Next to the coastline in Northeast Brazil, close to a mangrove area in the state of Sergipe, lies a beautiful community named Pedra Furada (which means “carved rock”). There, time seemed to have stopped; little houses built with rammed earth by the hands of the local community frame still unpaved streets that are also composed of earth. The houses that do not display the same colour with the streets have painted colourful walls, evidencing both the connection with nature as a source of survival and the care for beauty in details. Children run on the local streets as if nothing could be more captivating than playing. Homeowners sit by the front door watching life on the streets or, just simply observe the beauty of the surrounding natural scenario.
Some of the houses built with adobe (earth).
Aerial view of part of the local community of Pedra Furada.
A place filled with colours, natural beauty, amusing fauna and flora, amazing culinary and people and, a rich culture of folklore, local traditions and circular dances. This is the amusing context for a beautiful school project named Dream School, centred on its community desires.
The project was designed from collaboration between different stakeholders, including the following:
A local NGO who has been acting on the development of the village for over 20 years through a social innovation lens and focusing on technology, education and creative economies – IPTI , led by Saulo Barretto (1);
An architecture and facilitation team, acting through a collaborative and holistic design approach and having at the core Sofia Croso Mazzuco (2), Rodrigo Carvalho Lacerda, Guile Amadeu, Gustavo Fontes, Robernildo Araújo and Diego Regis (3), counting with the support of architecture students Annare Reis, Andresa Oliveira, and Matheus dos Santos;
Together with Martina Croso Mazzuco (4), leading the landscape design for sustainable solutions.
Moreover, the school is being sponsored by private institutions and will be built on an area donated by the local municipality.
Part of the group designing the Dream School.
The idealisation and design of the Dream School was developed through a collaborative approach mindful on community desires – having the architecture team applying a methodology different from that what is currently mostly practiced by architects in Brazil. By this collaborative approach the architect assumes that skills can be summoned between designers’ knowledge and the integrated knowledge brought forward by locals, thus optimizing the result and positive impact of the architectural project, aimed at accelerating holistic development.
The school was idealized through three different community workshops, led by the architecture team that also acts as the facilitation team (facilitators are responsible for facilitating the development of given communities, helping them identify local resources for development). The workshops were structured in a timeframe of 3 months, as follows:
– Workshops 1 (17 May 2018): School curriculum. This first workshop aimed at investigating the real learning needs of the local community, asking what type of knowledge and pedagogical structure would help them thrive socially, economically and ecologically. It was collectively decided that the school will follow a Waldorf pedagogy (with an anthroposophy approach based on Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy), combining social innovation and technical courses.
First introductions and setting personal and collective intentions.
– Workshop 2 (18 May 2018): School architectural design.The second workshop focused on the synergies between the school curriculum and its architectural design, looking at ways to maximise community building, integrated learning (mind, body and soul), and sustainability. The community emphasised the need for a big area where they could cultivate their own food, besides a space for cultural activities such as theatre and dancing, and a technology lab where the agenda run by the local NGO could be taken forward.
The architect Sofia Croso Mazzuco facilitating the collaborative design process.
– Workshop 3 (15 August 2018): Presentation of the school architectural project. This was an occasion to present to the community the school design developed thoroughly during 3 months by the architecture team, based on the conversations and material originating from workshops 1 and 2. Workshop 3 invited the community to either approve or make changes to the overall project, made visible through architectural drawings and physical models. The community was very happy with the result and did not ask to change a single thing; they felt very represented by the project.
Aligning project design and curriculum.
During the whole conception process, it can be said that the community acted both as the client and as the architect. As set by the multidisciplinary team, the Dream School project values local resources and talents, and thus invites the local community not only to conceptualise the project itself, but also to join hands and bring its walls up. Part of the school will be constructed through a hands-on collaborative approach, called “mutirão” in Brazil, and much used as part of the popular culture in Sergipe – where people gather to build their own houses and, at the end of the day, celebrate together through a barbecue feast.
