You're not just getting a bill, you're getting a whole process that is engendering community.
It's connecting people. It's promoting integration. It's promoting skill sharing mastery, understanding of other groups.
And why can't every building be like this?
I just see it as a wasted opportunity. And I think it's just a waste of resources.
This is the fourth episode of the Disobedient Buildings podcast and the AHRC funded project at the University of Oxford.
Our focus is on the everyday life of people living in ageing blocks of flats in three European countries the U.K., Romania and Norway.
My name is Anna Ulrike Andersen. And today I take you to Oslo, where I speak with Else Abrahamsen and Jack Hughes from the architectural firm.
Makers Hub talking about participatory led design, we are an architecture, office and volunteer organisation.
We focus on participatory design, participatory methods in architecture.
We do a number of different scales of projects, mainly the buildable scale,
because we focus on self building as our kind of strongest participatory method.
And we work from outdoor projects, projects in parks, outdoor furniture, interior work, small scale structures, all of that.
And we're a small group right now.
It's an eye, but we have a lot of volunteers who are part of our network who kind of come and go when they can when they're available.
We also specialise in reaching a specific user group because we believe that architecture today is the majority of architecture is,
in our opinion, unfortunately more directed towards the people who have the means.
So we want to give people who don't have a voice in the architectural industry a voice through our projects.
We like to say that we work with the forgotten people and the forgotten spaces, and that's our main focus.
How do you find the forgotten voices?
What do you do to reach out to people who might not necessarily be in architecture already or think about architecture,
or even you consider that this is something that they want to participate in.
It's pretty easy, in a sense, to understand what groups are are underrepresented in architecture because architecture is a game of the rich.
It's a game. It's a privilege. You know, it's like all people in society.
They all use architecture all the time.
But what happens with the wealthy is they choose their architecture, they cross their architecture, and then they do make their spaces.
But the underprivileged or handed spaces often left over forgotten from older projects or from older things.
We are not shy,
we are pushy and we take contact with people and also the public governments and actually tell them that you should include this user group more.
Let's create a project, for example. I think it was two years ago we started up our project with a youth club in the borough of government USHL,
and we were so lucky here because the person in the borough.
He actually knew our work from before because we had done some.
We have done a lot of volunteer work on one of the city's asylum centres.
So we were given the freedom of proposing a method and a way of working,
and they listened and they gave us completely freedom to develop this method and experiment along the way with the youth.
For example, we facilitate for the teenagers to participate into the co-designing with us.
We are not this like one great designer who makes a pretty space.
Our main role is actually to facilitate for the teenagers to take space and and credibility in our processes.
Teenagers we work with are from underprivileged. Areas of the city and they are marginalised.
So when we develop the youth club for them and with them, most importantly,
this space becomes something that's cool, it becomes something beautiful and it becomes something functional.
All of those different elements and those helped with the functional aspect help with like safety,
help with privacy, help with comfort, help with keeping the place clean.
All of these kind of contribute to dignity. But then the aesthetics help with that kind of more emotional experience of a space where they say,
like, OK, this is are like, we own this space and we feel comfortable here.
We feel safe here. We are emotionally connected to this and we feel pride of this space with this
idea of designing with the participants of the people that you work with.
Once you maybe then leave your ego behind, then something new and unexpected can take place and occur.
And I wondered if you have.
Have you experienced that in your projects that you, you come in with maybe certain expectations, even if you try to leave those behind?
And then the youth, for example, that you work with, come up with something unexpected and very intriguing, have you?
Have you experienced that? My my favourite version of this is also been going to the youth club every was it Tuesday or Wednesday,
just kind of like hanging out with the teenagers, just getting ideas from having conversations.
It was very kind of free form research. And then we kind of went, OK, now we have to create a plan for the space, you know, we have to.
So we created six proposals and we made them as one to 20 models, very, very big models so that they could really understand them and look at them.
Some of them had like couches, kind of like built in couches.
Some of them had like, we created this kind of like big form in the room that was like this kind of object that they could move around.
She would have like gaming stations and all these different things.
And as we workshopped the ideas and the kids, they would just take the models apart.
And basically, they just kept adding more sofas and just kept adding more sofas in different
arrangements until the room became basically like one giant built in sofa.
And we were so astounded by this because in a way, it's architecturally a bit of a boring solution.
It wasn't what we were thinking like. That's what we'll give them.
It's almost like it would seem like we thought it would be patronising or something to give them that solution.
But what they wanted and what they needed was a living room or a studio.
We said no way. They wanted a place that was a cosy place to relax and talk and chill out.
They didn't want to be experimental with their architecture.
They wanted to be cosy and have a place that it was like they're in their own space.
And it was just such a revelation to us because it was not the solution we had proposed.
So if we did did not do the participatory method, we would not have got to that point.
And this is a completely different kind of entry point to how you do architecture than most
big architecture projects like we are not creating projects that look good on our portfolio.
We're not creating this like pretty magazine pictures. We're creating the spaces for these people and that's what we care about.
Yeah. And I think, you know, I I know you because I I signed up to volunteer for one of your projects.
I'm not a trained architect and I'm not great with building things. But, you know, even I could could easily put these blocks of wood together.
