Participatory Stakeholder Engagement in Design Studio Education

Abstract

Researchers have highlighted the need for ongoing design pedagogy reform in order to reflect worldwide transformations, changing socio-cultural contexts and the expanding scope of design practice. New pedagogical models have emerged in architectural education that incorporate stakeholder perspectives and encourage community engagement. Participatory Design (PD) methodology has become a promising pedagogical approach to engage diverse stakeholders and communities in the design process. The twofold goal of this article is to describe and categorise student learning experiences in an architecture studio and to delineate the benefits of applying PD methodology to architecture studio pedagogy. Students from a graduate level integrated architectural studio participated in the study and led a series of three participatory co-creation activities with diverse stakeholders who were planned for the front, middle and backend of the design process. Observations, questionnaires and interviews were used to describe and categorise student learning experiences as well as determine the benefits of integrating PD methodology into a design studio. The study results demonstrate that participatory activities positively impact student learning experiences as well as greatly enhance student empathy for stakeholders, thus integrating the social and technical aspects of their experience and demonstrating the importance of stakeholder engagement in collective and creative experimentation.