Hands-on community workshops will be guided sometimes by expert community members and sometimes by external experts who have technical knowledge on construction works, allowing the wider community to join efforts for building the new school. A community centre for assembling construction elements such as cement tiles and earth bricks will be settled to manufacture locally part of the school’s construction materials, and will keep being run by the community for commercialization to accelerate local economic development.
As part of the holistic sustainability agenda, the school will count with grey and black water treatment through septic tanks – that make use of specific plants to clean water originating from the kitchen and the bathrooms. It will also host food production, having allotments, orchards and unconventional food plants (UFP) that will be cultivated on a nursery to be set locally during the school construction. That being said, the learning possibilities of the Escola dos Sonhos, or the Dream School go beyond what can be learned in the classroom, and permeates its conception, construction and collective management processes.
View of the school main entrance.
View of the school courtyard.
View of the theatre and gardens.
The Dream School will become a real one very soon since its building process is about to start in November 2019. Interested in helping to build it? If so, please get in touch(5).
School students excited with the new Dream School.
The co-created
story of Jardim Nakamura neighbourhood
Image: Sofia Croso Mazzuco. The welcoming of Jardim Nakamura map showing the local context.
Jardim Nakamura is a peripheric community
in the city of São Paulo, in Jardim Ângela neighbourhood, and the lucky place
chosen for an urban signalling project that aims to tell the story of the territory
in order to bring a new sense of appropriation and belonging to the area. The
project called “Passeia, Jardim Nakamura”- which means “stroll, Jardim Nakamura”
– was developed by two NGO’s; SampaPé! (1), which promotes the appropriation of
the city through the genuine act of walking and occupying public spaces; and COURB
(2), which promotes the encounter between organizations that aim to strengthen
collaboration for development in the urban environment.
On a hands-on effort that occurred on
December 7 and 8, 2018 in the streets of the community, different people
participated on what is called mutirão
in Brazil (meaning bottom-up, collective action) to install three types of urban
signalling:
– the first one aiming to point directions
and walking distance to specific places within the area;
– the second one showing where people are
within the big community map;
– and the third one telling the history of
specific places (for example where the neighbourhood started or stories about
the local culture). (3)
The project clearly made it possible for
the neighbourhood to be reinserted in the history and territory of the city of
São Paulo in a different manner, since the acknowledgement that there are
stories worth being registered invites a different outlook towards Jardim
Nakamura. Children who live in the neighbourhood also participated in the
installation of the signalling through a treasure hunt game, where the finding
of a signalling spot was linked to the painting of that area with a project
symbol. Involving children in this activity aimed to help promote appropriation
of the place and the awareness of being a citizen and helping build the local
history.
The area already received many visitors before
the project was completed, for hosting a local community institution which is
an example of sustainability and circular economy – namely the institute Favela
da Paz (4), which explores different projects linked to local culture,
citizenship, music, clean energy production and the well known cooking project
Vegearte (5). This institute also partnered and gave support to the “Passeia,
Jardim Nakamura” project, for believing in the value it could bring to the
territory.
Image: Sofia Croso Mazzuco. Jardim Nakamura seen from above.
Besides the direct influence of the project
in the community, it has also contributed to the discussion of how telling the
story of a place through different lenses can help heal and bring new meaning
to a territory; something worth considering when understating the power urban
design has to influence the life of communities.
Image: Sofia Croso Mazzuco. One of the signalling showing the distance to interest places.
Recreating the urban territory as a commons means reconsidering the way citizens absorb and engender all the elements that can support human development – including learning, as a broader way to refer to education. Urban territories can offer unique learning opportunities on different levels, an important one being that of stimulating people to recognise themselves as citizens and as part of a community, or different communities (from the street, to the neighbourhood, to the city layer). Moreover, the experiencing of the urban territory exposes people to social diversity, which is crucial to cultivate empathy and tolerance, much needed qualities especially in present times.
