Part of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)’s recent camp improvement program, Febrik worked with the community through a design participatory process that attempts to negotiate the rights of space of previously unrepresented groups in the public domain, such as children and women. This process brought forward the roles of different agents and authorities involved in decision making: the camp community (children, men and women), UNRWA, funders, designers, and contractor. Febrik’s Talbieh project, Edge of Play, examines negotiations of play through the existing social practices in the public realm and the reinterpretation of the playground as a multi-use intergenerational public space. The two-year long process, in collaboration with numerous stakeholders, touches on issues of education through design participation, time and budget constraints and their role in the outcome, as well as the difference between design proposals and their actual implementation within a predefined social structure.

Author: Febrik /UNRWA
Location: Talbieh, Jordan
Factors for success: Communality, Identification, Context, Ownership, Publicness
Websites: http://febrik.orghttp://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=132