Creating the Community

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the participatory processes involved in the creation and running of community centre ‘t Karregat in Eindhoven using tools and theoretical models on participatory design from the time of the centre’s creation as well as off today. The goal is to understand the limits and shortcomings of the user involvement processes implemented to evaluate and discuss the reasons for why the experiment in participation, community and multifunctionality carried out by architect Frank van Klingeren together with Eindhoven Municipality and Amro/Westland-Utrecht received extensive criticism and was ultimately viewed as a failure. This paper finds that the participation efforts were extensive and that a lot of effort was taken to ensure the successful implementation of ideas, needs and wills of the neighbourhood inhabitants to make the multifunctional centre theirs. Shortcomings can be understood as a combination of the nature of the experiment, the key stakeholders and their role, the extent of participation and the expectations contra the implementation. It is evident that there was a certain degree of dissonance between expectations on the participation processes and the results where key stakeholders asserted inertia in the further development of the centre. The participation was also demanding on all interest groups, causing long discussions as hundreds of participants were expressing their views on how the centre should be redeveloped. These factors ultimately dragged out the process, leaving the centre in a prolonged state of disarray where certain aspects stayed in an undesirable state.

The paper aims at closing the gap in the evaluation of participatory processes and investigations into real life case studies to better understand the limits and basis of user involvement in design processes. This is done through looking at archival material and first hand accounts of the intentions and actions of key stakeholders given at the time of the experiment together with second hand sources giving a theoretical background through which an evaluation can be made.