Fast Company, the only available source for the project we are writing about, reports on the design research recently completed by Gensler, an “international architecture, design and planning firm with 53 offices and 7,000 professionals in the Americas, Europe, China, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East”. The research was carried out over three years, the aim of which was not so much to design a product but, in the words of Amanda Stone, community impact specialist and project research director at Gensler, to “design a design process” to alleviate the problem of heat islands in urban environments. Therefore, whilst the end result is undoubtedly, despite its simplicity and elemental nature, of interest, the design process, precisely, seems to us to be of greater relevance.
Indeed, the result of the “design process” proved to be very useful for the community in three ways: it provided a modular system of umbrellas adaptable to different surfaces and public spaces; the community itself can easily build it with local materials and almost in an improvised manner; and it is multifunctional, as the canvases, in addition to providing shade, serve as a projection screen for audiovisuals, a support for works of art or a support structure for ivy or other climbing plants. The crucial point is, precisely, that in order to arrive at such a functional and simple product, a design process was carried out which, let’s remember, took 3 years of research. Let’s see how it went:
At the start of the research, the Gensler team realised that the design process they were looking for only made sense if it was done collectively. After all, it was about establishing a process to solve a collective problem; what better way to start the process than by establishing the work of the community affected by the problem as the starting point? Accordingly, the research team circulated a call for proposals to Gensler’s designers and researchers. From these, new requests were sent out to their own networks, looking for community partners who wanted to participate. This is how the Costa Rican city of Curridabat came into play.
This city, which is particularly hard hit by climate change, already had a climate action plan in place at the time, according to Fast Company’s Paula Badilla, sustainability specialist at Gensler in Costa Rica and Latin America resilience officer, and had collected data on the effects of climate change on its territory. However, once the city was established as a model in the design process, the researchers went beyond the data and conducted interviews with residents. Where were they the hottest? What time of day? What time of year?
Since the interviewees’ answers did not exactly match the city’s heat maps, it was the community, which the researchers consulted, that chose three locations based on their own experiences. Once these spaces were determined, the research team again turned to the design collective from Gensler’s Latin American offices, with more than 80 participants, to come up with a final design. The result: a modular sunshade system, made of bamboo, canvas and rope. In conclusion, Fast Company again quotes Amanda Stone: “it is knowledge sharing that really works”.
Sources: Fast Company, Gensler.
Images: Gensler.
