Engage

Presentation of student work completed over the last couple of years as part of DRS 07.

The studio is concerned with socially involved spatial practice, working in real sites, through live, collaborative projects, asking students to critically engage with site and community. It explores spatial design as multi-authorial, a mechanism for joint creativity of designers and users. We encourage on-site participatory investigation through making of spatial interventions that engage diverse user groups and can drive change.

In this paper we would like to share experiences when disbelief and resistance to the idea and process of ‘engagement’ transform into comprehension, appreciation and delight. We will share our studio methodology towards achieving this transformation. We will present a short film directed by our students that demonstrates the feeling of accomplishment and enjoyment provoked by the activation of projects on site, through interaction with local audiences. Following the screening, we will open up a discussion about the importance of enabling participatory skills in spatial design education; about reasons behind the initial disengagement of students with such methodologies, exploring whether this is a shared experience in other educational contexts and the different pedagogical approaches to overcome this resistance.