Future Users, Future Cities: Dweller as designer

Collaborative Design Future Users, Future Cities: Dweller as designer Murat Germen, Emrah Kavlak Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey (http://www.muratgermen.com), (http://www.emrahkavlak.com) [email protected], [email protected] Abstract. As technology advances, users get more detached from the way things work and are produced. Users end up being pure consumers and leave their positions as decision makers behind. Before the architecture and buildings processes were industrialized, most practitioners of the so-called vernacular architecture were in fact the dwellers of what they built and they easily met the specific personal needs since they were in total control. Some “architectural theorists have turned to vernacular construction with the conviction that such buildings and settlements express the interconnectedness between humans and the landscapes they live in.” (Beesley and Bonnemaison 2008). Considering the present day intense building activity, such relationship of dweller and architecture seems not possible excepting a very few examples to later referred to. This paper will instead focus on the possibility of the non-architect users of architectures as decision makers in order to reach designs that meet the requirements of their addressees.