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Dr Mirian Calvo

Lecturer in Participatory Architecture

Participatory Architecture, Design Activism, Community Architecture, Urban Planning and Design; Co-design, Community Engagement, Placemaking, Mutual Learning, Design Innovation, Collaborative Theory and Methods

Expertise

  • Urban Design

m.calvo@lancaster.ac.uk

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Mirian is a Lecturer in Participatory Architecture at Lancaster School of Architecture, UK registered Architect ARB, and a member of the ImagintionLancaster cross-disciplinary design research group at Lancaster University (LU). She is also a guest Lecturer at the Master’s Rebuilding the World (RBW) – School of Architecture Bordeaux (ENSAP-BX). Previously she was a Lecturer in Design and Architecture at the University of the West of England (UWE). Mirian’s research explores other ways of doing architecture by strengthening community engagement in the transformation of the built environment. Such a transformation comprises the emergence of shared meanings, creating an environmental system that operates on symbolic and emotional levels. Her research also explores the interaction between citizens and the Public Sector in the built environment, and how co-design can be a driver for change in architectural processes.

Her core research draws a convergent path in-between the designing of spatial conditions and human agency with a focus on activating genuine collaboration to support social innovations. Mirian leads research between communities and the Public Sector with a particular focus on developing effective strategies and tactics to standardise more participatory architecture and co-design frameworks. She led MyMainway, a consultancy project in partnership with Lancaster City Council (LCC), which consisted of a series of public engagement events of different nature – from August 2020 to January 2021 – seeking to build a close-knit collaboration with Mainway residents to collectively reimagine the future of the social housing estate. Here participatory architecture stands for the democratisation of the production of social space. It employs designerly engagements to build a bridge between political, social, and economic agents, and citizens.

Her doctoral thesis explored the intrinsic relationship between mutual learning and community-based co-design, focusing on how such a relationship influences the co-design process. She participated in several research projects such as Emotional City, The Political Lab, and Leapfrog. She also has experience as a n expert consultant for organisations in China and Europe, such as beentheretogether. Recently, she has been involved in EPSRC project Embedded Intelligent Empathy in Design, British Academy project Mapping Values, IAA – ESRC Growing Together, British Academy project Youth, Democracy, and Sustainable Citizenship.

PhD diagram phase 3 of the theoretical framework: participants enacting genuine collaboration, 2019.

She has presented her work at international conferences such as the Design Research Society, the European Academy of Design or Design Principles and Practice, and has had her work published in the Design Journal and the International Journal of Art & Design Education. She is also a member of the Scientific Committee of BAc (scientific publication of contemporary architecture) and part of the international review board of Charrette , discern (International Journal of Design for Social Change, Sustainable Innovation and Entrepreneurship), ServDes 2018 Conference, EAD 2021, and reviewer of books and special issues in Europe and Latin America, e.g. Base, Diseño e Innovation.

Mirian has both an academic and a professional background in participatory architecture, urban planning, design innovation, design ethnography and co-design. Driven by her curiosity in understanding the symbiotic relationship between environmental conditions and people, she has acquired a unique set of design research skills and knowledge which enables her work at the edges of a wide range of disciplines, understanding and analysing their potentialities, and bringing their valuable contributions to animate and strengthen design research and architectural transformations.

Mirian is particularly interested in supervising research projects that investigate new radical collaborative practices in Design and Architecture, including technology-mediated engagement in participatory processes. Theoretical and methodological innovations in the development of distributed, practice-based transformative rural and/or urban environments are another key focus.

ResearchGate

Google Scholar citations

Academia.edu

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