5 CONCEPT

5.1 DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

Community Driven Design

“From the community, to the community, by the community”.

How can design be addressed to enable balanced community involvement and benefit, while being attentive to the different needs and opportunities of that community? How can architects contribute in ways that are less about guiding a project’s path and more about enabling space for community members to jointly, iteratively pick its direction?

Community-driven design makes the most of the fact that local residents are best able to comprehend local issues as well as the barriers and opportunities for change. Instead of trying to solve a community’s problem without their involvment, we should advocate that individuals use their ingenuity to tackle their own challenges and problems. [1]

Principles of community driven design

1. Solve the fundamental, underlying issues, not the symptoms.

2. Ensure that the outcome is appropriate for the history, culture, and environment.

3. Design must focus upon the entire activity under consideration, not just isolated components.

4. Start with small projects and then after testing, refine and enhance the capabilities through successive iterations.

[1] Manzini, E. (2015). Design, when everybody designs: an introduction to design for social innovation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.