that might be points of reference of departure, of
origin [...] Such places don’t exist, and it’s because they don’t
exist that space becomes a question, ceases to be self-evident...
Space is a doubt: I have constantly to mark it, to designate it.
It’s never mine, never given to me, I have to conquer it. (Perec
2008, 91)
As the French-Polish writer Georges Perec suggests, the
relationship between architecture and the activities of the people
who use and inhabit it is not neutral. This paper departs from the
observation
TRANSCRIPTIONS
that architecture is inuenced by social practices and that even so,
architecture, by giving shape to people’s environment, has its
inuence on social behaviour. The dynamic relationship between
people and places is the key focus of this text, and I introduce
transcription as a conceptual tool to address this
interactivity. The word Transcription implies a
directional way of writing: “trans” is the Latin preposition
“across” or “through”. The etymological dictionary notes: “to write
across, i.e. to transfer in writing.” (Partridge 1983)2 The
directional and experimental character that the word transcription
implies, is crucial in that transcription can be understood as a
dynamic notion. First, aspects of movement and activity in
literary writings are closely connected to the spaces in which they
take place, and often point at social practices; offering
information about the way people move through, use and appropriate
space. In literary works, spatial metaphors often have to do with
direction and movement. Indeed, in writing about spaces, the aspect
of action implied by the space: a passage, a pathway, a threshold,
a door, an opening to another space, can play a part in the
narrative. Space can encourage characters to move, pass through,
undertake action. In literary reections about changes in society,
architectural and urban scenes not only serve as the decor against
which narratives of activity can unfold, these scenes also play an
important part in depicting social practices. As Marilyn Chandler
argues, our built environment and the way we live in it “has a good
deal to do with the way we tell our stories[...] both architecture
and literature are simultaneously reective and formative social
forces. In both, implicit issues of gender and class lie behind the
politics of style” (Chandler 1991, 6). Indeed, literature both
reects the social codes and the use of the city, while it may also
take part in its process of change. Literary texts on how people
behave in the city shine a light on power relations in society,
showing how the social codes of different user groups relate to
specic urban places. In their own ways, both architecture and
literature represent, reect on and produce societal behaviour.
Therefore, literary urban portraits are of interest for
sociologists, cultural philosophers and others concerned with
social and spatial practices. A second aspect of transcription has
to do with its potential as an experimental practice: it searches
the boundaries of the discipline by “writing through”. Literary
examples are the experimental practices of the literary movement
Oulipo, or the “spatial” literature of James Joyce. These authors
experiment within the use of language, or within the production of
text, but also experiment regarding the structure of the novel, and
its content. They explore the possibility for confrontations and
conicts, openings to include the unexpected. In these writings
space, even the space of the novel itself, is constantly
questioned, designated, marked or conquered. Here, issues of
transgression and violation within the space of literature are at
stake. Third, the
Klaske Havik
commonly used meaning of transcription is “to write a version of
something”, or “to write in a different medium;
transliterate”.3 When looking for direct transcriptions into
other media, the transcriptions of literary scenes in lm or theatre
are probably most common. Writing another version of a text,
however, can also happen within literature itself, namely through
the reader, who can take on the role of an active participant.
Indeed, one can speak of the interactivity between writer and
reader as producers of the text. If transcribing indeed implies an
active role of the reader as a producer, a maker of the text,
architectural transcription might direct us to a similar role for
the user of space.
NARRATIVES AND SOCIAL PRACTICE. Thus, in literature, space is never
neutral: it is the stage for social activities. Therefore,
literature has the capacity to offer precise accounts of social
processes, not only as vivid portraits of urban life, but also as
“symptomatology” of social illness, to speak with Deleuze4.
Literature can provide a cure in the sense that it can offer
alternatives, new directions for society. The eld of tension
between the reader and writer (or the designer and user) of a work
come to the fore as important issue: the reader, by his very act of
reading, has a role in the production of the text. Likewise, the
role of the user of architecture can be brought into play when
addressing the social dimensions of architecture. In the
continuation of this text, I will bring to the fore how these
aspects of transcription can be “transcribed” to architecture. One
of the key arguments that Henri Lefebvre made in his
conceptualization of lived space was indeed that such space is by
denition socially produced. Like the reader, who has a role in
producing the (experience of) the text, it is the user, the
inhabitant, the passer-by, who has a role in producing the lived
experience of space. In other words, lived space exists precisely
through the actions of its users, inhabitants and passers-by, it is
dynamic and subject to change. It has ability to speak, as it were,
to address the visitor, user or inhabitant: “Representational space
[lived space] is alive: it speaks.” (Lefebvre, The Production of
Space 1991, 42)
For Lefebvre, society produces its own space, through its own means
of production. Social practices and structures of power thus play a
role in this production of social space, and become visible in the
streets and public spaces of everyday life. By analysing the
behaviour of people in public urban spaces, social patterns can be
found. In this way, Lefebvre argues, “[...] social space works as a
tool for the analysis of society” (Lefebvre, The Production of
Space 1991, 33-34), or even, “space is social morphology”
(Lefebvre, The Production of Space 1991, 94). In his earlier book
The Urban Revolution, Lefebvre focuses specically on urban society,
claiming that the city is inextricably linked with social
TRANSCRIPTIONS
49
practices of everyday life (Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution 2003).
