Community-Engaged Interior Design

Book excerpt: This step-by-step guide takes the reader through each stage of the design process, from concept to completion, exploring practical methods of how to engage the community throughout interior architecture and design projects. This book argues that all design should be accomplished through a process of engagement, be it with community members, clients, or end users. The community-engaged designer welcomes participatory processes, mutually beneficial collaboration, and equitable inclusion in order to meet the needs and wants of diverse groups of people. Chapters cover the initial engagement of communities, marketing, and pre-design phases, translating research into a design scheme in development with the community, communicating designs, engaging community-based makers, craftspeople, product manufacturers, vendors, and distributors, constructing designs, and evaluating the end result. Finally, case studies of successful community-engaged design projects are presented and analyzed to demonstrate this approach in action. Learning objectives, chapter summaries, and exercises help to ease understanding and build design thinking and technical skills, equipping the reader with the tools to succeed as a community-engaged designer. Hicks distills years of experience teaching community-engaged design within this volume, which will be a valuable resource for all interior architecture and design students and practitioners.