Community, Co-design, Architecture:
Nanoco gallery, Hanoi,
Vietnam
2017
The exhibition was developed through a collaborative process with other architects and creative professionals in Hanoi exploring processes, tools and methods behind collaborative design process.
Featuring previous projects with communities in India, Philippines, China and UK, the exhibition explored how we can work together, identify ambitions, needs, resources and existing knowledge within these communities. The exhibition was also an opportunity to prepare for an upcoming project to design and build new facilities for the Lung Tam Textile Cooperative in Ha Giang Province, Vietnam. Working together with the members of the cooperative, the aim was to engage them in a process to learn, question and make something that belongs to them. As experts of their own lives, communities should be involved in the design and planning of their built environment, to identify and address the challenges and issues that they face. The process of design and building architecture can become a platform for different opinions and ambitions to come together in a creative process to give shape to a building that eventually belong to the people and the place that made it. But for this to happen the role of the architect needs to change, from a designer of products to a ‘curator’ of a process where the clients and end-users of the building are no longer passive receivers but active designers and builders.