Participate in Design (P!D)

Project Name: Hack Our Play - St. James Church Kindergarten
Location: Singapore, Singapore
Date Designed: 2017
Date Completed: 2017
Size: 128 sqm
Client: St. James Church Kindergarten
Programme: Public Space

ABOUT P!D
Participate in Design (P!D) is a non-profit design, planning and educational organisation that provides their expertise in participa- tory design to help institutions in Singapore design community-owned spaces and solu- tions. P!D was founded in 2013 by founders, Jan Lim and Mizah Rahman with the vision to spread the ideas of participatory design across Singapore.

ABOUT Hack Our Play - St. James Church Kindergarten
Hack our play is the first community-built play space in Singapore. The project was executed in 4 phases (connect, understand, create, deliver), driven by participatory design guiding principles. It aims to allow for the primary users of the space to create a unique play environment, empowering users to take pride and ownership over the space.

Hack Our Play - St. James Church Kindergarten

Interview with YEUNG Larry of Participate in Design
Insights and Takeaways
1. ADVICE TO YOUNG ARCHITECTS?
I would like to tell myself, do not be afraid to try and step out of your comfort zone. Stay true to your own values.

2. HOW DOES COVID AFFECT YOUR WORK?
I think there will need to be a hybrid of methods in the “new norm”. While online engagements were seen as “the new norm”, we felt that we should not neglect the importance of physical interaction, so that our seniors or community who have no access to computers, would not be le^ out of the co-creation process.

3. BOOKS TO RECOMMEND?
Jane Jacobs “Life and death of Great American cities”. This was the first book I read In architecture school that really left an impact on me, and was also one of the reason I got very interested in the field of urban planning, community and public architecture.

Interview Transcript
Q1: Could you share your latest project, and how did you and your team start connecting with the community involved?
Our latest project is the Neighbourhood Renewal Programme in Nee Soon East, whereby we were given the task to brainstorm innova?ve ways to co-create the neighbourhood together with the residents in Nee Soon East. This project just started a few weeks ago, and we are in the midst of reaching out to the Town Council, grassroots and advisor for the area. Our first step for any new project is to first understand the community a little more through the above mentioned stakeholders, before doing the actual ground work with the residents. We are excited to connect with the residents through various means such as the upcoming walking conversa?ons and community workshops. If you stay near Nee Soon East, do keep a lookout for these community engagements!

Q2: Everybody’s needs are different, and opinions have been extensively collected in the first 2 phases of every project. Thoughts from every stakeholder might be vastly different or at times even clashing. How does the organisation consolidate and converge the thoughts of the community?
There will hardly be any community engagement with all views aligned,. At some point, there will likely be conflicting views. But most importantly, I would say the par?cipatory design process is about crea?ng this plaNorm for the community and designers/space managers to empathise with one another, so that each of them can understand one another’s perspec?ve. With such understanding, we can then mobilise the community to work towards a common vision of the space. At the end of the day, we are there to listen and co-design with the “local experts” (in this case the residents), and collabora?on between all stakeholders and the design experts can create a meaningful change in the built outcome.

Q3: What is your vision for participatory design to be used as an approach for community designs? Do you think all projects should adopt participation from the community? Are there any cases you can think of for which par8cipatory design might not significantly value-add to a community project?
My vision is for more public projects to adopt a participatory design framework from the beginning of the project so that the design brief could be shaped more meaningfully. A lot of times we only start engaging the community at the later part of the project, and by then, we realise that a lot of assumptions were already made, and the scope which the community could influence the end outcome is extremely limited. That may in some cases cause the public project to look good as a space/architecture, but fail to serve the community in the long run. That being said, I do feel that not every project need to adopt participation from the community. Some examples are conservation projects. When it comes to deciding what architecture to preserve, it requires some degree of knowledge of conservation and architectural history to decide what needs to be preserved, and these are some things that require more of an expert point of view. So in this case, I do not see public participation as crucial in this case. However, public participation can come in at a later part to perhaps decide what programmes can go along in the conserved spaces.

Q4: What do you think can be done or what precautions may be taken to ensure community spaces can be designed to stay relevant?
I would say for community spaces and design to work, one must really understand who are you designing the space for. You need to take time to understand the community. Only then, you will be able to design something meaningful that can relate to the community. Like how Jan Gehl puts it, “First life, then spaces, then buildings - the other way around never works.”

Q5: What are some projects that you would like to do, but are unable to because of certain restrictions from the government?
I do not have such project so far. I would say however, there are some ideas which we wanted to propose but was not able to implement due to some operational reasons. One of which are movable furniture in public spaces, which has many concerns regarding theft and maintenance.

Q6: For the “Hack Our Play” series, is the research and understanding phase repeated for the different sites or how did you manage to adapt the general ideas learned to the different scales, objectives and age groups?
For Hack Our Play, we worked on one site, which is within a privately owned space at St James Kindergarten. We hoped to demonstrate to our partners and public agencies that such a methodology could be applied to different sites through this project. We documented our research journey, and also shared with the public what methodology worked for us, and some challenges we faced, so that they will be able to adjust these methodology according to the different sites they choose to work with. The toolkit is available for free at www.hackourplay.com.

Q7: Do the public spaces created with upcycled materials tend to be temporary in nature (be it as a play environment or in terms of maintenance of these materials)? Are the spaces created with upcycled materials as appreciated, or perhaps even more appreciated than its counterpart that are associated with more permanent structures?
The concept of using upcycled materials was to create a space that will constantly evolve over time. So it was meant to be more transitionary from the beginning. From our observation and feedback from the teachers, kids enjoyed the upcycled space more because it was built by themselves and their parents, they feel a greater sense of pride towards the space. Some feedback we got was also that the upcycled space offers more elements that can be customised to their liking, therefore able to accommodate more of their imaginative play during their play time. The fact that it will constantly evolve also adds some excitement for the kids and educators as it is a space that can constant change based on different students’ and educators’ imagination.

Q8: During the time of the Covid-19 outbreak, was the P!D able to adapt the participatory design principles to contribute to any community in an innova8ve way to help cope with the situation?
We have to move a lot of our engagements online. And that to us is something new, because we always have been doing physical engagements, and doing engagement online is something new for us. But how might we do engagement online but still doing it in a fun and accessible manner, that is what we are constantly trying to innovate. Also, there are communities that may not be present online, so how do we still reach out to them during such times?