Dear Colleagues,

Designers and users are inextricably related in regard to both the design process and the design output. Designers, and especially architects, have major impacts on the quality of the built environment, i.e., on the quality of life of many people. Designed artifacts, on the other hand, are useless and forsaken unless endorsed by end-users [1,2]. The traditional model of architectural design seen as the result of a sole master’s artful persuasion [3] is nowadays considered completely outdated and no longer practicable [1,4–6], especially in view of users’ current willingness to integrate the process [7] and to enrich it with their unique and relevant expertise [8].

Acknowledging a similar revolution, disciplines such as product, service or software design progressively shifted over the past four decades from “utilisability” to “user-centered approaches” and to “user-driven experiences” [9,10], eventually moving forward to “post-anthropocentric” approaches that equally include human and non-human actors to reach more inclusive and ecological solutions [11,12]. Urban planning was among the first design disciplines to upscale design participation, by integrating to the process those who would ultimately be affected by the design [13,14], paying particular attention to the neighborhood needs and desires in regard to temporary and permanent public spaces [15]. Resources for design participation such as “participatory design”, “codesign” or “open innovation” emerged, either in an institutionalized way (end-users volunteering to integrate participative, top-down initiatives [16]), or in an “horizontal” way, i.e., the sole innovative consequence of practical and concrete problems end-users decide to tackle by their own means [17]. The practical implementation of such approaches nevertheless proved to be challenging. The participatory design’s egalitarian approach, for instance, foreseeing in the “authority of consumers” a way to increase social awareness, consciousness and cultural pluralism [18], was sometimes reduced to a simple consultation tool with limited genuine decision-making and became subverted by populist discourses leading to tokenism [19], retrieving possibilities of involvement from “resource-weak” stakeholders [1,20,21]. Moreover, such approaches were found to be rarely conducive of convincing solutions [4,22,23] and dismissed both the frequent unforeseen users’ appropriations [20,24,25] and the competing constraints designers have to deal on a daily basis, sometimes prevailing over user-related values [26].

In the architectural field, more specifically, although still sometimes fueling some local committees of citizens (e.g., during collective housing projects, see [27]), design participation encounters several difficulties in really taking roots into practice. Firstly, apart from some isolated, alternative initiatives of social interaction with/for users (e.g., the work of Geddes, Mumford, Davidoff, Zévi, Erskine, etc. all the way up to 1970s post-modernists such as Kroll, Alexander, Habraken, or later phenomenologists), models for participation applied to architecture never really reached the necessary balance between users’ involvement and architects’ need for “creative authority” [6,14,18,19,28,29]. Secondly, more often than not, participatory practices in architecture have been labeled as “activist” or been considered only through the lens of their political statement (given their focus on vulnerable communities for instance), thus reinforcing their marginalization and preventing broader connections and knowledge transfer towards the “common” architectural community [30].

Observing that architecture tends to lag behind other design fields [26,31,32] when it comes to user participation, this Special Issue therefore intends to shed light on recent innovation (research-driven or practice-driven) in that regard. What are the contemporary issues in participatory architecture? Are there any recently adapted, renewed tools, methods, environments and models of interaction and participation that have been developed and specifically tailored for the architectural field? How could theoretical, empirical, experimental initiatives (either from the architectural field or from any other discipline) help us to root participatory architecture into practice? Any research paper with strong theoretical, empirical, or experimental findings, prone to helping the architectural field to bridge the gap toward users’ active involvement is welcome, regardless of its epistemological or disciplinary position.

References:

[1] Siva, J.P.S. & London, K. (2011). Investigating the role of client learning for successful architect-client relationships on private single dwelling projects. Architectural Eng. and Design Management, 7:3, pp.177-189.

[2] Biau, V., Fenker, M. & Macaire, E. (2012). Les métiers de l’architecture et de l’urbanisme à l’épreuve de l’implication des habitants et des usagers. In Cahiers Ramau 6, L’implication des habitants dans la fabrication de la ville. Métiers et pratiques en question. pp. 11-28.

[3] Prost, R., & Chaslin, F. (2014). Pratiques de projet en architecture: le tournant silencieux: essai. Infolio, 250p.

[4] Albrecht, J.(1988). Towards a theory of participation in architecture: an examination of humanistic planning theories.J. Arch.Ed.42(1), 24-31.

[5] Macaire, E. (2009). Des architectes à l’épreuve de la participation. In De Coninck et Deroubaix (Eds).,Ville éphémère, ville durable – Nouveaux usages, nouveaux pouvoirs, Ed. de l’oeil d’Or, Paris, pp. 135-147.

[6] McDonnell, J. & Lloyd, P. (2014). Beyond specification: A study of architect and client interaction. Design Studies, 35(4), 327-52.

[7] Sanders, E. B.-N. (2005). Information, Inspiration and Co-creation. Proc. of the 6th Int. conf. of the european academy of design, University of the Arts, Bremen.

