Future users, future cities: dwellers as designers

Abstract

As technology advances, users get more detached from the way things work and are produced. Users end up being pure consumers and leave their positions as decision makers behind. Before the architecture and buildings processes were industrialized, most practitioners of the so-called vernacular architecture were in fact the dwellers of what they built and they easily met the specific personal needs since they were in total control. This paper will focus on the possibility of the non-architect users of architectures as decision makers in order to reach designs that meet the requirements of their addressees.