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You're not just getting a bill, you're getting a whole process that is engendering community.

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It's connecting people. It's promoting integration. It's promoting skill sharing mastery, understanding of other groups.

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And why can't every building be like this?

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I just see it as a wasted opportunity. And I think it's just a waste of resources.

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This is the fourth episode of the Disobedient Buildings podcast and the AHRC funded project at the University of Oxford.

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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.

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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.

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Makers Hub talking about participatory led design, we are an architecture, office and volunteer organisation.

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We focus on participatory design, participatory methods in architecture.

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We do a number of different scales of projects, mainly the buildable scale,

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because we focus on self building as our kind of strongest participatory method.

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And we work from outdoor projects, projects in parks, outdoor furniture, interior work, small scale structures, all of that.

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And we're a small group right now.

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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.

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We also specialise in reaching a specific user group because we believe that architecture today is the majority of architecture is,

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in our opinion, unfortunately more directed towards the people who have the means.

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So we want to give people who don't have a voice in the architectural industry a voice through our projects.

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We like to say that we work with the forgotten people and the forgotten spaces, and that's our main focus.

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How do you find the forgotten voices? 

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What do you do to reach out to people who might not necessarily be in architecture already or think about architecture,

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or even you consider that this is something that they want to participate in.

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It's pretty easy, in a sense, to understand what groups are are underrepresented in architecture because architecture is a game of the rich.

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It's a game. It's a privilege. You know, it's like all people in society.

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They all use architecture all the time.

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But what happens with the wealthy is they choose their architecture, they cross their architecture, and then they do make their spaces.

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But the underprivileged or handed spaces often left over forgotten from older projects or from older things.

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We are not shy,

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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.

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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,

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and we were so lucky here because the person in the borough.

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He actually knew our work from before because we had done some.

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We have done a lot of volunteer work on one of the city's asylum centres.

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So we were given the freedom of proposing a method and a way of working,

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and they listened and they gave us completely freedom to develop this method and experiment along the way with the youth.

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For example, we facilitate for the teenagers to participate into the co-designing with us.

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We are not this like one great designer who makes a pretty space.

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Our main role is actually to facilitate for the teenagers to take space and and credibility in our processes.

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Teenagers we work with are from underprivileged. Areas of the city and they are marginalised.

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So when we develop the youth club for them and with them, most importantly,

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this space becomes something that's cool, it becomes something beautiful and it becomes something functional.

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All of those different elements and those helped with the functional aspect help with like safety,

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help with privacy, help with comfort, help with keeping the place clean.

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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,

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like, OK, this is are like, we own this space and we feel comfortable here.

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We feel safe here. We are emotionally connected to this and we feel pride of this space with this

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idea of designing with the participants of the people that you work with.

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Once you maybe then leave your ego behind, then something new and unexpected can take place and occur.

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And I wondered if you have.

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Have you experienced that in your projects that you, you come in with maybe certain expectations, even if you try to leave those behind?

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And then the youth, for example, that you work with, come up with something unexpected and very intriguing, have you?

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Have you experienced that? My my favourite version of this is also been going to the youth club every was it Tuesday or Wednesday,

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just kind of like hanging out with the teenagers, just getting ideas from having conversations.

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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.

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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.

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Some of them had like couches, kind of like built in couches.

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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.

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She would have like gaming stations and all these different things.

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And as we workshopped the ideas and the kids, they would just take the models apart.

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And basically, they just kept adding more sofas and just kept adding more sofas in different

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arrangements until the room became basically like one giant built in sofa.

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And we were so astounded by this because in a way, it's architecturally a bit of a boring solution.

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It wasn't what we were thinking like. That's what we'll give them.

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It's almost like it would seem like we thought it would be patronising or something to give them that solution.

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But what they wanted and what they needed was a living room or a studio.

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We said no way. They wanted a place that was a cosy place to relax and talk and chill out.

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They didn't want to be experimental with their architecture.

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They wanted to be cosy and have a place that it was like they're in their own space.

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And it was just such a revelation to us because it was not the solution we had proposed.

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So if we did did not do the participatory method, we would not have got to that point.

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And this is a completely different kind of entry point to how you do architecture than most

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big architecture projects like we are not creating projects that look good on our portfolio.

