Participative architecture

Complex global conditions
The globalized economies and migration movements affect the regulated forms of European cities and produce global metropolises that are way beyond the administrative concepts of what can be controlled and how it can be planned. The instable economic and social frameworks make the effectiveness of traditional planning instruments doubtful and radically question these. The fascinating view onto the self-organisation of spatial structures attempts to close in on the changing realities in the southern metropolises, doing this on a practical basis.

Already in the 1960s the search was underway by planners for potential informal and self-organised appropriation. For example, the architect John F. Turner discovered both in the poor quarters of the Third World as well as in the highly developed industrial nations the superiority of self-construction versus state centralized planning models. These analyses led to the acceptance and valuing of different forms of space appropriation and to the demand for participative construction and planning.

___156

Active users save modern architecture
The relationship of modern architecture with its universal emancipative demands to the actual complexity of life and how one lives was from the start very complicated. There is a basic contradiction in terms between the attempt to find the best solution for the housing needs of the masses by standardizing everything and the cultural promise of free development for the individual. The social, cultural and economic changes since the end of the Second World War up to the present are leading to a more and more aggravated situation.

From the criticism of the technocratically planned reality of functional urban development and the architecture of modern mass housing construction, there developed in the 1960s the first signs of an opening of the planning process towards the everyday; this in turn requires an active role by the users. Thereby, in connection with the social changes, different architecture concepts developed that followed along the line of radically democratic, anarchic, alternative, techno-utopian and reform-orientated beginnings. They encompassed everything from autonomous self-help to flexible prefabricated construction.

___157

The promises of effectiveness and democratisation
The demands for participating in decision-making processes in the sense of the democratisation of different social areas was widely spread at the end of the 1960s. As the area of reproduction in the form of living, which was ignored and not taken into account by the Left up till then, became the focal point of the discussion, new forms of participation especially in architecture and urban planning were taking form. Back then, though, these demands for democratisation and liberalisation had an emancipative character; nowadays the question that one is confronted with is in how far the techniques of individual flexibility are a part of neo-liberal ideology or at least the logic of administrations, management and production processes.

The hope for a social de-hierarchisation through participation is usually topped by the promise of effectiveness. The process-orientated and discursive technique of participating in decision-making possesses an economic advantage when compared to hierarchy-orientated, static organisational models.

___158

A different planning and construction
The conditions in which the city and housing is created and the requirements that they are confronted with are too hidden, complex and always in motion; therefore the idea of time-space control and a fixation of the planning process cannot be managed. Space and that what can be found within it influence each other all the time. Therefore no space can be built for assumed usages without them changing themselves within this space. Concepts that allow feedback processes, accept faults, prefer the creation of possibilities to already thought out solutions, that work process-orientated, offer flexible space concepts and lastly demand that a variety of groups participate are based on this experience.

In a participative architectural starting point, the promise can be found of justly dealing with unseen social as well as economic developments and opening oneself for participating in the decision-making process in a variety of social areas. "Hier entsteht/here is being created" wants to point out perspectives for a different form of planning that is capable of always being able, time and time again, to relate to more and more complex realities, using for this the discussion on theories and user participation constructs of the late 1960s up to the present day. We are dealing with subjective communal alternatives when working with space, way beyond the sad capitalistic individualisation in the living rooms of the suburbs.

___159

Participation as a power-critical process

Power participation
Participation means as much as taking part or making decisions in society and can be based on different areas of public life: work, politics, school, cultural production and consuming. Deciding on when one has a break at work or reaping the benefits of profits, taking part in national referendums or going to parents' night in schools, operating an interactive media work of art or colouring one's runners and bike on one's own or putting together a cupboard by oneself. One takes part in something that usually takes place without oneself, but in this way it is maybe easier, more fulfilling, nicer, cheaper, more just or even more human and democratic.

By taking part one ends up in a certain relationship with a specific power base with its hierarchies, within which one can participate and make decisions: school, the state, the market, culture, science and others. This finding of power must be the starting point for productive debates on participation. Then one can see a social model or a cultural technology within it, being able to negotiate with power.

___160

Participating with/one's share of space
If one has a look at the conceptions of participation in relation to planning or construction and also the use of space, then the relationship to power enters into the spatial sphere. The relationship between power and space is especially pronounced. Space is produced in society and is in itself a location for production and reproduction. In this respect, space, especially constructed space, is a subject for negotiation when dealing with power as well as its expression and place of negotiation.

The living conditions, be it a one-family house with a garage or a council flat where one has given notice, pinpoint hegemonial concepts of society. In these spaces the capitalistic reality reproduces itself. If one demands participation that can be critically understood, then this can only be a part of society as a whole; it reflects the terms of its materialization and possibly exceeds them.