The understanding of the city as a fertile learning environment presents itself as an invitation to consider what children can learn in the urban territory that cannot be taught at school, and what are the urban qualities that can be cultivated to create social connection and empowerment. Initiatives, worldwide, that explore this invitation are growing in power and number. One of them, TaMaLaCá1 (Tutta Mia La Città, meaning, All The City is Mine, a collective of woman based in Sardinia, Italy) has been working in collaboration with primary schools to instigate children in the creative occupation of the urban environment. TaMaLaCa’s projects reverse the situation that life on the street has been replaced by cars on the streets, and that many cities are not placing an invitation for children to play in the outdoor urban environment as they used to in old times.
Image: http://www.tamalaca.com/
Another approach to the city as a learning environment is the concept of Bairro-Escola (meaning Neighbouhood-School, in Portuguese), an alternative education model prototyped by Cidade Escola Aprendiz2, a Brazilian NGO that advocates for integrated learning opportunities for communities. Bairro-Escola is a model of networked learning that articulates different stakeholders such as communities, community organisations, local schools, private institutions, and the public sector, aiming at an integrated development of people and territory based on learning opportunities that exceed the formal school curriculum, and a set territory to expand the notion of learning. It aims at developing richer community relationships and integrated human beings that express different kinds of intelligence (including cognitive, social, physical, affective, and psychological abilities), capacitating students to become active in society through personal and collective autonomy.
Bairro-Escola place schools as a reference point for articulating public policies, community resources and, mainly, community knowledge, being much attentive to local identity and its richness in relationship to human integrity. Schools, thus, become responsible for the articulation of democratic political-pedagogic projects, always committed with collective decision-making processes involving different stakeholders for managing the school itself and its wider community. In this process, students are apt to see themselves as part of networked-systems and to trust their ability to influence the development of their communities, and their cities, also understanding their role and power within a wider network of people.
How can cities be redesigned in such a way that, as emphasised by these two case studies, stimulates learning processes in the urban environment that allow children to grow into citizens that understand they are part of networked systems, thus becoming active citizens?
Italian pedagogist Francesco Tonnucci3 reinforces the idea that it is crucial to stimulate children’s participation in the urban if we are to have cities that, instead of disconnection, stimulate stronger ties and more resilient systems. That said, to recreate cities where children’s experiences are valued is an idea worth expanding both through design, learning curriculums, and policy development – after all, the children of today represent the active societies of tomorrow.
Come possiamo pensare la città come uno spazio in cui le opportunità per imparare fuori delle scuole esistono in abbondanza? Esistono innumeri progetti di design e politiche pubbliche che stimolano questa idea, guardando a come i bambini si possano tornare cittadini più coscienti e autonomi per essere attive e presenti nelle società di domani.
Warrior Without Weapons (1) is a 32-days leadership immersion for social entrepreneurs to enhance their ability to positively impact communities – a program created by Instituto Elos (2), a Brazilian institute focused on community building through bottom-up and collaborative approaches to placemaking.
Every year around 40-60 participants from all over the world are selected to partake in the program, based on their readiness to take action. I was ready and lucky to be part of the 2018 edition and to live for the whole month of July 2018 in the city of Santos, state of São Paulo, to learn and act alongside amazing people from 10 different countries including Brazil, Congo, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Turkey, Germany, Italy, The Caribbean, USA, and Mexico, while absorbing Elos philosophy which was develop over the course of 20 years of practice of Elos Institute.
Photo: Isabela Senatore.
Photo: Isabela Senatore.
Over three months after the completion of the program, I still feel I am in the process of truly becoming a Warrior Without Weapons. It is not easy to describe what it takes to becoming a Warrior, a deep transformation that allows being attentive to how we can collectively recreate the world around us; I will make my best to tell you this story.
It all started with a dream, a collective dream. Instituto Elos emerged out of the dream of young architecture students to make of the design and construction phases a collaborative process that brings value in the building of not only places, but also (and mainly) of communities. Elos Phylosophy gradually became a channel for groups of people and communities to dream together their spaces and development processes.
Elos Philosophy (3) is based on a 7-step methodology, that being:
1 – Gaze (Olhar); as stated in The Little Prince, “what is essential is invisible to the eye”; we can only see with our hearts and when we silence our minds and judgment. This first step proposes to not only see, but to feel the energy of a community before acting in it, finding its visible and invisible beauties and resources.
