Children As Designers: participatory design with Siaya's young Learners

Abstract

This project involves a team from Chalmers University participating in the Master’s program Architecture and planning beyond sustainability, working in close collaboration with children in Siaya County, Kenya and especially kids from Awelo Primary School located in Siaya. The collaboration began with the aim to involve and engage children more actively in design processes. Children are a vulnerable group often excluded from these kinds of activities, as well as from many decision making processes in society. Kenya and Siaya have worked with the issue of inclusion of vulnerable groups through an ongoing development plan, where our project covers the topic through the perspective of a child. As a result, this report proposes two parallel outcomes: one methodological representation on how to include children in design processes, and a specific design solution for improvement of schools in Siaya County. The design further suggests site-specific improvement of Awelo primary school in the three scales of a masterplan, a building and a prototype detail.