Community Architecture

With this I intend to propose to gather data
about the average size of a jeepney. But the
jeepney in general as stated above is one very
diverse animal, so to speak. The research would
then focus on a single species, and that would be
the Malolos Inter-city jeepney, or amorously called
the “Karatig.”

Paper presented in Conference Ce-PhD Cluj, Romania 2014

The fast and turbulent development patterns that have our countries experienced since the fall of communism regime have strongly influenced the image and functioning of our cities and regions. The economic and social polarisation reflects in the Slovak landscapes in the form of segregated residential 'islands', of which one type are Roma concentrations.
The paper analyses different forms and processes connected to design of public space that have  potential to play a significant role in bridging these gaps and thus building inclusive communities. In the first part paper deals with the concept of inclusivity in the urban design agendas and its role in understanding public spaces. In the second part, preliminary results from the case study project 'For better life in Rankovce' are drawn out in order to suggest recommendations for widening the definition of public spaces, multidisciplinary and people-based involvement in all the stages of the design processes and the necessity of flexibility and time-adaptability in design strategies.

Brian Anson was an architect and a planner but also a poet, a drawer, a story teller, a folk singer, a children book illustrator and more than anything a political activist. Born in Liverpool, from a middle-class background, he was particularly active in the 1970s, instrumental in the campaign to save Covent Garden. Shortly after loosing his job as a planner at the Greater London Council (GLC), he was invited by Alvin Boyarsky to teach at the Architectural Association School (AA). Anson taught at the AA from 1971 until 1978, a incredible period in its variety of groups such as ARCHIGRAM, SUPPORT... Anson launched the Architectural Revolutionary Council (ARC) at the AA in 1974. It was an action group active in different local campaigns implementing the idea of
'Community Architecture'.
I am exploring Brian Anson's understanding of the architect's role. How he tried to bridge a gap between residents and architects through the implementation of “Community Architecture”. I am seeking to uncover his influence at the AA through his teaching and the creation of the ARC. What importance did he give to design and creativity when he was taking strong political positions? What can I learn from him ? What is relevant today in the context of London's housing crisis: his attempts, his successes, his failures ?
London is currently going through a major change. Since 2005, a process of privatization of public land has begun, highlighted with the very much broadcasted case of the Heygate estate. In December 2014, more than 70 social housing estates are going through “regeneration” which mainly imply demolition and population displacement. More than 160 000 inhabitants are affected, mostly evicted via Compulsory Purchase Order3. The land concerned is the equivalent of 15,5 km2. London is facing an historical change, comparable in its size and impact to the rehousing initiative undertaken in the 1950's Brave New World area... Except that today, the poor and middle-class Londoners are pushed outside Greater London (as far as Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool...).
I will sketch a panorama of the community actions taking place now in order to compare it with Anson's attempts in the 1970s.
Is there any legacy from Anson to be found in today's community
actions? Where are the architects today? What is my role as an architectural student ? How to start to implement the beginning of the end of the housing crisis ? What if today's planning system could be challenge through community action ? What if the planning process could embody something different ? What if design and creativity could play a role?
What if...

Households’ participation has been unanimously advocated by various frameworks and guidelines but has also been rarely post-evaluated to prove its importance in the post-disaster reconstruction programs. This study examined the case of Pope Francis Village in Tacloban City, Philippines – a post-Yolanda resettlement advocated with extensive participatory interventions. Households’ depth of participation was analyzed including its influence to the level of residential satisfaction being an indicator of a project’s success or failure. Data were derived through surveys, key informant interviews, and FGD. Across forty-three (43) indicators from the planning, design, and construction phases, depth of households’ participation was rated average (mean = 2.90 / 5.00) while the level of households’ residential satisfaction was rated high (mean = 3.86 / 5.00) from thirty-five (35) attributes across the dimensions of site characteristics, housing condition, institutional services, and social environment. Using Pearson’s correlation, it was determined that the households’ depth of participation and the level of their residential satisfaction have a significant, strong, and positive linear relationship, r (160) = .36, p = .000. Further, using multiple linear regression, it was identified that participation during the construction phase influenced the level of residential satisfaction with housing condition (R2 = .113) and social environment (R2 = .133). Also, participation during the design phase influenced the level of residential satisfaction with institutional services (R2 = .073). However, when dealing with the notion of participation, this study suggests reframing it to “compromise and collaboration” rather than as beneficiary control (Arnstein, 1969; Choguill, 1996) or mere collaborative pursuit (Opdyke et al., 2019) due to the realities of participation encountered.

