Site

Ateliescola Acaia, São Paulo, Brazil

Duration

May 2019

Role

Co-Designer, Design Researcher, Facilitator

Overview

What happens when you change your view? This was the central question guiding the Master of Integrative Design Cohort’s design residency at Ateliescola Acaia in São Paulo, Brazil in May 2019. Ateliescola Acaia is an arts-based school providing quality, holistic education that meets the specific needs of youth in their community, many of whom live on the margins in Brazil’s cultural capital. Through a program of participatory design workshops, Acaia’s fourth and fifth grade students were probed to see with new eyes what commonly fades into the background of our experience: the spaces we occupy, the languages we speak, and the cities we call home.

The design workshops incorporated a variety of methods and technologies to engage youth in the act of close observation, including cameras attached to kites (pipa vista), cameras on feet (pé da vista), and optical illusions. At the end of the residency, students produced videos with their captured footage to express their unique perspectives of their city. The design program concluded with guided reflection activities asking students to consider the transformative power of a new perspective.

Reflection

The residency at Ateliescola Acaia highlighted the joys and delicacies of designing with youth. The students’ willingness to complicate their own views of their city

In addition, the experience clarified best practices for approaching inter-cultural collaborations. It reminded that laying the groundwork for working together is itself a design challenge. The designer is not a neutral feature of the design process, and close attention must be paid to the values and social signifiers one brings to creative partnerships.