2 – Affection (Afeto); a call to walk around the community being open to meaningful conversations with local people. A time to listen more than talk, to be carried throughout stories of those who dwell in the place being discovered; a time to offer not only open ears but mainly open hearts for real connection.
3 – Dream (Sonho); we are all driven by dreams. There are both individual and collective dreams, all worth being shared. Some say happiness is only real when shared; we, Warriors, must agree…this is why we go around a community and instigate the sharing of dreams, supporting the dreamers to trust that, if it can be dreamt, it can be accomplished. And this takes us to the next step…
4 – Care (Cuidado); this is the moment to match dreams and plan their collective accomplishment. A time leading to making dreams tangible by planning their strategic steps and creating opportunities for community action.
5 – Miracle (Milagre); here, people, resources and action all come together to make the dream come true. A time for hands-on, collective effort and to reassure that, yes, it is possible to transform the world we live into the world we dream of.
6 – Celebration (Celebração); gratefulness matters. This is why celebrating accomplishments – the miracle itself – is an important part of the path to development. It is when people acknowledge their collective efforts and invite more action and change into their community.
7- Re-Evolution (Re-evolução); what is needed to keep working on all the dreams that were brought to life in action or thoughts? Each community has its own paths…this is what the Re-Evolution step proposes – finding out which strategies work best in a given place to keep the ‘dreams come true’ process alive.
Elos methodology into 7 steps (Image source: http://elosfoundation.org/elos/elos-philosophy.html)
Experiencing this 7-steps in the path of becoming a Warrior Without Weapons at Santos in July 2018 has shown that beyond the methodology itself, so much more happens that cannot be predicted in the script; each step presents myriad of surprises both for individual and collective learning, while making the process richer and more intriguing. The 38 Warriors-to-be were divided into 3 different communities to take action during 21 days.
The community where I lived this process with a wonderful group of 16 Warriors is called Vila dos Pescadores (Fisherman’s Village), located next to Santos in a city called Cubatão, right into the mangrove ecosystem. A community with a population of more than 30 thousand people, most dwelling on stilt-houses with structures that go as deep as 10 meters into the sand to allow stability. While the village is considered to be an irregular occupation, the question of replacing the population elsewhere is delicate to consider (like in many other communities in Brazil).
Photo: Isabela Senatore.
We were invited into this community to establish a relationship of mutual learning; they have taught us so much during the 21 days we spent together, and so much energy we brought to support the collective accomplishment of a dream of theirs. But mainly, hope is what was exchanged of most valuable. We have brought the hope that, as a community, they can act to accomplish their dreams and there that are people from outside the community who are there to support them. Meanwhile, Vila dos Pescadores taught us, Warriors-to-be, that there is so much more beyond what we can see with the eyes, that a lot can be made out of little, that we all have the capacity for resilience…
Experiencing Elos methodology at Vila dos Pescadores allowed us to get to know the story of that wonderful place and of the wonderful people who dwell there. Their culture of fishing which is passed from father to son, the meditative state of mind that takes local fisherman to seek not only fishes but also peace and contemplation while alone in the sea, the mangrove regeneration effort that was carried by a local fisherman who is now remembered with pride and which has brought back a species of bird called Guará that was extinct, the care of an elderly lady who lives with her cats and gives plants to her neighbours as a way of showing affection, the infinite love and curiosity from the local children, the wise man who owns ten dogs and collects discarded objects on the streets to upcycle them into new objects…so many stories were discovered in the process of being open to that community and to a way of life that was unknown for most of us becoming Warriors.
Photo: Isabela Senatore.
Photo: Isabela Senatore.
Photo: Isabela Senatore.
Photo: Isabela Senatore.
Once we, Warriors, became more familiar with the place, and the local community more familiar with us, it was time to Dream; we went out on the local streets offering people a Brazilian desert called sonho (which means dream) in exchange of them telling us a personal or collective dream. We came to learn that the community dreamt of having a space for their children to play, learn and flourish. So we started to work on this plan! In the Care-step we invited the community to collectively design the space they dreamt of, supporting the definition of strategies for collective action and identifying a place inside Vila dos Pescadores to materialize the children’s center.
