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.

Participatory practice - Designing a Place of Worship

Peter Hubner with an evangelical youth group designed a small chapel space for prayer and contemplation. This was not a community of architects and designers, but citizens, a priest, the regional head of the youth group and members.

Hubner took an interesting approach to designing with this community. To help participants understand the needed scale of the space, he first had each person make a scale model (1:10) of themselves followed by an exercise in which the group explored configurations with their bodies while reclining, standing, in motion and static. Beginning with exercises like these enabled the community and the architect to understand the necessary scale of the space based on the actions of those who would use it. You can read further about the process of design and construction here.

Enabling public understanding of the design process was an effective way to engage the community as designers. The architect benefited by understanding in greater detail the needs of the end user.

A participatory approach in Halifax

The new Halifax public library postures itself to be a landmark in the historic setting of Halifax. The building is a collaboration between Fowler Bauld & Mitchell Ltd. of Halifax and Schmidt, Hammer Lassen of Germany. The space was conceived of with the public through a series of five focus groups through which the following aspirations were identified:

a hub for the city
awe-inspiring
innovative architecture
green building
flexible spaces
accessible and inclusive
inspiring
social interaction and engagement

It is difficult to know the success of this project for we have yet to interact with the space as a built environment. The fulfillment of these criteria remain to be seen in the coming years.

Referencing the working process of Peter Hubner, mentioned in the previous post, I wonder if further insight could be had into the way we design a space intended for a wide range of users. What is a library through the eyes of a child, what is the same space through the eyes of a student, a senior citizen, a mother? If the role of the architect/designer was shifted to facilitator and the creative role was given to the user, would we glean a deeper insight into the needs of the end user?

You can read more about the community involvement in the development of the public library here.