Design and Construction: Changing the Role

Since the seventy’s many experiences went towards alternative or soft technologies, architecture for the poor, etc. In all of these the design was an answer to a need. Is it possible to see building as an opportunity? Certainly, when the architecture is used, some functions or needs can be satisfied. But the building process itself represents a way versus knowledge, a research field, a social event, a door opened on the future (while the need is a result of the past). Within this area we could experience to involve groups of non-experts in the design and construction process, which allows to have a direct interface between individual needs and production. Specifically during two workshops in the secondary schools in central and southern Italy, the pupils built from recycled material a theater stage in the first case and the stands for a little market in the other. Some university students guide the secondary students in the construction process using newspapers, cardboards, tetrapak and cables. A third project, bigger then the others, consist in a modular shell, made by plied metallic net, covered with cement, sand, paper or fabric to self-build (thanks to the direct help of the university students) a family house for sick children in Kenya. Decomposing the design and building process in single phases is in accordance with the segmentation of industrial and economical processes of our contemporary world. Generally, nowadays architects are sad about this situation where they can’t be the only “art director” anymore. On the other hand, if well managed, this segmentation can be the opportunity to host at each step all those virtuous inputs, which can arrive: from a diffuse knowledge even if not structured and specialized in any way; from the disposable resources like recycled materials or free labour, etc.