And it was it was very low. How do you say this low threshold?
Yeah. How did that make you feel that you were actually able to do this kind of things that you probably never have done before?
I went for a walk last night and I walk through through that area and I was like, Oh, I was part of,
you know, putting this together, and it made me feel a lot more connected to that space.
What makes me happy to hear Anna is that you're pinpointing a few points that we want to achieve with every project that we do.
Number one is that we we form our designs for unskilled people to build them.
And then the second thing is so that when we do a project like this, it's really important that you leave your ego at the door.
You are not. This is. Architect who knows the best for everyone else, you need to listen and then adapt for me, which was very interesting,
is the sense of like what is participation and what does it do and where is participation.
So like when you're talking about the sense of empowerment from working, like we like to say, you know that we give empowerment with power tools,
that just the fact that like learning how to use these sorts of drills gives you a sense of mastery and ability to like, OK, I can do this.
I think I want to give an example of, well, this is not the correct word saying that a project went wrong,
but for the latter project that you actually participated in volunteering like one year ago,
we were supposed to have the first kind of Kick Kick-Off launch event for that project.
But then COVID 19 happened and we had to cancel all of our planned activities.
And those planned activities were, for example, workshops where we were like intending to co-design the space with the people in the neighbourhood.
But unfortunately, we we weren't able to do that because of COVID.
And I would say like when when Jack and I reflect back on it like we had, we had to in a very, very quick and very cheap way.
We had to design something because kind of time we were running out and we couldn't wait any longer because we have kind of a window of building,
which is during the summer months here in and then in Oslo. And so we didn't have co-designing in in that project.
And I think both of us, we feel that that was kind of the missing key ingredient for us,
even though if it was a co building project in the end with like a massive volunteer effort put into the building of it,
we from our perspective, we didn't feel that people got like the, let's say,
the proper way of ownership to the space because we couldn't do the co-designing.
And when we reflect on that as an example, like it just reminds us of how important that part actually is in our projects.
Our work is about how important public space is and how important people meeting physically is and how important face to face contact is,
how important public space is in creating societal connectedness.
And basically corona is the antithesis of of that philosophy of practise.
And it's such a that's such a good point.
I mean, how certain things that we do in our everyday life in our work, it's completely fine to be remotely from our home offices.
And then there are other things like the kind of life that you do that it's not the same calling someone there's,
you know, it's not, and you might not even reach the people you want to code the fun with.
I've been looking into blocks that are quite central in Oslo,
so some notions that area when visiting your sites, many of your projects are based in in that area.
And I also think it also is the part of the city that has the most forgotten spaces, as you would call them, and also maybe the forgotten people.
I absolutely love working in that area.
It is so complex and that will also project was probably the most complex participation that we have ever done.
Also, because it's so polarising.
It exists as a collision between a kind of her area and 1970s infrastructure projects, physical barriers like a river, train lines.
So first of all, this is an incredibly diverse community. And one of the most diverse in all of Norway.
And that community is complex in its diversity, and it's of Norwegians, of immigrants.
So I have never, ever seen a more complex urban space.
And I think it also should be mentioned that in this beautiful part of the city, the child poverty is actually increasing.
For me, that is just mental. Like, we have more kids in that area who are growing up in poverty in the context of Norway.
And that is bad. Like that that line of graph is going the wrong way at one participants.
You know, we asked them to write a letter about what worries you.
And she answered, You know, I'm worried about bikes being stolen, even though it's locked and in locked bike room.
And another participant in a the postcard speaks quite directly about feeling a privilege,
experiencing a privilege in in the way you know where she lives.
And I think it's quite striking to see then how. But you do see this inequality and you see like a gap in within such a small part of the city.
And then also a quote building projects. We also aim for that to be an arena for people from different social classes to actually meet.
We employed certain people with a certain background to come and work with us,
and we paid them salaries and we invite volunteers, just whoever open call.
And usually our volunteers are actually work immigrants, I would say, or were locals who are and want to do something nice for the community.
And and in a way, you work shoulder to shoulder with someone who might not have the same life as you and you
actually manage to meet people who are completely different from you in our building processes.
So in a way,
what they're building is not necessarily the most interesting part for the volunteers is actually the people that they might meet at the workshops.
So, so this is also a way that we work with inclusion and integration and this this borough, it's so extremely divided.
And I think this ties in very interestingly to your work on Tarbox and especially its entire blocks.
This idea of a utopia that OK will house like airy apartments that are lifted off the ground with light and
all of these things and will have this modernist dream similar to the modern a string of around Alafia,
these motorways moving through the city. You know, when you force your utopian ideal upon someone else, you know, like what are the results?
And I think the urban space has been healing from the willingness of but who are the people who it's experimented on?
It's experimented on the working class, it's experimented on the underprivileged in society,
like what are the winners from from that lack of participation?
So to me, participation isn't just a cosy, nice thing.
It's actually a cure to a dystopian reality.
Thank you for listening to the Disobedient Buildings podcast edited by myself and produced by Jack Soper.
If you want to hear more, go to our website.
W w w disobedient buildings dot com or search for a podcast where you normally find your podcasts in the next episode.
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