Power of Design Agency in Building and Sustaining Collaboration: Two Cases in São Paulo

Abstract

Design research has considered the power of collaboration in terms of the politics of artefacts, services and practices to build or to support publics. Working within a framework of "commons" as continuing processes of negotiation in collaboration, this study asks: How can design skills and agency build up collaborative capacities in urban communities for sustained processes of social innovation? This qualitative research explores two case studies in Brazil, where design agency is identified in social practices carried out by both designers and non-designers. Three key processes involved in designing collaboration were identified: experimenting, disrupting and sustaining. This work concluded that design skills facilitate the distribution of power to build collaboration through co-production of common spaces. This investigation contributes to the ongoing discussion of design and "infrastructuring," identifying the power of design agency in building and sustaining collaboration in a complex social landscape of an emerging city.

Infrastructuring urban commons over time

“…In recent years, the participatory design /co-design 1 community has been increasingly interested in notions of commons and commoning. This interest has arisen from the engagement of codesigners with commons and new commons [28,14], meaning the shared resources which are used in (and in some cases, generated through) collaborative forms of value production, for example, cultural commons [21,22,24], digital commons [40,41], commons-based production, [33] and urban commons [34,23].…”

“…This proposal builds on the vision that collaborative ways of using and accessing resources might be the basis for more sustainable and fair ways of organizing the economy and society [3,4,12]. The interest and enthusiasm about commons is also growing within the overall design research community, particularly, among researchers who explore how design can contribute to the creation of a more sustainable and fair society [1,10,36]. When it comes to how to (co-)design commons, infrastructuring has been repeatedly proposed as a possible approach [22,24,33].…”