Pawns on the Chessboard
The characterization of the Indigene as the “Other” arises from the imperialist longing for an authentic identity rooted in the land, consequently bounding the Indigene within a semiotic field created by white signmakers. Terry Goldie compares these boundaries to a chessboard, where the cultures and practices of the Indigene fall under a static set of symbols, restricting movement to prescribed areas upon a single field of discourse, one created by British imperialists.1 White culture then chooses to either incorporate the Other through stereotypical adaptations and literature or reject the Other through alienation, by reframing the history of a nation to begin with the white man.2 These strategies are described by Avery Bell as “the settler appropriation of indigenous authenticity to give substance and distinctiveness to their own nationalist identity claims.”3 White indigenization is thus a method of appropriating the distinct native identity to ensure that any “othering” only occurs to the Indigenous population.
In describing cultural appropriation within the context of the design practice, acknowledging it as inherently an appropriation of an interpretation of culture reveals the tendency to default to stereotypical motifs and symbols when designing for non-whites. For the Indigene, this means subjection to an architecture of misrepresentation and simultaneous devaluation of their existence. Moreover, Indigenous architecture is deemed obscure, frozen in time to be studied only in the context of vernacular tradition.4 Relegation to the past prevents the Indigene presence from seeping into the design of the future. Lack of recognition for their true identity maintains the Indigene’s image as the Other even when it comes to creating spaces for serving the needs of their communities.
Humanitarian Design and the Saviour Complex
When vulnerable communities are placed on the sidelines, they are discredited and portrayed as incapable of imagining and enacting solutions to sustain themselves. Poverty-stricken regions fall victim to band-aid solutions, often due to assumptions of the experience of poverty rather than meaningful engagement with the affected populations. In some cases, the saviour complex emerges, whereby designers use disaster and poverty as opportunities to implement form-focused solutions with aesthetic appeal, achieving praise and distinction along the way for “tackling” such dire and complex social issues. In “Beyond Participation,” Gabriel Arboleda highlights the role of the starchitect in perpetuating the use of “normative tools of high architectural design” to address issues of poverty, but often failing to meet the objectives initially promoted.5 He lays the example of Shigeru Ban’s log houses, designed for Ecuadorians after the 2016 earthquake, but ultimately never coming to fruition.6 False promises abandon communities trusting external sources to deliver the resources necessary for their survival after facing hardship. At the same time, reliance upon the designer as the saviour feeds the existing hierarchal nature of the design industry, thus maintaining a separation of people into the Other. Similarly, innovation is attributed to Euro-American ideas, ignoring the layers of contributions made by non-whites to the history of architectural design and barring them from further influence. White ideas cannot translate into non-white contexts without the participation of the communities at stake. Otherwise, they risk stereotyping the practices of the people involved. Arboleda describes how Western depictions of Indigenous life in Guyana emphasize traditional materials such as thatched roofing. In reality, the Indigenous Guyanese population favours the use of more modern materials for their homes, namely zinc sheeting.7 Zinc sheeting provides clean surfaces for rainwater harvesting, a need discovered during community assessments, and which later became the focus of the housing development project in Guyana.8 Creating opportunities for community participation can drastically alter thoughtlessly conceived design objectives to build for the people rather than the ego.
What Does Participation Mean?
Participatory design in the traditional sense is understood as a shift from design “for” to design “with.” While this change is significant in dismantling the architect’s perceived authoritative presence, it continues to reinforce the designer as the translator, receiving input from the community and manipulating it to fit into the desired narrative and architectural design.9 According to Arboleda, the true meaning of participation can only be realized by a subsequent move to design “by.”10 The designer becomes both a facilitator and a participant, helping to materialize the community’s ideas. Networks that establish connections replace hierarchies and encourage active participation of communities in the public realm. This bottom-up approach addresses the high-design problem by empowering communities to invest in themselves.
Bruno Marques et al. outline four steps to actuating bottom-up design: understanding of place, relationship building, respectful facilitation, and empowered participation.11 The value of these steps begins within the titles, each of which evokes a collaborative practice that focuses on the beauty of the process rather than the beauty of the object.12 Prioritization of people over form is the key to effective participatory design.
The Designer as the Advocate for the Indigene
Additionally, bottom-up approaches recognize the Indigene as already possessing a participatory culture. While new to the imperialist, participatory design is not radical to the native, whose long-lasting tradition of intergenerational planning renders them experienced users of this social design strategy. Yet, the dominance of the design field by Euro-American ideals and methods edges out local practices and holistic planning integral to the structure and sustainability of Indigenous communities.13 As a participant of the design project, the designer must now become an advocate for the ideas of the community, negotiating with government officials for the resources and funding required to return to a mode of self-reliance.14
While society recognizes differences, co-design is about re-structuring the design process to consider those differences by understanding that catch-all solutions to address complex social issues do not exist, especially when the cultural contexts change. Participatory design can combat popular narratives fashioned by the imperialist to recognize the presence of distinct cultural identities, including those that history tried to erase.15 As Goldie writes, “absence is also negative presence.”16 If the true image of the Indigene is to persist, we must advocate for design practices that enable community empowerment and pursue thoughtful representations of diverse identities.
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1 Terry Goldie, “The Representation of the Indigene,” in Post-Colonial Studies Reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 1994), 232.
2 Ibid, 234.
3 Avril Bell, “Authenticity and the Project of Settler Identity in New Zealand,” Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology 43, no. 3 (November 1999): 122.
4 Theodore Jojola, “The People are Beautiful Already: Indigenous Design and Planning,” Cooper Hewitt, February 16, 2017, https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2017/02/16/the-people-are-beautiful-already-indigenous-design-and-planning/.
5 Gabriel Arboleda, “Beyond Participation,” Journal of Architectural Education 74, no. 1 (March 2020): 16.
6 Ibid, 15.
7 Ibid, 18.
8 Ibid, 17.
9 Maria Rodgers, B. Marques, and J. McIntosh, “Connecting Maori Youth and Landscape Architecture Students through Participatory Design,” Architecture and Culture 1, no. 1 (June 2020): 4.
10 Arboleda, “Beyond Participation,” 19.
11 Bruno Marques, Greg Grabasch, and Jacqueline McIntosh, “Fostering Landscape Identity Through Participatory Design with Indigenous Cultures of Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand,” Space and Culture 2, no. 4 (June 2018): 11.
12 Arbodela, “Beyond Participation,” 23.
13 Jojola, “The People are Beautiful Already.”
14 Ibid.
15 Arboleda, “Beyond Participation,” 11.
16 Goldie, “The Representation of the Indigene,” 235.
