Co-design to thrive

When working with a group of people to achieve a common goal, understanding each other is essential. The job of an architect here goes way beyond doing some drawings. We need to bring the group together and help them, individually and collectively, bring out their creativity, fears, reservations and dreams. Future users, organisers, volunteers, and often people who had never worked together before. The brief in those moments is rarely clear. There is only a shared intention to create a place that will hold collective life.

My role in these settings moves between designer and facilitator. We map how people want to use space, where tensions might arise, and what rhythms the building will need to support. Conversations unfold through drawings, models, material samples, and sometimes through simply walking the land together. Decisions take longer, but they carry more depth because they are held by many voices.

Over time, something shifts. The group begins to see the project as theirs, not as something designed for them but with them. Spaces emerge that reflect real patterns of use. Kitchens sized for shared meals. Thresholds that allow privacy without isolation. Outdoor areas that invite gathering without obligation. By the time construction begins, the community is already forming, held together by the very process that shaped the building.