Aims

Alternative Practice: Co-producing Space explores the role of the socially engaged spatial practitioner in community-led place making. Through a semester long enquiry, students will work on a live project and engage with a real community aiming to understand, through first-hand experience, how people relate to places (their experience, stories, narratives) and how places can enhance sociability, connectedness and the desire of appropriation through different activities. The module asks students to engage in a participatory approach (drawing from APL2035) through a temporary intervention conceived as means of testing and trying new urban experiences and narratives. The delivery of the intervention will provide a physical setting for probing the future: a form of enactment that intensifies and invests a space with new dynamics, allowing new socio-spatial interactions. Through the process, students will be required to develop a critical approach as reflective practitioners, and engage in a learning process that revolves around knowing and doing in a continuous process of reflection-in-action.

Module aims:

•       To facilitate a community project or intervention, engaging with the meaningful relationships of people and places (ARB GC5) and delivering a small-scale temporary intervention to test urban experience and narratives integrating constructional knowledge and resourceful sourcing of materials (ARB GC 8.2).
•       To apply theories, histories, case studies and approaches learnt through the alternative practice, creative practices and related modules (ARB GC2. GC3, GC7).
•       To situate the community project in relation to arguments for intervention in the built environment and an understanding of processes for change and the role of professionals and others in achieving it.
•       To demonstrate an understanding of the complexities of issues and problems pertaining to co- production in the built environment (ARB GC5).

Outline Of Syllabus

•       Initial introductory and briefing lectures.
•       Short lectures introducing important considerations underpinning the project brief, including precedents situated in the traditions of temporary urbanism, creative art practices, as well as the self-build and other radical movements and bottom up approaches engaged in community-led place making.
•       Group workshops/tutorials and student site visits to explore the characteristics and dynamics of the community or locality, and to determine the issues that the project or intervention will address.
•       Group workshops/tutorials to determine possible co-production strategy.
•       Co-production engagement with community groups or individuals in the community.
•       Presentation of Strategy including the design, planning, detailing and/or making of a live intervention for community engagement.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Initial lecture introduces the module and will be followed-up with briefings at key stages in the project. Other short lectures introduce important considerations underpinning the project brief, including precedents situated in the traditions of temporary urbanism, creative art practices, as well as the self-build and other radical movements and bottom up approaches engaged in community-led place making.

Group tutorials and reviews allow students to gain from staff expertise and provide opportunities to discuss their particular co-production strategy. The fieldwork and private study enable students to gain an in-depth understanding of the site (through field visits) and community/stakeholders, and to follow up evidence in relation to it. It also provides time for students to reflect on key theoretical issues related to community engagement. Students will also need to organise their time/plan future actions, meet to discuss their various activities, and draw together their strategy and presentation (Group-learning).

Should the public health situation not allow for present in person teaching, the briefing sessions will be delivered in an online synchronous mode with weekly live module talks and drop-ins. Group tutorials and project reviews will move to synchronous online delivery with the support of online platforms. Fieldwork will follow public health restrictions and engagement with communities will take place remotely.

Contact hours rationale: 38 contact hours. Students work on a live project and engage with a real community, this mode of delivery of design studio requires a higher level of student support.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The co-production project addresses a real issue in a real community - usually in the North-East - and is conducted in conjunction with a community group.

Students work in groups and their work includes the design, planning, detailing and/or making of a live intervention for community engagement. This tests the students' ability to understand a community and evaluate the issues at work, as well as articulate a co-produced spatial intervention (through a range of different media including visuals, models, engagement probes or 1:1 small scale intervention), and to reflect individually on the achievements/challenges/limitations of their engagement and/or intervention project.

The group portfolio is an opportunity for students to narrate the co-production and engagement process as well as the delivery of the temporary intervention conceived as means of testing and trying new urban experiences and narratives. The assessment criteria are based on the learning outcomes and assessment criteria outlined in the project brief, demonstrating engagement with context and community groups (ARB GC5), brief writing (ARB GC7), reflective practice, testing of ideas through different spatial and visual techniques, and development of key skills in architectural design and making (ARB GC3, GC8).

The individual reflective report supplements this process, providing an opportunity for students to extend a narrative of their engagement with community groups, develop a critical approach as reflective practitioners, and engage in a learning process that revolves around knowing and doing in a continuous process of reflection-in-action. It provides an opportunity to reflect creatively on ideas presented in other modules and to demonstrate a critical understanding of values and ethics in built environment intervention (ARB GC2, GC6).