Let’s make something together.
co.katherineann@gmail.com
Collective Ownership! is response part of an architecture-activist campaign against housing alienation. Created by Haeccity Studio for the curation team Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA) exhibited at the Venice Biennale in Italy, the theme of the exhibition "Not For Sale!" is a response to the housing crisis in Canada.
My goal as the Creative Lead and Architect was to strategize, manage, and deploy design research and decisions for a captivating, timely, and memorable exhibition to empower visitors to mobilize and join the call for safer, healthier, and more equitable housing.
The main problem of the project was to address a complex topic within a few memorable seconds. We had to address the attendees of the Biennale exhibition as our primary users but also seriously address the fictional users within our narrative.
Majority of exhibit visitors are not Canadian and will not know what Co‑living, Co‑housing or Co‑operative means or their differences. The project is a case study format, a user-centered framework for designing housing that can become a reality in the future.
We aligned the values between the Venice Biennale exhibition users who would be viewing this exhibition and our Richmond case study users.
By conducting research about our case study users, collecting data, interviews, and studying other Co‑living projects, I quickly realized the pain points and frustrations that users will have.
These insights were vital to understanding architects spatial needs and configurations for Co‑living users and also determine how to craft an engaging visual narrative for the exhibition users.
45% of users groups value sense of community and outdoors over monetizing property.
76% of Richmond residents are visible minorities, the largest percentage in a Canadian city.
62% of senior residents are afraid of living alone in case of a medical emergency.
After talking with the AAHA curatorial team, we set our goal to create a conversation around cultural diversity in Co‑housing projects.
The first Co‑housing projects come from Scandinavia which has a very different context to our project site in Richmond, BC. How could we improve Canadian lives through cohabitation?
User retention increases from creating a clear and simple exhibition wall. By scaling information to different levels, users can digest and understand information.
I proposed the team create 3 large posters to capture and retain user attention. It visually guides the user through posters and through the interwoven research and narrative.
I advocated for qualitative user research, innovative and experimental within the architecture industry, which resulted in persona cards that became pillars to our design decisions.
These personas directed architectural design decisions, reflecting the democratization and impact users have on this new framework of designing space.
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Each persona has a colour assigned to them, so users can find each character within the posters.
I created the visual language and a streamlined workflow to create assets so any team member could follow along and contribute. I ensured that the workflow was simple and standardized. Requiring minimal artistic skill, the steps involved using image references and applying effects so create a uniform visual.
Storytelling Sketches
I sketched these thumbnails after a team discussion on graphic representation during preliminary explorations. At first, we were interested in a graphic novel style that could zoom in and out of scales as we liked. However, we realized we needed a strategy that would allow easy changes that could be done by anyone in our diversely‑skilled and small (but mighty) team.
Exhibition Layouts
A Curator team set the guidelines that the exhibition projects had to follow. One challenge was the mounting surface. We did not have a plain wall to display our project, but a simple wooden‑frame structure that had gaps in‑between! That meant we had to mount on the short sides of wooden studs.
Other design challenges included having a maximum percentage (%) of wall area covered we could go past, and only working on physical exhibition materials remotely.
An isometric drawing can show layered information of several building floors. We chose to do a Chinese parallel perspective which retains that information‑layering, and also adds character to a mathematical drawing style.
Through Collective Ownership! we hope to inspire social connection and collective action. Our contribution to this campaign represents a new typology of grass roots social housing that would empower its residents and beyond.
Using Richmond, Canada as the site for a global stage like the Venice Biennale was a moving and humbling opportunity to solve the housing problems of my hometown. I felt honored to work with the rest of the Haeccity team who were just as fearless and passionate in celebrating community, diversity and social empowerment.