Photo: Isabela Senatore.
Photo: Isabela Senatore.
Plan defined, place defined; it all seemed right and ready to go. But then, the unpredictability factor came in – namely the inability to use an area for building the children’s center that the local municipality initially granted permission, but then went back on the decision (this unpredictability factor is something that usually happens when working in communities and that invites presence and lightness for a new plan to emerge). One day before the Miracle-step, consisting of a 4-days hands-on collective intervention, we did not have it all figured out any longer. But still, Warriors are warriors…we were there the next day, ready to do whatever needed to be done to serve the Fisherman’s Village and to support the building of their dream. And then, really like a Miracle, it all came together. How? This is what I wrote by the end of our 1st day of hands-on action: “…last night, the lack of clarity of a path to follow was very present. But today I realised that it was all part of something bigger, which was a call to fit the puzzle together with the community and at the right time. That was it, letting the puzzle fit in a spontaneous and genuine way – as it happened, and which made me realize that whatever happens is right. ”
Photo: Isabela Senatore.
From painting the floor and walls, to building new public space furniture, all was created jointly by the hands of locals at Vila dos Pescadores, the Warriors, and people from other communities (with joint efforts also in the donation of construction materials). What came out of the Miracle were a regenerated plaza, a sports court and playground with new furniture, and a temporary container where the children can now play and learn. The awe in the eyes of the children and of all the community who took part in this process showed that the faith factor was being reinforced by each collective accomplishment. Deep inside, they always knew they could do it, and we Warriors were there as a catalyst to redirect this faith into action (both their faith and our faith of empowered communities). There are many reasons why, at the end of the 4-days of hands-on action, we Celebrated with a sense of joy and gratefulness the work that had been done on the physical and subtle level of both the place and the expanded community that helped build it.
Photo: Isabela Senatore
Photo: Isabela Senatore
Photo: Isabela Senatore.
Photo: Isabela Senatore.
Right at this moment, the Fisherman’s Village is in the Re-Evolution process. This means that the hands-on was not the final piece but a seed and a prototype of what can be done through community action. Instituto Elos and the Warriors Without Weapons are now working with the community via different meetings to help potentialise community action and make it into more tangible dreams. So much awareness of their capability to act is coming out of this process and it has been beautiful to see how they find their own ways of organising new strategies.
Not only Vila dos Pescadores, but also we Warriors are living a Re-Evolution process. I can say that one does not suddenly become a Warrior Without Weapons after the 32-days immersion…one gradually becomes a Warrior while allowing the learning to mature in its own timing and practicing it on the day-to-day life. For me, this has been a multiple experience of practicing the dream muscle, being more attentive to the abundance and the beauties presented daily, and caring more for the needs of all around me. Becoming a Warrior Without Weapons has taught me that the more I give, the more I feel complete and that serendipity (unplanned and fortunate discoveries) will always come along in the beautiful complexity of community action, and of life. More and more I believe that the world we dream of is being built, right now, while we put our love – which is something natural – into action.
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Guerrieri Senza Arme è una immersione di 32 giorni creata dal Istituto Elos (1), che succede a Santos (Brasile) per che imprenditori sociali possano assorbire tecniche di leadership per il lavoro in comunità, imparando la metodologia creata tramite la pratica del istituto per 20 anni in varie comunità. Sono stata fortunata di partecipare dell’immersione a Luglio 2018 con altri trentasette giovani di dieci paesi, un’esperienza che ha causato un impatto veramente positivo e mi ha insegnato che è possibile, collettivamente, creare il mondo in cui sogniamo.
