Designing DOKK1 from a child’s point of view

Designing DOKK1 from a child’s point of view
By Aviaja Borup Lynggaard & Birgitte Geert Jensen
This poster presents a design case of collaborative innovation between design students from Aarhus School of Architecture and pupils from the public school, Samsøgades School in Aarhus, facilitated by the research project Kids n’Tweens Lifestyle. The scope of collaborating was to design the content for DOKK1, the new Mediaspace center in Aarhus, where design students took offset from the children’s world in a creative workshop as inspiration for the final design proposals.

The task was carried out in collaboration with the working group on the new Dokk1 and the goal was to create a library that makes sense for the whole family.
Some of the questions that the students wanted to answer was:
• How can you create a library where there are joint activities that makes sense for the whole family?
• How to create fun for families in the library?
• How can play help to promote interaction and communication?
The students worked with the space in Dokk1 as the “third place”, which is identified by Oldenburg (1999) as “great good places”, being public places on neutral ground where people can gather and interact.
The cooperative design workshop led to a range of insights and inspiration for the students to implement in their design solutions. An issue that the workshop revealed concerned a variety of interests and requirements when designing across ages. The age difference between users calls for variations in the use of space and design. The workshop also showed that the “third place” is achieved today in existing places around the city, such as in shops and banks. Therefore, several of the solutions showed that there is need to create a residence that can accommodate the versatility and give space for user participation.

The workshop was facilitated by Kids n’Tweens Lifestyle, as part of method development when engaging children in the design process. 8 groups were formed and a range of creative methods was tested. The methods varied from: Model making, lego prototyping, mood boards/blocks, inspirational pictures, future scenarios (library in 500 years), thinking out loud, body storming and sketching. The outcome led to new insights about the end users and an ideacatalogue for the students to elaborate from. The poster will present two design results – “Bookscape” and “Tumble”. Bookscape took offset from the children’s aspiration to create small and private spaces, as the shelves can be moved and thus act as space makers. The storage of the books provides a platform where new activities can take place. Tumble took offset from the pupils’ request towards being able to perform multiple activities in DOKK1. This led to the design of transformative furniture that can be rolled around on 4 different edges that each enables different activities.

We presented an innovative collaboration between design students and pupils from a public school. A creative workshop led to manifold projects, where two are presented in this poster to exemplify how the inputs from children can feed a creative design process.