Community Engaged Architectural Design Learning, The Case of Altering Practices for Urban Inclusion

This book offers an account of how, from 2017 until 2020, the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture research group Altering Practices for Urban Inclusion (Alt_Shift*) engaged end-users, civil society organisations, students, researchers and practitioners in collective learning and Networked Critical Spatial Practices through the transformation of several teaching initiatives into service-learning courses.

Starting from the realization that ‘traditional spatial practices’ often fail to recognize the complex and unequal relations between people living in cities, Alt_Shift* aims to explore the agency of altering the ways of practice in the real world. The research group recognizes that lived experiences of people at the margins of society provide important insights into institutional failure and social exclusion in urban projects. By setting up academic research in the context of collaborative learning and combining outreach-based community work and interdisciplinary network practices, the research group generates new knowledge and innovative socio-spatial inclusive design approaches.

In this book, we are describing how the Alt_Shift* Community-engaged Architectural Design Learning courses became platforms for collaboration and laboratories for reflection-in-action, reflection-through-action, and reflection-on-action. Moreover, we are discussing how, as a result, a Quadruple Helix Mode of Innovation was activated, Mode 2 and Mode 3 Knowledge Production was fostered, and Design as Politics was engaged.

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