Participatory Design Workshop

An intense 10 days of learning about human centred design and then putting those learnings into practice by going into the community and finding out their exact challenges, needs and wishes for a better quality of life at the orphanage. The in loco lead Architects, Pedro Clarke and Luca Astorri visited Lesotho from Portugal and Italy respectively to run the workshop.

The in loco fellows learnt about various participatory design activities before going into the field and put these methods into practice. They split the community at GLC into 4 groups – children, two groups of adolescent youth and staff and spent an entire day collecting data and information.

Then came back to the studio, analysed the gathered data, identified the gaps of information and went back out into the larger community to collect more info and met with Ministry of Social Development, Maseru City Council, community members living around GLC’s existing and new sites as well as local entrepreneurs. They then put their findings together, presented to GLC who were given the opportunity to prioritise their wish list according to importance so that the fellows could then design accordingly which they are busy doing now.

A visit to the historic town of Morija, was also an important part of the workshop, so that fellows could learn about vernacular architecture and building techniques, including seeing the country’s oldest building made out of mud bricks built 130 years ago!

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