[8] Fleming. N. (1996). Professional-Client discourse in design: Variation in accounts of social roles and material artifacts by designers and their clients. In Text, 16(2), pp. 133-160.

[9] Barcenilla, J., & Bastien, J.-M.-C. (2009). L’acceptabilité des nouvelles technologies : quelles relations avec l’ergonomie, l’utilisabilité et l’expérience utilisateur? Le Travail Humain 2009/4 (Vol. 72), Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 311-331.

[10] Lallemand, C., Gronier, G., & Koenig, V. (2015). User experience: A concept without consensus? Exploring practitioners’ perspectives through an international survey. Computers in Human Behavior, 43, 35-48.

[11] Sevaldson, B. (2018). Beyond User Centric Design, Relating Systems Thinking and Design 2018 Symposium Proceedings: Challenging complexity by Systemic Design towards Sustainability, Torino, 516–525.

[12] Davidová, M., & Zavoleas, Y. (2020). Post-anthropocene: the design after the human centered design age. Proceedings of the 25th International Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) 2020, Vol. 2, pp. 203-212.

[13] Chadoin, O. (2004). La ville des individus. Sociologie, urbanisme et architecture, propos croisés. In Villes et entreprises, Paris, L’Harmattan.

[14] Zetlaoui-Léger, J. (2013). Urbanisme participatif. Dictionnaire critique et interdisciplinaire de la participation, 2013, 8p.

[15] Harrop, D. (2015). «‘Let’s make a prototype’: Exploring temporary urbanism in the form of transitional urban design schemes that can be tested prior to permanent implementation», In Empowering Change – Transformative Innovationsin and Projects: Book of proceedings of the 8th international urban design conference, Brisbane (Australie), 16 18 novembre 2015, Nerang, Australie, Association for Sustainability in Business Inc., p. 124 146

[16] Chesbrough, H., Vanhaverbeke, W., & West, J. (2006). Open Innovation. Researching a new paradigm, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

[17] Cardon D. (2005). Innovation par l'usage. In Ambrosi, A., Peugeot, V., Pimienta, D (Eds) Enjeux de mots. Regards multiculturels sur les sociétés de l'information, Caen, C&F Editions.

[18] Steen, M. (2011). Tensions in human-centred design. CoDesign, Vol 7 No 1, pp. 45-60.

[19] Luck, R. (2007). Learning to talk to users in participatory design situations. Design Studies 28, pp. 217-242.

[20] Bjögvinsson, E., Ehn, P. & Hillgren, P.-A. (2012). Design Things and Design Thinking: contemporary participatory design challenges. Design Issues: Vol. 28, No 3, pp. 101-116.

[21] Norouzi, N., Shabak, M., Embi, M. R. B., & Khan, T. H. (2015). The architect, the client and effective communication in architectural design

[22] Roux, M. (2002). Inventer un nouvel art d’habiter. Le ré-enchantement de l’espace, l’Harmattan, Paris.

[23] Faburel, G. (2012). L’habitant et les savoirs de l’habiter comme impensés de la démocratie participative. In Cahiers Ramau 6, L’implication des habitants dans la fabrication de la ville. Métiers et pratiques en question. Pp. 31-53.

[24] Hill, J. (1998). Occupying Architecture – between the architect and the user. Routledge, London.

[25] Latour, B., & Yaneva, A. (2008). Give me a gun and I will make all buildings move: An ANT’s view of architecture. Explorations in architecture: Teaching, design, research, 80-89.

[26] Van der Linden, V., Dong, H., & Heylighen, A. (2019a). Tracing architects' fragile knowing about users in the socio-material environment of design practice. Design Studies, 63, 65-91.

[27] Blundell-Jones, P., Petrescu, D. & Till, J. (2005). Architecture and Participation. London Routledge, 304 p.

[28] Macaire E. & Roudil, N. (2012) Participation et démarches innovantes: méthodes, postures et compétences. Cahiers Ramau 6, L’implication des habitants dans la fabrication de la ville. Métiers et pratiques en question. Pp. 267-311.

[29] Tribout, S. (2012). Quels freins à la participation des habitants du point de vue des concepteurs? In Cahiers Ramau 6, L’implication des habitants dans la fabrication de la ville. Métiers et pratiques en question. Pp. 199-216

[30] Badanes, S., Feldman, R., Palleroni, S., Swenson, K., & Fisher, T. (2008). Expanding architecture: Design as activism. B. Bell, & K. Wakeford (Eds.). New York: Metropolis Books.

[31] Bacqué, M.-H., & Gauthier, M. (2011). Participation, urbanisme et études urbaines. In Participations n°1, pp. 36-66.

[32] Van der Linden, V., Dong, H., & Heylighen, A. (2017). The good client: How architect-client dynamics mediate attention for users. Proc. Of Professional Practices in the Built Environment, University of Reading. 9p.

Dr. Catherine Elsen
Dr. Clémentine Schelings
Dr. Yaprak Hamarat
Guest Editors

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• participation
• participatory processes in architecture
• collaboration
• co-design
• users’involvement
• architectural practice
• architectural research