Supporting Design-Build Collaborations

By Keena Suh and Ann Dinh

"This making-based research focuses on community-engaged projects, exploring how multidisciplinary collaborations can shape process and outcomes through shared languages, landscapes, and experiences. While these collaborative environments hold potential to address imperatives of design activism through community-engaged work, finding sustained support for these initiatives is often challenging, particularly in course-based projects. Building upon existing partnerships and momentum from previous coursework—successes, lessons, and possibilities—this research seeks to:

–Identify, share, and pursue funding opportunities and other resources to support design-build multidisciplinary collaborations, working with community and industry partners, for sustained support for community engagement.

–Expand and consolidate knowledge base of programs, organizations, networks, and resources for hands-on making and fabrication-based collaborations, focused on curriculum building and community engagement.

–Explore materials, tools, and processes of making as a shared landscape of learning that integrates a broad range of frameworks."