Community
Designing Process to Regain People’s Expression: The Case of the
Collaborative Art Project at "Izumi no Ie" |
| This paper reviews the collaborative art project conducted at a welfare facility called "Izumi no Ie" in Setagaya, Tokyo. Focusing on the 8-month process and its results, I will describe how the participatory program should be designed and how the designers should play their roles. Izumi no Ie is a home and workplace for people with physical disabilities. Approximately 60 people are working and 40 of them are also living in this facility. Many of them have lived here for a long time (as many as 19 years on average) with little contact with the local community. The facilities of Izumi no Ie, which were built 40 years ago, are also old. We conducted a series of collaborative art workshops from May to December 2003, and designed the common spaces at Izumi no Ie. Our workshop team mainly consists of university students at Tokyo Institute of Technology. In addition to designing the spaces that brought light to the old facilities, we aimed to encourage the people to show their individuality and self-expression, through the process of changing their living spaces with our team. Our workshop team discussed what kind of program would be necessary and how we should play our roles to achieve our objectives. In the process of designing the mural, canopy, and the garden, we learned that we needed a participatory design process in which people’s creative power is recognized. We also realized how we could inspire people to change through the process of space design. |