Cities of the future will be largely extra-legal. Most will not be planned nor be built on land that is legally owned.  They will be realized without the formal input of civic or private agencies.  Politicians, policy-makers, planners and civic leaders will have limited impact upon them.  Architects and engineers will have even less.

This professional marginalization is not due to a lack of expertise, nor is it due to a lack of desire.  It is because the frameworks that support these professions are structured in a manner that privileges a pace and structure of interaction that is fundamentally counter with that used to build these future-cities.

This chapter proposes an alternative manner of practice, one that is more aligned with the nature of these extra-legal settlements.

Angela Brady, architect, the former RIBA president, states that “Architects should not assume what
people want until they clearly hear from the actual people.” I
Without a doubt, architecture affects the quality of life. Hence, architects ought to have a certain sense
of social responsibilities. Consequently, there are architects who become advocates in their
communities, beyond being mere members of organizations, which results in positive impacts in their
areas.
As architects, the most efficient way to contribute to society would be to participate in public projects in
their area. Since such projects require a tremendous understanding of the local people, the community,
and the place, establishing trust with inhabitants of the region is a requisite for a successful outcome. At
the same time, this is the most difficult task to achieve successfully. It gets even harder when architects
have projects that are not in their territories. It is apparent that there are many bad examples that
resulted in strong distrust between the local people and architects due to architects’ misinterpretation
and ignorance to the local desires.
To prove their capabilities in delivering the local’s desire, architects should be flexible to apply people’s
demands on local situations. Trust does not come from simple words or conversation. It should be
backed up with certain evidence on how architects implemented people’s requirements in their design.
Fred Kent, the founder of the Project for Public Spaces, Inc., stated that “Building better communities
through improving their public spaces is one area where architects can really add value ̶but only if they
let the community drive the programming and design.”ii Thus, architects should be guides for
communities, rather than being advocates of their design ego.
This paper will unfold into three categories. First, it will examine how architects became disconnected
with the general public. Second, it will illustrate successful examples of strong trust built between
communities and architects. Finally, it will focus on how to establish such trust with the people, the
communities and the place.

Multifunctional space is perhaps the most appropriate representation in architecture of the rapid, continuos, evolutive changes through which passes the contemporary society. When it is a part of community centers or even defines itself a community center, for architect it is a challenge to develop new spatial possibilities for communication, social-cultural relations and loisir, thus reviving the community spirit.
The present article investigates the relation between multifunctional space and the scale of community centers. The volumetrical-spatial scale of community centers it is a quantitative criterion (but not just this) of classification for contemporary community centers relevant for community, for social policies of district/ area/ city level and for the community architecture.
From about 100 analyzed examples of community centers, was proposed a classification in  three scale categories: S- small community centers (100-1000mp), M- medium community centers (1001-3000mp) and L, XL- large and very large community centers (3001->15000mp). For each category were established subcategories.
Multifunctionality respectively multifunctional space was defined as an essential principle in designing contemporary community centers. From the same about 100 analyzed exemples were identified three types of multifunctionality: merging-concomitance, polyvalence-adaptability and hybrid solutions, resulting from combining the first two. 
Merging-concomitance principle assumes the existence of several spaces with different, precise destination, functioning simultaneously under the same roof. The exact functional destination customizes spaces, makes them recognizable, confers a certain character, a special ambience, expresses the users’s wish at least at a certain time. These spaces may not be so easy to change, have some functional inertia.
Unlike the principle of merging-concomitance, the polyvalence-adaptability principle assumes interior or exterior spaces which by different organization (interventions on furniture or subdivision items) allow the deployment of several activities, concomitantly or delayed in time. The polyvalent space is easily adaptable and can meet the changing requests of today society. Polyvalent space supposes an initial neutral conception, customizing of this being made ephemeral for each event in part.
Contemporary community centers can use both contemporary principles separately or simultaneously, in which case occurring hybrid solution of multifunctionality.  Most times it is necessarily to take place concomitant several types of activities that requires well-defined spaces and also are needed spaces that can morph, adapting according to the requirements.
Very few of contemporary community centers examples have a spatial functional structure fully functional determined. Although prevails quantitatively spaces with clear, customizable functions, polyvalent, multifunctional spaces are almost always present, even if subordinated. Community centers generally function after scenarios commonly agreed with the community, being available, at
least for a certain time, in the life of that community.
Multifunctionality strictly interpretated as merging-concomitance works especially for large centers that allow a wide range of spaces intended for various destinations (eg. Clayton Community Center, Australia-S=6650sqm). Are functions that are requiring specialized spaces (eg. sporting, cooking facilities) or meet better the community’s requires if are customized (we talk especially about elderly people, more conservative by definition).
The hybrid multifunctionality is the most widely used, almost always  for the medium centers (eg. Community Center Herstedlund- S=875sqm) and most times for large centers (eg. The Gateway Center, Wetschester Community College, USA- S=70000sqm). From the functional scheme point of view, it correspond the best to the community as a whole, offering both specificity, stability as well as flexibility, adaptability.
Multifunctionality, however understood as polyvalence, always brings an extra to the community centers in adapting to the changing requirements of today. Multifunctional spaces represents the unexpected, the anticipation of future nonanticipation. These occur subordinated in the case of large or medium community centers or can be independent for small centers. Small community center constitutes an interesting exercise in terms of multifunctionality, shifting to the POLYVALENCE-FULL ADAPTATION. In this case, the functional scheme can be simplified even to use only polyvalent space (eg. Youth Centre Amsterdam-Osdorp, Holland, S=285sqm).
In conclusion, the multifunctional space in community centers expresses the refusal of predetermination and the awareness of the rapid changes of the present society, eliminating complex functional schemes, proposing instead adaptable, flexible ones, possibly to be used in various ways, that fold specifically over the scale of space and on the specifics of the community.
Keywords: multifunctional space, merging-concomitance, polyvalence-adaptability, community center, scale

