Abstract

In recent years there has been much debate about public involvement in architecture and planning. On the one hand, this debate has frequently led architects, administrators and social scientists to acquire more explicit information about user requirements; on the other hand, rather than treating people as ‘objects of research’, it is also possible to involve them directly in the architectural design process. Nonetheless, this option has not always proved successful, given that architectural projects are generally documented with two-dimensional (graphic) representations of space, which laypeople have difficulty reading. With the recent development of spatial simulators in a few European countries, which permit full-scale architectural mock-ups to be assembled, it is apparent that not only the role of the building user in the design process can become more active, but also new insights can be gained from the analysis of people participating in the architectural design process. These issues are discussed in this paper, with reference to research undertaken at the Laboratoire d’Experimentation Architecturale (L.E.A.), a full-scale simulator at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, which has been used by members of a housing cooperative to design their homes. The research on this participatory design process has revealed the capacities and shortcomings of laypeople to read three-dimensional, full-scale models, and how past, personal experiences of diverse residential environments have been used as ‘resources for design’ during the design-by-simulation process.

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