The city as a Commons is a city that is produced via collaboration between different institutions and decision-making nucleus supporting the active presence of citizens. This idea touches upon different fields of urban development, being Architecture one of them. Historically, Architecture always had a purpose linked to a given historical context, being guided by a specific artistic style or by a way of building. Architecture can convey messages of power or disruption; be it the modernist architecture emerging in the 20th century that claimed the rupture with both neoclassical and beaux-art styles typical of the 19th century to prove the advancement of technology on buildings made of concrete, glass, and metal, or be it the Brutalist architecture of the 50’s-70’s that in countries like Brazil set an architectural style giving less emphasis to the building itself and more attention to its ability to enable social opportunities.
To understand the influence of architecture it is important to contextualize how it can impact the physical and social fabric of cities. That said, as an example, modernist architecture has created less livable cities for establishing buildings that are more spread in a disconnected urban environment counting with the possibility of the private vehicle to overcome bigger distances, thus celebrating the independence of people and their disassociation both with each other and with the city space. A good example of what did not work out in modernist architecture is Brasília, Brazil’s capital built between1956-1960. Brasília is well known both for the beautiful and curvy architectural style of Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and for the difficulty of mobility and little incidence of street life which shows too much emphasis was given to architectural and urban aesthetics and little attention to its impact on the city’s social opportunities. Brutalist architecture, on the other hand, had opposite principles. It intended to convey a message of social empowerment through buildings with big voids supporting social exchanges. In Brazil, this style of architecture was diffused during the political dictatorship of the 60’s, which threatened people’s freedom. In 1968 Lina Bo Bardi, Italo-Brazilian architect, presented the city of São Paulo with her well-known MASP (Museum of Art of São Paulo), which is still today a civic landmark and a place where people gather to initiate important collective resistance movements.
Architecture has its own history and so has its impact on society. The point I would like to raise is: what is the purpose of Architecture in the ongoing global transition to cities being governed as a common good, and how can architects understand their social responsibility in a context of resources and social services’ commodification crisis?
British architect Alaistar Parvin believes that the great design challenge of the 21st century lies in the democratization of the production. On his talk ‘Architecture for the people by the people’ [1] he emphasizes that “We are moving into this future where the factory is everywhere and the design team is everyone”. As a recently graduated architect in 2008 and with the UK going through an economic crisis he had a crucial insight: designed architecture is a privilege of only 1% of the world population. This means that the impact of architects on society is still very marginal, but would there be a way to scale up architecture’s beneficiaries from 1% to 100%, thus generating a more positive impact of architecture on society? Can cities be conceived not from little people with a lot but from many people with little? With these questions in mind, Parvin came to develop WikiHouse [2]. WikiHouse is an open-source construction system that anyone can access online and download to build private houses – or to be more precise, to assemble them. Its different elements can be shaped by CNC and laser cutting machines using plywood sheets thus making it easy and accessible for anyone with or without building techniques expertise to build a sustainable house in a day, while also adapting it to personal needs. This all means that “technologies are lowering the threshold of time, cost, and skills” [1], and that all of us are becoming entitled to control the means of production – what somehow goes back to the idea of vernacular architecture where communities build for themselves under commons principles (in this case, under the Creative Commons license). The central pillars of WikiHouse are:
“To put the design solutions for building low-cost, low-energy, high-performance homes into the hands of every citizen and business on earth.”
“To use digitization to make it easier for existing industries to design, invest-in, manufacture and assemble better, more sustainable, more affordable homes for more people.
“ To grow a new, distributed housing industry, comprising many citizens, communities and small businesses developing homes and neighborhoods for themselves, reducing our dependence on top-down, debt-heavy mass housing systems.” [2]
There are other approaches for the democratization of production that do not necessarily count on technological advancement but with hands-on collective efforts. In fact, there is a new generation of young architects that acknowledge the value of collaboration and invite communities to co-design, co-build, and co-manage different architectures that support local development. This collaborative approach generates a different value to architecture, vesting it with a sense of community pride, achievement, and belonging. Moreover, collective processes allow co-involved people to learn techniques of construction and communication that strengthen local resilience and social capital, consequently fostering other processes aiding community development. An example of an architectural practice with this collaborative approach to architecture is Workshop [3], founded in 2012 as a student initiative by architects Alexander Eriksson Furunes, Clementine Blakemore, and Ivar Tutturen. Their portfolio includes projects such as schools and community centers in the Philippines and in India, built with the community and supported by public and private institutions. Workshop has been showing how architects can act as mediators of collective processes by coordinating different people and expertise needed to build both the building and the community itself (when a sense of community is not yet established). Another practice with a collaborative approach and aimed at addressing holistic sustainability (social, environmental, and economic) is aaa (atelier d’architecture autogérée) [4] founded by Doina Petrescu and Constantin Petcou, and working on the design of networks of urban commons’ projects to establish closed-loop activities, with their most disseminated project being R-Urban [5], in France. Moreover, aaa co-developed an online tool, EcoDA [6] to help people coordinate collective management of different projects.