The victory garden and Community Greenhouse at Vermont’s Marlboro College were born of student initiative. The projects — idiosyncratic of the self-governing community and student-led academic program — were created bottom-up. The garden and greenhouse are spaces of experimentation to relearn essential human skills — how to grow food. The students built knowledge by building community, while decreasing dependency on industrial agriculture.

“I was amazed to see even on a holiday so much work was going on : recycling of paper, plastic, paint, making soap, shoes and despite the effort that goes in blighting these people’s lives. And so the chemistry is important, it is everything a city must be.”

Within the proliferating cities of the global South, innumerable transient cities have grown, taking in migrants and refugees who are unable to find affordable housing in the ‘planned’ city defined by Master Plans and designed by architects and developers. These transient cities have been built by the people themselves, brick by brick, floor by floor. They exist in an ephemeral state of insecurity of land tenure and hence ‘illegality’, and are often built only to be dismantled, relocated, and rebuilt. Over seventy percent of the capital city of Delhi is built this way, comprised of what are called informal settlements – squatter settlements or jhuggi-jhopri clusters, unauthorized colonies, urban villages, resettlement colonies, regularized unauthorized colonies etc.

What is the role and relevance of an architect where more than three quarters of the city is designed and built by the people themselves? What can a designer learn from the design of these transient cities and can the designer bring her design knowledge to these informal cities?

With its emphasis on the collective, open character of the design process, community architecture practice has been challenging the methodological tenets and disciplinary boundaries of architecture, shifting the focus from a merely physical output towards a remaking of sociopolitical relations, knowledge production and transmission, people’s capacity and self-organization. Community architecture is, in short, about the practical reformulating interaction between the terms that make up the concept: community and architecture. 
When practicing community architecture we are positioning ourselves, as individuals and kind-of-architects, alongside a social construct we refer to as “community”. Such concept is subject to various actual interpretations: as community architects we may find ourselves engaging with overlapping entities, at times in friction, that share a common physical space and are all, one way or another, the community. 
This emerges well in an ancient, stratified and heterogeneous locality such as Nangloeng, a community in central Bangkok where I have been working for some time as part of community architecture group Openspace. This brief account aims to provide some cues for reflection on the actual meanings of “community” on the ground, and the role community architects can play bridging across such meanings.