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We're not creating this like pretty magazine pictures. We're creating the spaces for these people and that's what we care about.

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Yeah. And I think, you know, I I know you because I I signed up to volunteer for one of your projects.

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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.

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And it was it was very low. How do you say this low threshold?

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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?

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I went for a walk last night and I walk through through that area and I was like, Oh, I was part of,

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you know, putting this together, and it made me feel a lot more connected to that space.

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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.

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Number one is that we we form our designs for unskilled people to build them.

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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.

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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,

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is the sense of like what is participation and what does it do and where is participation.

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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,

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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.

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I think I want to give an example of, well, this is not the correct word saying that a project went wrong,

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but for the latter project that you actually participated in volunteering like one year ago,

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we were supposed to have the first kind of Kick Kick-Off launch event for that project.

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But then COVID 19 happened and we had to cancel all of our planned activities.

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And those planned activities were, for example, workshops where we were like intending to co-design the space with the people in the neighbourhood.

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But unfortunately, we we weren't able to do that because of COVID.

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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.

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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,

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which is during the summer months here in and then in Oslo. And so we didn't have co-designing in in that project.

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And I think both of us, we feel that that was kind of the missing key ingredient for us,

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even though if it was a co building project in the end with like a massive volunteer effort put into the building of it,

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we from our perspective, we didn't feel that people got like the, let's say,

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the proper way of ownership to the space because we couldn't do the co-designing.

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And when we reflect on that as an example, like it just reminds us of how important that part actually is in our projects.

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Our work is about how important public space is and how important people meeting physically is and how important face to face contact is,

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how important public space is in creating societal connectedness.

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And basically corona is the antithesis of of that philosophy of practise.

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And it's such a that's such a good point.

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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.

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And then there are other things like the kind of life that you do that it's not the same calling someone there's,

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you know, it's not, and you might not even reach the people you want to code the fun with.

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I've been looking into blocks that are quite central in Oslo,

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so some notions that area when visiting your sites, many of your projects are based in in that area.

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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.

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I absolutely love working in that area.

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It is so complex and that will also project was probably the most complex participation that we have ever done.

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Also, because it's so polarising.

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It exists as a collision between a kind of her area and 1970s infrastructure projects, physical barriers like a river, train lines.

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So first of all, this is an incredibly diverse community. And one of the most diverse in all of Norway.

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And that community is complex in its diversity, and it's of Norwegians, of immigrants.

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So I have never, ever seen a more complex urban space.

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And I think it also should be mentioned that in this beautiful part of the city, the child poverty is actually increasing.

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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.

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And that is bad. Like that that line of graph is going the wrong way at one participants.

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You know, we asked them to write a letter about what worries you.

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And she answered, You know, I'm worried about bikes being stolen, even though it's locked and in locked bike room.

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And another participant in a the postcard speaks quite directly about feeling a privilege,

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experiencing a privilege in in the way you know where she lives.

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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.

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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.

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We employed certain people with a certain background to come and work with us,

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and we paid them salaries and we invite volunteers, just whoever open call.

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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.

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And and in a way, you work shoulder to shoulder with someone who might not have the same life as you and you

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actually manage to meet people who are completely different from you in our building processes.

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So in a way,

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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.

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So, so this is also a way that we work with inclusion and integration and this this borough, it's so extremely divided.

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And I think this ties in very interestingly to your work on Tarbox and especially its entire blocks.

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This idea of a utopia that OK will house like airy apartments that are lifted off the ground with light and

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all of these things and will have this modernist dream similar to the modern a string of around Alafia,

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these motorways moving through the city. You know, when you force your utopian ideal upon someone else, you know, like what are the results?

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And I think the urban space has been healing from the willingness of but who are the people who it's experimented on?

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It's experimented on the working class, it's experimented on the underprivileged in society,

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like what are the winners from from that lack of participation?

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So to me, participation isn't just a cosy, nice thing.

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It's actually a cure to a dystopian reality.

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Thank you for listening to the Disobedient Buildings podcast edited by myself and produced by Jack Soper.

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If you want to hear more, go to our website.

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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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Inge Daniels, takes you to London to speak with Jackie Peacock from advice for renters.

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What kind of housing problems can be experienced in London today?