Workshop Architecture. Project in India. Image source: http://wrkshp.org/hariharpur/
A more extreme example of citizen-led development is that of architecture without architects, or more precisely, of communities acting as leading architects. The ‘Condomínio Esperança’ (meaning Hope Housing Complex) located in a peripheral neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was built in four years by a group of women with no previous building techniques expertise whatsoever and who belong to a co-operative housing group with the same name ‘Hope’. The housing complex was financed by a municipal institution called ‘Minha Casa Minha Vida Entidades’, which is a branch of a previous institution that did not count with the active participation of its future inhabitants (‘Minha Casa Minha Vida’). The decision to create this new participatory institution seems to have emerged from the awareness of the value of collaboration in the making of better cities. An issue that collaborative processes can clearly overcome is that of government housing institutions placing beneficiaries in areas where social capital must be ignited from scratch to create a sense of belonging and connection between its inhabitants – a process that is not straightforward and requires time. All women involved in the creation of Condomínio Esperança, namely Maria do Carmo Martins, Maria Ribamar Figueiredo Freitas and Vanilsa Queiroz Motta [7], between others who built their homes brick by brick during weekends and free time (although being full-time workers) did so by acknowledging that the value of co-building relies in the possibility of continuous interaction for building both the material and psychic structures that make a community. Not only architecture should be designed by interaction to support better cities but also architecture can design interactions for the same matter. Architecting interaction is the motto of AKKA Architects, an Amsterdam-based architecture firm founded by Stephanie Hughes [8]. For Hughes, the users of a building are the most knowledgeable designers since they offer the insights on how space can be organized to serve its civic purpose. AKKA’s work is thus based on leaving architecture unfinished to some extent so that social appropriation can occur and hint at how architecture can plant the seeds for a better future by supporting wider interaction amongst its different users [9]. Again it becomes clear that architecture can stimulate social exchanges and mutual collaboration in cities, and those can be stimulated both through processes (such as collaborative legal frameworks and community will) and through design.
All of the described examples strongly relate to the right to build (both buildings and social space) and the ‘right to the city’, a concept ignited by French philosopher Henri Lefebvre and further developed by British geographer David Harvey. In Harvey’s words: “The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.” [10]
With these words in mind we must rethink the role of architectural practice in society today and for the future, rethink architects as enablers and mediators of collective processes that enhance the chance that whatever is built is inclusive and contributes to making better cities…architects as professionals concerned with possibilities for communities to thrive and for individual and collective empowerment. What would the switching of attention from shape to process cause to architectural practice, and how would it influence the resilience of cities? Considering that 2/3 of the world population will be living in cities by the year 2050 [11], this reflection seems more timely than ever.
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La discussione della responsabilità civica dell’Architettura è uno dei tema che nascono con l’idea della città come bene comune. Come possiamo ripensare il ruolo degli architetti in una situazione globale in cui soltanto 1% di cosa è costruito nelle città è basato in un progetto architettonico, mentre gli altri 99% sono costruiti per necessita e grande parte in situazioni di deprivazione sociale? Come pensare il ruolo dell’architetto in un mondo che in 2050 avrà 2/3 della popolazione vivendo in ambienti urbani? Collaborazione in tutti i livelli urbani diventa un tema ogni volta più critico e necessario per pensare città più resilienti.
