Building Blocks for Social Sustainability: A Four-Day Design Workshop

To sustain is to survive, and to survive as a community requires that class and racial differences, as well as spatial and perceptual distances are overcome by good will and good design. Since social sustainability is more of an enquiry than a definition, workshops such as the BBSS (Building Blocks for Social Sustainability) serve as an orientation device rather than a solution to a problem. Social sustainability ensures cohabitation and coexistence between all racial groups; thus this workshop aimed to accentuate cultural differences and similarities while enhancing mutual respect between communities of cultural diversity and environmental systems. The workshop targeted to explore the concept of social sustainability and to discover its placement concerning broader issues of sustainability. The four-day workshop took place in March 2013 at the Department of Architecture, University of Nicosia. This essay presents the philosophical premise, workshop process and product, as well as lessons learnt and future seeds for further development.   

The workshop aimed to address the issue of social sustainability within a humanistic and cultural context, set on the platform of the built environment. Participants were called to consider matters of formal and informal urban structure, sense of community, social identity and ethics as those pertain to societal development in a diverse, multicultural setting. Operating under the premise that social sustainability can be attained through means of collaboration and common awareness, the workshop’s findings aimed to activate urban spaces in a three-dimensional and temporal manner in order to induce values of social and egalitarian participation.

While particular attention was set on non-conventional means of visual expression, inquiries included the physical and metaphorical manifestation of conditions of social inclusion and exclusion, identifying physical elements or landmarks which, if removed would strip the area of its identity, its sense of place, traces of transculturation and others. Participants of this catalyst workshop have taken a multi-ethnic area of particular urban interest, analysed it as per its specific physical and social elements and were encouraged to invent a system, a process, a space, an object, a condition, or a circumstance that will act as a catalyst of social and spatial perception. Since enquiries and proposals were condensed within four working days, participants were compelled to exercise different design muscles than those used within the context of a semester- or year-long project. The final product was encouraged to include the invention of a new visual language for wayfinding, choreographing experiential activities, staging new urban functions, or designing interactive mobile systems, temporary or permanent structures and others. The aim of this product was to challenge current cognitive perceptions and encourage social inclusion and sustainable communities