Collaborative process and the transformation of the urban environment : wall, street, and scaffolding on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston

Abstract

This thesis addresses two questions: how to develop a process of collaborative building in cities, and what kind of public places to make in cities. More generally: how can urban dwellers re-engage with urban architecture in a meaningful and vital way? In response to these questions it is proposed that architects must help to define ways that people can directly collaborate in experiments to redefine their environment. An approach is suggested to bring the process of making together with the design of the place by designing "pieces of the process." An architectural "vocabulary" is put forward that can be used in on-site collaborations to develop alternatives and to build zones of community interaction and reconciliation of civic life. This vocabulary is made up of both build-able form and an awareness of the cultural capacities for use and meaning of architecture. It attempts to enrich the dynamic language of architecture which already exists in the social life of communities, and to address that language to the goal of enriching the life of the city.