DEMOCRATIC DESIGN

Cooperation, Collaboration and Compromise

This theme explores working together for a future architecture by identifying strategies to bring architects and new partners together, to extract tools for successful collaboration and to discuss aims for a broader communication

Concept

DEMOCRATIC DESIGN investigates the new momentum of the local in relation to the global. Citizens have rediscovered their direct impact on smaller entities and scales. This localisation makes socio-political and spatial challenges conceptually tangible and their responses imaginable, as both policies and concrete projects for spaces. With a new emphasis on resilient architecture, transitioning our economy and a growing urge to mitigate the impact of climate change by increasing local and regional building culture, it has also become necessary to identify and connect the people and protagonists behind the processes. The rise of collectives and new partnerships – not only in the architecture profession – already signals a new era of working together to achieve the goals that will benefit all. We must not only ask what can be done, but who can do it. 

How can architects make use of this newfound empowerment and motivation of people to become involved? How can protagonists from space-making professions strengthen urban cohesion with enhanced communal structures? Which tools can replace a static and mistrusted masterplan? Which participation instruments can carry the process of commissioning public buildings and spaces or awarding industry contracts assuring accountability? Can architects and planners be educated as facilitators and co-conceivers of such new tools and processes? How can processes from architectural practices be transferred into economic structures and accelerate the urgently needed transformation? 

New partnerships have been and must be formed to be able to connect and generate a general consent: architecture is and has always been teamwork, collaboration and cooperation (and compromise). In this sense, the design process can strengthen democratic understanding as well as support the participation and societal cohension that we are so desperately in need of. This also includes providing spaces for collaboration and encounter, such as public spaces, informal places and making sure the city enables housing, meeting and participation for everyone.