Cosmologies of participatory design: PlaYInn summer course

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5821/jida.2025.13684

Keywords:

co-design, co-creation, youth, public squares, reuse

Abstract

The text explores participatory design as a pedagogical and transformative tool, understanding each project as a cosmology of relationships and meanings. It describes a summer course framed within the PlaYInn project, where students from various disciplines collaborated in the co-creation of urban furniture using reused materials, applying Research by Design and Action-Research methodologies. The course combined lectures, collaborative design, and 1:1 scale construction, culminating in a public exhibition with a popular vote. The value of the prototype as an epistemological vehicle is highlighted, integrating theory, practice, and sustainability. The Design-Build approach allowed students to learn by doing, facing real technical and social challenges. Collaboration with collectives, companies and local institutions strengthened the link between academia and community. The project aligns with the principles of the New European Bauhaus, promoting beauty, sustainability, and participation in public space.

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logo DOI logo DOI logo DOI 10.5821 DOI: 10.5821/jida.2025.13684

Author Biographies

Lucila Urda Peña, URJC

Lucila Urda Peña, PhD in Architecture from the UPM (ETSAM) with 18 years of experience in national and international teaching. Coordinator of the urban planning area of the Degree in Fundamentals of Architecture at the URJC in Madrid Sur, member of the PENT(H)A research group, and collaborator in NUTAC and ABIO.

Member of the COTES teaching innovation group of the URJC. In her teaching, she uses the Service Learning methodology for the integration of local problems in the training curriculum of students.

Expert in urban regeneration, public space, social housing and educational spaces. He develops consultancy work for the improvement of cities, renaturalisation of public urban spaces and educational environments. It has numerous works to improve educational environments, with collaborative work with educational communities and institutions, producing informative publications of great impact.

She focuses her publications and research on the humanization of cities, integrating the processes of participation and co-creation in urban transformations. She has directed 7 local research projects and is part of national and European research projects. She is an expert in urban art, as an activating engine of contemporary socioculture, specifically in projects, exhibitions, publications and research developed in the city of Madrid.

 

 

Fermina Garrido, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

Fermina Garrido has been an architect from the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid since May 2002 and a PhD in Architecture from the Polytechnic University of Madrid since January 2016.

He joined the faculty of the URJC in 2016, developing his teaching work in three subjects, mainly Architectural Typologies and Projects I of the Degree in Fundamentals of Architecture and Project Workshop of the Master's Degree in Architecture. Previously, she was a professor at the Pontifical University of Salamanca in Madrid (UPSAM) 2005-2013 and at the European University 2006-2012. As a professor she has two five-year periods until 2020 and has been evaluated in two courses with the qualification of remarkable from 2016 to 2019 and excellent from 2019 to 2022. She was a teaching manager of academic exchange (national and international mobility) between 2021 and 2022 and Coordinator of the Degree in Fundamentals of Architecture between 2022 and 2024.

Coordinator of the CUIDARQ Teaching Innovation Group where they have developed two RED-RUBAC Educational Innovation Projects. He has developed two Service Learning projects, approved by the University Office of Service Learning of the URJC entitled "Projects on the urban and landscape heritage space. The case of the Real Cortijo de San Isidro" 2022-2023 and ¿Social energy. Care and sustainable transformation in Getafe¿ 2024-2025.

Guest in university and qualifying master's degrees: in Maca (Complutense-UPM) and in the Master's Degree in Collective Housing (UPM). Also to workshops of undergraduate and postgraduate projects such as the virtual seminar "INHABITING (IN) THE PANDEMIC. INHABITED SIMULATION" or "Architects of Uruguay. A collective atlas" both at FADU-UdelaR; the workshop "The Architect is present" at the ICO Foundation; or the Workshops "When Dante's Inferno Becomes a Magical Garden" at the 13th Biennale di Architettura di Venezia 2012 or "GAME-ON" within the International Program of the Faculty of Architecture and Design. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Bogota. Colombia. She has been invited to conferences at the Pontificia Javeriana Bogotá, FADU Buenos Aires, FADU Montevideo, ETSA Seville, Alcalá de Henares and ETSA Madrid.

She is currently coordinator of the PENT(h)A research group at the URJC, where they develop five lines of work. Her work in the Matrices subgroup stands out, which explores the role of women in architecture, their recognition, the parameters and registers for their enhancement and urban life; she has organized six editions of the "Women and Architecture Conferences" and has edited Architecture with Architects. She has been a researcher in ¿VIVIDA - From housing to the city: analysis and feminist proposal¿, a project funded in 2024 by the Women's Institute of the Ministry of Equality. Within the Penthalab line, project laboratory, she has been Principal Investigator in ¿PlaYiNN [Plazas for Youth Innovation]¿ project carried out in 2024 together with the Fuenlabrada City Council and funded by the EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology) won within the framework of the Co-create proposals of the New European Bauhaus.

 

 

Narjis Azahra, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

Narjis Azahra has been studying architecture at the Rey Juan Carlos University since 2017, after having started her degree at ETSAM in 2016. During the 2023-2024 academic year, she completed an Erasmus stay at the ENSA Paris-Val de Seine.

 

He has participated in the summer course on urban furniture organized by the URJC in 2024, and in group exhibitions such as the sample of models at the COAM and the exhibition of Proyectos I in Aranjuez, both in 2024. Since March of the same year he has been working at the VA Arquitectura studio. She has also participated as a contracted collaborator in the European project Playinn, focused on the improvement of public space through participatory co-design processes.

 

She is currently interested in the representation of space through digital media and in the relationship between architecture, language and perception.

 

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Published

2025-10-28

Issue

JIDA'25

Section

PAPERS