Master of Architecture Thesis Rice University 

ii. power without ownership


[f16]
Camden Bench, 2012
This bench was commissioned by the Camden London Borough Council and installed throughout Camden. The request for a design that deinfluences certain behaviors, restricting the use solely for tempororay sitting. Public use objects that are designed to inhibit certain behaviors are known as hostile architecture.
[f17]
A desire path formed from repetitive people taking the alternate route than what is paved. 
Design and power have an embedded relationship. Whether it is spatially, visually, or materially, a designer holds the power to define how objects will be made, used, and the impact they could have. Independently, the designer has the power to define such conditions for their own desires and needs. Though when a designer’s skills are requested by an owner for themselves, the designer’s power comes second to satisfy the owner’s desires and needs. In conditions where the owner requests a designer’s skill for other users to benefit, there is a dance of power between the owner and designer, while ultimately resting in the hands of the owner. There do exist design processes in which the public users are invited to participate in decision making processes, however the input given is one of many deciding factors that may or may not see light at the end of the design process. Users may choose to engage with the results of the designer’s and owner’s decisions, however the engagement is set within parameters determined for specific intents and purposes.

This leaves users grappling with moments of power and having to release. Relinquishing deciding power, users settle on limited agency. Using what they are given to achieve what they desire. The limits of power, control, and degrees of agency are directly related to the lack of ownership. What one does not own, they are likely to tread lightly.
community architecture

[f18]
Community members participating in a public design meeting.
[f19]
A site plan option that was presented during a meeting for the design of a park. The meeting is held with the community residents to gather their feedback in order to make improvements in the design. A common exercise is also seen here where the community members were given red and green colored stickers to mark what they liked or disliked of the proposed design.
Whenever something put into place by people in positions of authority does not satisfy the general public, it is easy to complain collectively and claim that ‘if they had just listened’ something better could have been done. While listening to the public is necessary, the public often does not realize what happens behind the scenes to implement actions. A strategy some designers take on is participatory design, also known as co-design, or co-operative design. The idea of participatory design can be greater on paper than it might be in practice. This is not due to people being insincere in their intentions, but rather the inability of participating members to be included in every state of projects. Many public use projects will prioritize conversations with the users in the schematic design and/or design development stages. These can be found at town hall meetings, interactive posters placed in the site of the project, or meetings scheduled on site for the future users. Feedback will be listened to, and made note of, ranking the requests from high priority to low. As with most design solutions, it will be impossible to satisfy everyone’s needs, especially when it is a public function. The people who joined to give input, will often not know how their comments will be responded to either until the project is completed or intermediate progress updates are shared with the public.

Jeremy Till discusses the tensions of power and communities relative to architecture in his essay titled “Architecture of the Impure Community” published in Jonathan Hill’s Occupying Architecture in 1998. Till explains the common utopian misunderstandings and shortcomings about community involvement, architects’ roles, and the hidden politics and powers at play.

Community members can have misconceptions about how much active participation they would need to have in order to get their requests emphasized in a public design project. “The word ‘community’ is always suggestive but never fully defined, holding out the promise of containing the values of interaction, mutual support and communality.” (8) Design projects based on a community architecture setup can be misleading to those who do not understand all the roles necessary to make a job successful. There can be an assumption that “someone else” will do it for the sake of everyone, or that there will be an external player that ensures the engagement of the community. While active participation from community members can be beneficial and help increase the positive impacts a project will ultimately have, it is not the ultimate solution.

Architecture is innately political, especially projects that are intended for the public. Design teams have to work with the legal requirements of the environments they design for. Architects cannot ignore these, as projects would not see light if permits were not adhered to. The architect’s role is designing in ways that respect legal requirements without letting them override the needs of the users. It is dangerous to claim the political role architects can have should be disconnected from the profession. Richard Bernstein states, “it lends support to the politically dangerous myth that there is a proper domain of social issues where social knowledge is appropriate (neutral expert knowledge) - a domain that is better left to the experts and social engineers and which is to be excluded from the political sphere.”(9) Till follows this up in his essay by stating, “Architects can thus argue that they are involved in the bettering of society through technique and expertise alone, whereas in fact by the disavowal of the political they are betraying the potential empowerment of the user.”(10) Referencing Colin Ward as an activist he states, “...Colin Ward, [was] explicitly political in [his] intent and saw the users’ involvement in the production of their own environment as an overtly political act.”(11) In Tenants Take Over Ward states, “It is political in the most profound sense: it is about the distribution of power in society.”(12) This thesis acknowledges and accepts the hidden politics Till describes, while emphasizing and building on the power embedded within defining one’s own environment. Acknowledging the relationship between ownership and power within architecture is crucial to strengthening public architecture and allowing for a productive balance of agency between users and designers.

(8) Jeremy Till, “Architecture of the Impure Community,” 63.
(9) R. Bernstein, “Rethinking the Social and Political”, 254.
(10) Jeremy Till, “Architecture of the Impure Community,” 69.
(11)  Jeremy Till, “Architecture of the Impure Community,” 66.
(12) Colin Ward, Tenants Take Over, 43.

Feyza Mutlu
Master of Architecture Thesis
Rice University School of Architecture linkedin.com/in/feyza-mutlu
fnmutlu1@gmail.com
@fnmutlu1