Auto-diagnosis and collective action: The Permanent Workshop for Participatory Design.

Los Comités de Tierra Urbana:

The Comités de Tierra Urbana (Urban Land Councils, CTUs) are self-organising federations of families living in the barrios. The CTUs, officially enabled by a presidential decree in 2002, are a direct continuation of the struggle by groups which began to form in the late 1980s around the campaign for rights to water and land.

These CTUs, enabled by government land reforms, gain collective ownership of the land they occupy for housing. By granting security of tenure and removing the threat of eviction a fertile situation is created where incremental improvements of the barrios can occur under the guidance of the communities themselves and with the assistance of a wide range of urban professionals, including architects. The CTUs also form around the creation of new settlements (Campamentos de Pioneros). These settlements offer the chance to create new, customised living environments driven by the ideas and desires of people themselves.

Crucial to the development of the new settlements is the fundamental participation of the community members at every level of the development of the place. The Taller permanente de Diseño Participativo (Permanent Workshop for Participatory Design) are a group of architects and planners drawn from universities and the public sector who are committed to providing communities with the resources they need to collectively develop their new homes.

A group of pioneros visit the site of their future community at Hoyo de La Puerta. Image courtesy of Taller Permanente de Diseño Participativo

At Hoyo de la Puerta, a new settlement being developed on the southern outskirts of Caracas, the process of designing new houses for 200 families has expanded to encompass a survey of all aspects of community life. The Taller describes this process as Auto-diagnosis, where the community members themselves research their own problems and situation and generate solutions from that understanding.

At Hoyo de la Puerta the auto-diagnosis began with a thorough analysis of the site, its connections to other parts of the city, as well as its local connections and characteristics (water, slope, orientation, access etc). The participants then began to ask many questions of themselves: How will we move around the new community? what areas do we need? what services? what kinds of production? how will we look after children? What emerged was a complex and richly layered vision for the community, a dense programmatic brief detailing all the requirements for the new community including housing, gas-lines, hostels for visitors, community childcare, workshops, clinics, orchards, chicken-houses, hairdressers, pathways, places for playing dominos and many other things. From this brief they then discussed how much of the site should be used for each purpose, how programs could be combined and spaces shared.

The group then returned to the site to begin to plan how these various functions could be applied to the specific piece of land. During multiple site visits and through the process of constructing a contour model of the land they identified the best locations for building (with low slope and without environmental protection constraints). With the use of the model they then began to arrange the various programs on the site, considering which programs needed to be physically linked, centrally located, public or private and in proximity to transport and services.

Participants plan where the specific parts of their new community will be located. Image courtesy of Taller Permanente de Diseño Participativo

With the large scale vision for the entire community now sketched out the workshop shifted focus to the micro-scale, that of the individual house. Continuing with the process of auto-diagnosis the participants began with an analysis of their current living situation. They compiled the demographics of who was in each house, studied what activities those people did, recorded the sizes and characteristics of spaces in which those activities took place and commented on the quality and practicality of those spaces. After this they discussed ways in which things could be done better and what they would change in their houses and surrounding areas. From these exercises the group was able to produce some model house designs drawn from the needs identified by the people themselves.

Participants use an analysis of their existing houses to create plans for some new house types. Images courtesy of Taller Permanente de Diseño Participativo

The project is still in its early stages, waiting for approvals and funding to come through complicated bureaucratic channels, but the community now has a concrete plan for the development of their land. It is a plan which they own and understand inside-out because they created it, making it a powerful tool for argument. One participant mentioned to me that through the process she had learned to question everything about her situation. Not just the physical conditions but also social and political ones: “Why are we living in tiny shacks on the edge of a crumbly mountain when others have more than they could possibly use?