The dilemma between in situ rebuilding and resettlement in reconstruction strategies has long been discussed in the disaster scholarship and practice (Badri et al. 2006, Cernea 1997, Lizarralde et al. 2009, Partridge 1989). This dilemma has centered on the social repercussions of the two reconstruction strategies (impoverishment, marginalization, disruption of social networks), yet the various roles architects (should) play in addressing these repercussions has been limitedly discussed. The reality is that building professionals not only contribute to the construction of safer and more ‘resilient’ buildings in their role as designers of material artefacts, but also engage with various reconstruction agents (governmental authorities, NGOs, fund providers, community leaders, civic groups) to co-guide socially complex, multi-level, and highly intra-disciplinary rebuilding processes that address or reinforce socio-spatial ills. To fill the lacunae in the scientific discourse, this paper investigates the multifaceted role of architects in fostering (or hindering) the resilience of disaster-affected houses and communities in and through post-disaster rebuilding and resettlement processes. The paper sets out to uncover the recovery-resilience-architect nexus by bringing theories of disaster recovery and resilience (Bosher 2008, Oliver-Smith 1991, Paidakaki and Moulaert 2017), multi-level governance (Eizaguirre et al. 2012, Swyngedouw and Moulaert 2015, Moulaert 2013) and political architecture (Boano and Hunter 2012, Coulombel 2011, Lyons 2009, Zetter and Boano 2009) in dialogue with each other. The heterogeneity of roles acquired by architects in post-disaster multi-governed recovery processes (social, political, physical) is empirically covered during fieldwork conducted by the first author in the Merapi area (Indonesia) between February and March 2018. During this two-month visit, a short study of three post-2010 volcano eruption recovery programs was conducted for primary data collection. The three programs were purposively selected to dig into the multifacetedness of architects in different rebuilding strategies (varied levels of engagement, authority, impact of the profession on the beneficiaries) in order to dig out the potential and limitations of the profession in ‘building’ post-disaster resilient houses and communities. During the study, the following research methods were mobilized: document survey, semi-structured interviews with key actors (governmental officials, local architects, urban planners, local professors) and questionnaires distributed throughout the villages in which the three recovery programs intervened.

Escribir la ciudad Escribir la ciudad supone la posibilidad de crearla y re-crearla, así como de leerla e interpretarla de muchas maneras en nuestras prácticas cotidianas. Supone el uso de vocabularios, de formas y signos de caligrafía, de sintaxis y reglas de ortografía, la utilización de acentos, símiles y metáforas y el uso de preposiciones para reflejar las perspectivas desde las cuales se experimenta, se escribe y se lee, es decir la ciudad ante, bajo, cabe, con, contra, de, desde, en, entre, hacia, hasta, para, por, según, sin, so, sobre y tras (Reguillo 1). Supone en la ciudad la capacidad de ser y significar muchas cosas para mucha gente, de ser memoria, presente y futuro, de ser múltiple y una. La ciudad es en realidad muchas ciudades Yo quiero hablar de algunas de las ciudades que habito. Todas se llaman Río Piedras y comparten la misma geografía, las mismas calles, los mismos nombres y lugares pero no sus historias ni las maneras de nombrarla. En ellas, viven las mismas gentes pero no todos habitan los mismos territorios ni se mueven de la misma manera a través de sus laberintos. Algunas de estas ciudades las habito con mi presencia, a decir mejor, no existen sin ella. Unas las imagino y otras más las vivo vicariamente, desde el atisbo y la distancia prudente. Todas existen simultáneamente, en diferentes registros, como en una matriz de innumerables relaciones, divididas por fronteras, a veces invisibles a simple vista. Cohabitan, se distancian, se entrecruzan, disputan los espacios, se yuxtaponen o mezclan a través de relaciones que son producto del dejar ser, la confrontación o la negociación. La ciudad se nos manifiesta siempre de manera incompleta e inconclusa. Siempre somos transeúntes en algún lugar de la ciudad. Nunca la habitaremos por completo. Cada una de las ciudades está marcada con tatuajes, reales, intangibles o imaginarios, dibujados por sus habitantes, que explican, a los que saben leer, los códigos y claves para descifrarla y orientar a los que pertenecen, o confrontar y desorientar a los intrusos. Los que la apropian crean territorios grabando sus señales de identidad en los edificios, los muros y la atmósfera, a través de sus voces, la palabra escrita, rituales, modos de vestir y moverse en el espacio, así como en los olores y sabores y las maneras de nombrar los lugares y las cosas. 1 Rossana Reguillo, 2001. 'Con,-para,-contra-desde-sobre-en-de la ciudad. Tres postales y un fragmento': El laberinto, el conjuro y la ventana. Itinerarios para mirar la ciudad. ITESO, Guadalajara.

Architecture in the community acts as a bridge between the local population and their everyday activities, routes through the community, creative and learning spaces, cultural and social activities. Buildings for the community will have many roles to play, as functional and appealing architectural designs; fitting into the site and surroundings, inevitably becoming landmarks and social connectors. They may help transform the way people interact and use shared space, building better communities, offering support for local people, addressing news and events, heritage and history; a familiar place for all; a beacon, the community gateway.

How much say do the community have in the shaping of space? How does a new, shared space influence the group, the community as one? How does an injection of new space, construction, complex urban planning, activity and event affect the individual community lives, intimately, comfortably and educationally? How do we create good, sustainable and welcoming community gateways?