Empowerment through Making

The build proposal of the project is a transformation of a building currently used as parking garage, into a shared creative workshop, facilitated by people of different social backgrounds, from the local community.

The projects main focal point is how design interventions can provide a stronger sense of own- ership for the people, who are to inhabit and use the space.

Within the research phase, the project has been influenced by two different sets of networks:

One is the activists of user driven, creative spaces located in the city.

The other is the users of an activity centre, Impuls, for citizens with mental health issues.

I found that people from the two networks, had a number of overlapping activities and interests. However, the sense of empowerment left with the individual users, were very different according to which context the people and activities found themselves in.

My aim for this project is to suggest a proposal that allows the users of a space to be included in the building processes, and where same users will be considered as active agents by trade, according to each their own set of skills of re- sources. This is done in order to allow participation of different levels that acknowledge people’s different capabilities, skill-related, but also mentally.