Date of Submission

Spring 2024

Academic Program

Architecture

Project Advisor 1

Ross Adams

Abstract/Artist's Statement

People do not have a hands-on relationship with the creation of the buildings and spaces they live in and that make up their communities. Spatial production in the United States is carried out by a well organized and legally protected system of expertise and property. Individuals with certain qualifications, training, education, and operating in the right occupations are responsible for virtually all creation of space. Though people can develop strong connections with the spaces they inhabit, their homes, their neighborhoods, they are not the ones bringing these spaces into being and generally do not have authorship over them. The jobs of planning, design, and construction are in the hands of developers, architects, and urban planners and out of the hands of populations of people whose lives actually fill the spaces. Building as a common practice, something that all people engage with, would redefine our relationship with the built environment. When what gets built and where it gets built is determined entirely by the people in a certain area, the construction becomes a total reflection of their wants, needs, preferences, and culture as a group. And since they are the ones who personally brought the structure into being, feelings of ownership, belonging, and care last long after construction is finished. The life of the structure isn’t steered by profit maximization or speculation. Instead the building is used, cared for, and changed by the same people who made it - regardless of revenue or market value. If that building falls into disrepair, it is because of the natural tides of movement, use and nonuse, care and non-care, of the community and not because it is deemed economically inviable or cannot financially support its own maintenance.

Attempts have been made to introduce non-designers or community members into the planning and design process through participatory architectural practices. But these practices, workshops, and public forums only partly bring people closer to the production and transformation of their built environment. The job still remains in the hands of developers, architects, and contractors. The field of architecture has handled the question of participation in an additive way. They introduce new mechanisms, new people, and new information into the process - but the core process remains intact and fully functional while our relationship to the process of spatial production stays stagnant. Real participation, real divergence from standard practices of spatial production requires more than involving new people in the planning phase, which keeps them several degrees of separation from actual production of the space. To bring people closer to the creation of their spaces the barriers that keep them away need to be removed, placing more people in direct contact with construction. By examining the public’s relationship to the practice of building in the United States, I will make visible the merits and shortcomings of our system of restriction. Participatory architecture and other practices that attempt to bring a broader population into the design and planning process are examined for their structural patterns and results. Design and building as a common practice will be explored and attempted through a community build project which is in conversation with traditional forms of “participation”. Through this study, the efficacy of our current relationship to the practice of building will be brought into question and an alternative system will be proposed with its own advantages and implications on space and community.

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