Design for design - Design by community

Abstract

Like many other countries in the world, Vietnam is facing the problem of housing for the poor. Though, a lot of money and effort have been poured into these projects, but often it falls into a very bad situation, which is unstable: the community rapidly come back to poverty, people cannot self-recover and develop on their own after withdrawal of project teams, ect. In the field of Architecture and Planning, there is a fairly common method, which is "participatory methods". But by failing to understand the essence and not knowing how to operate the method in practice, the projects for the poor have little success. This paper introduces the following two areas: The Community "Participation Design" concept we have just implemented in a poor neighborhood of Tam Ky, Vietnam. Through the lessons of Tam Ky, the shift of participation concept is summarized: from passive to active community. In this way, the Community initiates and implements its initiative to change its habitat, make it better and more sustainable.