Presented for public review Jan. 9, 2005
Special thanks to:
Chris Macdonald - UBC SOA
Pat Patkau - UBC SOA
John Robinson - SDRI
This project is an exploration of architectural design process related to collaborative design, sustainable development, and cultural advocacy. The project — culture lab — is a specific exploration of the theories of soft design developed through the trans-disciplinary study of design and learning processes.
Soft design is a broadened view of architectural process that encompasses the design of not only buildings but also social organizations, patterns of use, and methods of future transformation.
The applied project, soft design [culture lab], is based on the premise that sustainability is a cultural issue that cannot be addressed simply as a technical problem. Given this, soft design aims to transform local organizations and place-based identities through open-ended collaborative design exercises. Viewed in this way, design is a tool used within a cultural laboratory and as much a means as an ends.
Test site:
The Great Northern Way Campus in Vancouver ‘s False Creek Flats.
Summary: This project is an attempt to break down some of the methodological barriers between planning, urban design, and architecture and to discover a potentially prototypical approach to localized sustainable development. At a specific level, it is an attempt to apply design-thinking and design-communication to a poorly defined and contested urban situation and to initiate an ongoing process of physical and cultural transformation.