Wayfinding between the Historical Landscape and the Design Space: Uses of the past in participatory design in the context of heritage-development

This dissertation explores the uses of the past in design in the context of heritage-development. In particular, it looks at how the past is mobilised in designing visions for the future of historical landscapes. These landscapes present sites where different expectations of development are confronted - for example, in negotiating between the interests of economic viability, conservation and sustainable transition. The research aims to understand how the past is used in the process of designing and confronting different visions, as well as how it can be used in participatory design approaches to critically engage with development agendas. It starts from the need to examine heritage-development as a specific nexus that configures how these agendas align with specific assumptions of development and heritage values. In that sense, it foregrounds a critical approach to development as a social construction historically tied to design praxis, to focus on the ramifications of universalising development frameworks in creating design visions and setting these visions against frames of ‘underdeveloped’ pasts. By foregrounding a design perspective, the research examines how the mobilisation of the past in the design space of development can be challenged through participatory engagements with the historical landscape as a repository of public history. The focus is on the design space as the imaginary space where different perspectives on the future design are gathered and confronted. The assumption is that, by tracing how the past travels from the historical landscape to this design space, we can learn more about how development is staged as a construction in design visions. Two key proposals for the design space are foregrounded: it is not just a space of future-making, but also a historical space and, it is a site where development is actively staged as a construction. They translate to two research questions. The first question explores how participatory design could engage with the past, to search for methods and tools that can help in staging the design space as historical. The second question aims to gain insights into how such an approach could also critically address development as a design construction. In devising a situated participatory approach to the design space, the research traces the uses of the past in both heritage-development visions and situated practices while observing how their relations and tensions are configured by and entangled with things in the historical landscape. The approach proposes that the role of participatory design could be one of wayfinding - where an engagement with the past helps navigate, articulate and narrate the relations of visions, things and practices in the design space together with the participants. Wayfinding was a guiding metaphor in experimenting with how to advance design methods with historical research insights through three steps: historicising, mapping and staging the design space. This approach was explored in three case studies situated in the cities of Leuven and Genk in Flanders. The first case presents the findings of a research residency that engaged with the ongoing development and transition of the post-industrial Vaartkom neighbourhood in the city of Leuven. WegenWerken, the second case study presents a long-term participatory design project involved in exploring and activating a neglected infrastructure of slow roads in Genk as a contribution towards a sustainable mobility transition in this city. The final case study engages with the post-mining Transition Landscape in Genk, in the context of a broader public debate on balancing between the interests of historical preservation and sustainable spatial development. The dissertation includes three peer-reviewed journal articles, two peer-reviewed book chapters and one article in a professional journal, complemented with introductory chapters and an overview of design material, followed by results and conclusions. In the results, I outline the main contributions to extended PD research and practice, as well as wayfinding strategies for a situated approach to the design space that starts from an engagement with the past. In conclusion, the dissertation underlines the potential implications of this approach in participatory design, particularly in relation to tackling socio-environmental challenges. In this context, a critical look to the past could help acknowledge and foreground peripheral and pluriversal ways of caring for the historical landscape, already prefigured in traces, continuities and dissonances around us.

Publication year:2022

Keywords:Participatory Design, Critical Heritage Studies, Uses of the Past, Heritage-Development, Design Space, Wayfinding

Accessibility:Open