Building a house and reaching a dream? - An investigation of the pedagogical dimensions of participatory design in a self-building process

Abstract

In the Swedish housing market today, where it is difficult to cater one’s own housing needs, the organization Egnahemsfabriken are offering a way to secure housing, by building a house by oneself, what is called self-building. The aim of this essay is to understand how to acquire knowledge and abilities, and uphold motivation, to be able to go through the preparation phase of the process of building a house by oneself, with the support from experts through methods of participatory design. This aim requires an understanding of what local precondi-tions of the study circle that is of importance in this specific case, and what obstacles and challenges that are occurring when preparing for building a house by oneself. The case investigated is a study circle, of Egnahemsfabriken, of eleven occasions, where two leaders are learning four participants how to build a house. The research design is a case study, and it is done abductively with observations of the occasions, seven interviews of cen-tral persons and a literature study. This essay does not take into consideration the personal differences between participants and leaders. There could exist differences between the cul-ture, sex, age, experience and personality between the people involved. The result is that there exist many structural obstacles which are beyond the influence of indi-viduals. Egnahemsfabriken tries to find ways around these obstacles by organizing self-building, for example, this study circle. The central personal challenges are to continue being empowered and to deal with the consequences of the obscurity occurring. Egnahemsfab-riken’s solution to this complex problem is by participating in the design, where an expert and the participant is working closely together, and the expert is designing from the participants perspective. The participant is learning how to build a house, by becoming a part of the prac-tice, while the expert and the participant work together. Keywords in the collaboration are responsiveness and trust. To even start to build the participants need the insight that it is pos-sible to build a house by oneself, at the same time as they need to be naive in front of what the challenge means.