His hypothesis is that society will become completely urbanized. He
believes that the transformations he perceives in the society of
Western Europe in the late 1960s will lead to an ultimately urban
society: a dominance of the city over the country. This urban
society will lead to a new practice: the urban practice (Lefebvre,
The Urban Revolution 2003, 5). By this, he hints at a new mode of
production: the citizen participating in the production of space.
This production can also entail transgression of spatial and legal
borders, as well as spatial violation, by means of which new rules,
new spaces and new forms of social life are initiated. Here,
Lefebvre foresees a change in power structures: it is not the
institutions, the formal bodies of power, that write the laws and
rules of society; rather, urban society is produced by people, in
the streets. The street is seen by Lefebvre as the place where
changes in society become apparent, society becomes produced and
“inscribed” in the streets, and this has to do with the function of
the street as a space for social interaction:
“Revolutionary events generally take place in the street[...] . The
urban space of the street is a space for talk, given over as much
to the exchange of words and signs as it is for the exchange of
things. A place where speech becomes writing. A place where speech
becomes ‘savage’, and, by escaping rules and institutions,
inscribes itself on the walls.” (Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution
2003, 19)
Clearly, this interest in the streets as the place where societal
changes are enforced by citizens, derived from the momentum in
which Lefebvre’s argument should be placed: The Urban
Revolution
was published in France two years after the social events in Paris
of 1968, when indeed the streets were the locus for social and
political change. The “Right to the City” that Lefebvre advocates
(Lefebvre, Right to the City 2006) may be read as the right to the
participant to transcribe – and thereby to produce new urban
practices.
Similarly, Jane Jacobs referred to the power of the citizens in her
critical comments on urban planning and economy in the 1960s and
1970s.5 She pointed out the importance of diversity in city
life and stated that planners and politicians should pay more
attention to everyday practices that give shape to public life in
the city, because: “The bureaucratized, simplied cities so dear to
our present-day city planners and urban designers[...] run counter
to the processes of city growth and economic development.” (Jacobs,
The Economy of Cities 1972, 97)
Even though their contributions to the urban debate date from a
specic period, their insights are far from outdated. Referring to
both Henri Lefebvre and Jane Jacobs, the contemporary urban
Klaske Havik
theorist Edward Soja argues that they were right: the twenty-rst
century has indeed become the era of urban society, and therefore
it is necessary to acknowledge and study the productive capacity of
users. (Soja 1999)
In this respect, a reection on the work of Michel de Certeau is
appropriate. This French theorist in social sciences and literature
has proposed a shift in thinking about everydayness: seeing
everyday practices as valuable aspects of culture. Like Lefebvre,
De Certeau is interested in the role of users, or consumers, the
word De Certeau employs for the “dominated” groups (Certeau 1988,
xi), in the production of culture. First, he makes a distinction
between the “strategies” that those in power develop in order to
organize and dominate society, and “tactics”, the ways of operating
of the dominated groups. Such tactics can “use, manipulate, and
divert” (Certeau 1988, 30) the spaces that are produced and imposed
by means of strategies. Everyday practices such as talking,
reading, cooking and walking are, in his view, tactical. De Certeau
argues that such practices have a much larger role in the
production of society than is generally accounted for. It is
through walking in the city, through the repetition of routes and
rituals, through daily meetings, chats with neighbours or shop
owners, that inhabitants live and produce the urban
life:
“The ordinary practitioners of the city[...] walk – an elementary
form of this experience of the city; they are walkers[...] whose
bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘text’ they write
without being able to read it[...] . The networks of these moving,
intersecting writings compose a manifold story that has neither
author nor spectator, shaped out of fragments of trajectories and
alterations of spaces: in relation to representations, it remains
daily and indenitely other [...] a migrational or metaphorical
city thus slips into the clear text of the planned and readable
city.” (Certeau 1988, 93)
De Certeau sets this urban life, generated by the patterns of its
praxis, against the conceptual city as seen from above. As a model
for the rational ‘Concept-City’, imposed by the ones in power,
visible from above, De Certeau uses the view of Manhattan seen from
the top of the former towers of the World Trade Centre. In contrast
to that bird’s-eye view, De Certeau points at the city as
experienced from below: a complex and barely visible conglomeration
of the patterns of its users, full of turns, rituals and
narratives. He recognizes in this city a different kind of
spatiality, which is not a geometrical, but an anthropological
space in which poetic experience plays a part. Similar to the
productive role of the reader in appropriating and ‘inhabiting’ a
text, De Certeau argues that the consumer actually ‘produces’
through his everyday practices: “Spatial practices[...] secure the
determining conditions of social life.” (Certeau 1988,
96)
TRANSCRIPTIONS
51