Abstract
Multiple publics and a pluralistic society call for multiple ways of bettering the lives of others. In higher education, Service Learning Projects (SLP) deal with these challenges locally and globally. Their value is found in their ability to develop lifelong learning experiences for our students (Fink 2003, Davies 2006), and foster the development of empathy, informed judgments and responsive action (Sears, 2004, Zingoni 2019). They empower students to do “good to the public”, improving others’ conditions. This SPL case study mobilizes knowledge from a Research I Public University in the United States to professors in a Public University in Venezuela, from the latter to their architecture students, and from them to the local community through a participatory design process to amplify their voices, while exposing them to design thinking and empowering them to develop agency. Based on Dewey’s (1938) view of education as a social process, faculty, students and community members, worked together to identify shared values and define common purpose that makes good to the public. This funded study presents the participatory design process that helped find common ground within the community of Volcadero in Venezuela, a fishing community located 334.2km west of Caracas, which is perceived by outsiders as unsafe and dirty and by its local community as disconnected. It presents the data analysis and translates these ideas into a design proposal that represents and builds on the Volcadero community identity. This pilot study is about empowering others to develop agency and assessing the success of such efforts.
Presenters
Milagros ZingoniDirector, School of Interior Architecture, University of Tennessee, Tennessee, United States Oriana Gil Perez
Student, Architecture, Arizona State University, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Service Learning, Participatory Design, Movable Knowledge, Design Build
