Enabling Conversations

This series of impromptu interventions took place in the public alleys of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighborhood.

This network of alleys serve as commuting corridors for many in the city and homes to those who make up what is known as Canada's poorest postal code. Creating an unfamiliar setting in this space sparked conversation with the community, revealing valuable insights from a wide range of people on local issues.
Many of these insights are not discovered in what is written on paper. It is by investigating new ways of engaging different communities that we are better able to understand the issues we seek to address.

photographs clément vincent

Community building in Eastern Germany

This intervention took place in the suburbs of East Germany in a physically and socially depressed area known as the Salbke District. This neighborhood is primarily comprised of decaying buildings from its past industrial identity, a few remaining commercial properties and a large sprawling residential sector. The area where this intervention took place was the site of the former public library.

The community used surrounding vacant commerical spaces to amass a book collection on a donation basis. Together with a group of professional architects and planners, the community engaged in a participative process to establish an programme of needs and design concepts for the library space. There were 20,000 books collected and a 1:1 scale model was built with the community, using over a thousand beer crates as building material. The community then held a two day event in the new space.

This initiative was presented to the Federal Government for funding to construct the facility. The library's facade was built using prefabricated pieces from a demolished building from the 1960's. Although this project had limited resources from the beginning, an innovative solution was arrived at due in large part to the deep level of community involvement. The result is a public library space that is open to the public 24 hours a day and managed by the residents of the community.

This project may not have had the successes it did if the community were not motivated to pursue the project, and were not empowered through out the design process. You can read an assessment of the successes and potential opportunities of this project here.